I Got Well

The summer of 2020 nearly undid me. I held my baby, in a global pandemic, and watched as black people were being killed across the nation. Deep wounds and fears surfaced pertaining to what it meant for me, a biracial woman, to watch my people suffer. To know the lack of justice, the lagging silence. So much of life felt like loss and flailing.

That was the summer I finally moved toward therapy. I found a black therapist who helped me process so much- grief and anger, marriage, race, faith, life and death, purpose. It was- and sometimes continues to be- grueling work. Yet, I began to get well.

And poetry poured forth.

In my deepest wrestlings and in the darkest parts of the night, poetry continues to be the vessel that can hold the complexity, rawness, and truth of who I am and what I have experienced. 

This is a testimony, not a prescription. New circumstances trigger old memories or leave me flailing once again. I’m not done getting well. But I’m so much more equipped- by therapy, by community, by rest, by prayer, by poetry. And I’m more myself than ever.