You are the enemy I fight every single day, You are constantly there, I do my best to keep you at bay, I do not know when you are going to rear your ugly head, I do not know what will happen During the day to cause me to flashbacks and nightmares, I do not know when I will be triggered And get into fight or flight, All I know is that there are times when I am afraid, There are times when I cannot stand noise, There are certain smells, There are times when I cannot stand being

I want to be in my body, I want my body to be my home, I want to feel that my body is safe, I want to be connected to my feelings, But I was taught at 11, 19, 23, 25 that my body is not a safe for me to be, I was taught to disconnect from myself, To float somewhere far away, That was the only way I could survive The pain that they caused. Now as I continue my healing journey, I want my body back, I want to be connected to myself, I want my body to be my home, I want to feel s

Discharged from Military since I developed Post Traumatic Stress from being raped, I hurt my knee doing my job, I tried to get care for my knee but was Told over and over again by chain of command, You are lying!! You are faking!! You are not hurt!! Conveniently discharged while rapist is promoted and sent back to another technical school so he can rape over and over again!! Meanwhile, I am discharged and given code of JFT Erroneous enlistment but I have honorable discharge 2

Knee Pain please go away, I cannot take this pain anymore, You make doing my job of damage control That much harder and I have trouble running all Over the ship to do my job of a damage control petty officer, You make it hard to run and I cannot run on you, I cannot do exercises on you, You bring tears to my eyes, You make me take over 1,000 milligrams of Motrin, You make me want to stay off you, You make me use a knee brace You make me go to the Medical Department to try to

Why? It’s too hard to understand Too hard to comprehend Too hard to deal with Flashbacks, nightmares,betrayal, rage, Replayed over and over again in mind, Do not understand why you would do this, Why the chain of command protects him? Why the chain of command ruined my career? It’s wrong, you knew what you doing was wrong. You knew that I did not consent to have sex With you and you raped me, You took everything that I believed in, Trust, Safety, Honor, Courage, Commitment Br

Forgiveness Forgiveness, One of those things I have heard a few times from different people through my life, Many times I got angry, cried and ignored what they were saying to me, Pushed people away from me, I was not in the place to hear about forgiving myself or them for what they did to me, Now, in this moment, I am ready to forgive myself for what happened when I was 11, 19, 23 and 25, I know that the things that I hold on to that keeps me stuck in pain, anger grief, and

An inspirational poem I wrote after co creating, Service with my friend and mentor Lynda. There have been people put in my life that have been lights in my darkness, They showed me the way back to myself by shining their light in the darkness, They gently guided me onto the healing path when I was lost in deep emotional pain and had no hope, They came beside me to tell me that could borrow there hope until I had my own hope, They told me that I mattered, They cared about me a