Posttraumatic Growth

mike166146/Adobestock

POETRY FOR INCLUSION

The pieces of me shattered

With emotional neglect

A perfect childhood is a facade

And the prepubescent voice whispers

What happened to you?

Trauma sighs and sighs

Beckoning answers

Whilst

The bard views repressed wounds

Of neglect bi-weekly

They dehisce at

The sound of mammoth

Tears

And

Anger an untouched emotion

No longer submerged in the

Numbness abyss

Greets the ambiguous

Soul with an affirming

Handshake

A frazzled limbic system

Seeking relief from

Repetitive knockouts

Filled with unrelenting

Cortisol

The lobe of reasoning

Is front and center

Trauma narrative

Embraces catharsis

Growth on display

For the poet and the poem

Dr Clark is an outpatient psychiatrist at Prisma Health-Upstate and clinical associate professor at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, Greenville. He served on the American Psychiatric Association’s Task Force to Address Structural Racism Throughout Psychiatry, and he currently serves as the Diversity and Inclusion section editor and advisory board member for Psychiatric Times^TM.