Anyone can be a poet. Yes, you read that correctly. ANYONE can be a poet. In fact, poetry is something we were all born with. From the womb, our bodies were being created by poetry. Not with words but with sounds, vibrations, light—and lack thereof—binding energy, love, pain… everything that is needed for a great poem. As we get older and learn to make sounds that create words that form into sentences, we evolve into constructing our own poetic expressions. I know what you might be thinking: “I’m not a poet. I can’t rhyme, I’m not crafty…” Poetry is so much more than that. It is simply painting pictures of one’s self, feelings, and surroundings, with words. Poetry is about being vulnerable and letting yourself get carried away by your feelings. These are objectives anyone can achieve, so my point still stands…anyone can be a poet.
In fact, poetry is a part of healing and spirituality. With the weight of the world on my shoulders, it is helpful to write how I am feeling or what I encounter on a piece of paper. Physically releasing the distress onto the pages feels like a purge that I need in my life to survive. I find this to be therapeutic instead of letting the emotions and stress fester in the body and producing “dis-ease”. But this state of mind did not come to me easily.
I always liked writing plays and stories as a child but I found my love of poetry during one of the worst periods of my life. In middle school, I was dealing with a lot of heartbreak, confusion, and anger. Bullies, self-doubt, low self-esteem, abandonment issues, neglect, fatherlessness, and suicide attempts all created a destructive pathway towards my demise. My saving grace was a poetry summer camp that my mom forced me to attend. By the end of the eight weeks, I was in love. A little more in love with myself and wholeheartedly in love with poetry. I have no idea what my first poem was or what it was about, but I know it was crappy. And guess what? I kept going. A decade later, I am still discovering new things about myself and poetry, and falling more in love with each one every day.
I would be lying if I said poetry comes easy. It takes hard work to progress in the evolution which generates poetry. You have to dig deep into your being and combat yourself to bring the raw emotions out. You must release the ego and break yourself down enough to become fertile soil for the abundance to manifest. I promise it will be worth it. The euphoric feeling after I write my words on paper—whether it’s a quality poem or not up to my own grueling standards—is a sensation that cannot be explained. Knowing that I wrote out my feelings, and that the piece of art belongs to me, brings so much joy to my spirit. This is something I work at every day. I study poetry, talk to poets, listen to their CDs, read poetry and books on how to write poetry, listen to conversations without speaking as often, and write in my notebook daily.
What fuels me to keep expressing myself and sharing my truth is knowing that we are all connected on this earth. Although we experience life individually and have our own perspectives, we are not alone. It would be a disservice to ourselves and our healing journey not to share our testimonies. We never know what others are going through and how our words could resonate with others. Therefore, I ask you to be vulnerable and open in everything you put forth. More tools for using poetry as healing, provided by yours truly, will be available soon.
Keep writing…
