When I fled my troubled home, passionately immersing myself in college, career, and family, I thought I had escaped the dark shadows, the pain. Mid-life, forced to stop pretending, to stop running so hard, I sought professional help. “You must,” said the therapist, “walk over to that closet where all the shadows are hiding. You must throw open the door and look them all in the face, or they will haunt you forever.” In the dark recesses, I found a grieving child, one I had abandoned to those shadows.
The Inner Child
At the top of the stairs
from the dry, dark concrete
basement of my soul,
I slammed the door
Trying to shut out her pain
Which seeped, like poisonous air
Up those wooden stairs.
I abandoned her there,
This part of my self,
This keening
grief-filled
despairing
part of my soul.
With busyness, duty, and do-gooding,
I distracted myself from
her leaden sadness,
her crying in the night.
But on and on she wept
for decades:
for attention
for compassion
for help
in climbing up
the wooden stairs,
For love…from me.
