You may remember Sue who shared her ‘Blooming Warrior’ journey with us for our #Emerging Proud through Trauma and Abuse KindaProud book?

Read it again here;

Sue bravely shares her ‘blooming’ inspirational journey through trauma and abuse to spreading seeds of Warrior hope to others.

A few weeks ago Sue shared an incredibly powerful poem that came to her in the middle of the night. It cut straight to my heart and speaks to everything that is wrong with how people are often treated in the current mental health system. I don’t think anyone could read Sue’s words and not be moved; (*trigger warning*)

Look into my Eyes

When you’re done with noting down the colour of my skin, the style of my hair, my gender, the clothes I’m wearing, the way I sit,

When you’re done with judging the way I express myself, the way I behave,

When you’re done with calculating the risk I pose to you,

When you’re done with depriving me of my freedom,

When you’re done with stripping away my dignity, my humanity, my self-agency,

When you’re done with labelling me and placing me in one of your cluster groups,

When you’re done with plotting out your pathway for me,

When you’re done with subtly insisting on my compliance to your world,

When you’re done with inflicting upon me your evidence-based practices and lecturing me about your NICE guidelines,

When you’re done with questioning the very core of me,

When you’re done with blaming me and shaming me,

When you’re done with crushing my hopes and my dreams,

When you’re done with raping my soul and breaking my spirit,

When you’re done with killing me softly.

When you’re done with all this,

I would ask you,

To show me your humility, your willingness to learn,

To put down your textbooks, your manuals and your formularies,

To set aside your prescription pads,

To peel off the electrodes you’ve placed on my forehead,

To remove your clouded spectacles,

And to step down from your thrones of power,

And when you are ready,

I invite you to be with me in my world,

To walk alongside me as I stumble along my fragile pathway,

To share with me your vulnerability as I have shared with you mine,

To sit with me and bear witness to my hopelessness, my alienation, my pain, my sense of betrayal, my grief and my humiliation,

To look into my eyes,

Where you will see the child within me who holds the agony, the scars, the terror, the silent screams,

And when you have sat for a while with all that you have witnessed,

And are able and willing to hold this space and explore with me my story,

Then my self-loathing, my despair, my loneliness, my shame, my fear begins to fade and wither,

My spirit begins to awaken, and my soul begins to heal.

Only then might you begin to understand who I am.

Andy Farr depicted Sue’s poem in this beautiful painting named ‘Little Sue’ – the details of the whole collection is called ‘The Twisted Rose and other Lives’ – and explores the emotions and experience of post traumatic stress and recovery. You can see the background info on Andy’s website here: https://www.andyfarr.com/twistedrose.