Welcome…
Hi, I hope you are well. Thank you for checking out my blog.
The reason I started writing was to express myself with written word as I struggle to do so verbally at times.
I have struggled with my mental health for large parts of my life. Writing and my faith have helped me greatly in recent years. A lot of my poetry is my own experiences, battling with mental health issues. Therapy also helped me rise out of some dark chasms leading to my now successes of love and family producing meaning in my life. I must admit an understanding woman does help a great deal.
The first time it entered this disorder head of mine to even associate myself with the word ‘writer’ was around the end of summer 2013 when this lovely Irish lady simply told me that I was.
Though with reflection I guess it goes back further than that. It was the first Thursday of October 2005 (national poetry day).
I was standing on thick metal pipes flicking pieces of hard crumbling bread to the rats out of a small crack from the plastic window, as if standing beside the park lake feeding ducks with my mum, all those years ago. I hadn’t hit despair although I was in bewilderment of how I was going to get myself through this next chapter in my life. I clearly remember holding back tears even though I was alone. Keeping strong or sending myself insane, one of the two for sure.
The bread flicking came to an end. I looked around the cold lifeless concrete shell only to find a packet of cheap rolling tobacco and a notepad and pencil. It was a small blank paper pad that came along with an extra piece of paper with thick black horizontal lines used to put behind the blank paper to keep your sentences nice and straight. I was reminded of my Nan as she had the same pad and I had doodled on it as a child.
I remembered a poem I wrote in school and decided that I would literally write this next chapter of my life away.
It was definitely national poetry day as the man on the radio kept telling me so. Sharing the occasional poem on-air and one stood out to me about a snail. I found it amusing that my life had so many comparisons with this damn snail. However, it inspired me to write a poem about my new life. I read it from time to time and it now makes me smile, with relief more than pride.
I kept writing for a few years even attending creative writing classes but over the last few years family life has kept me busy, however, Covid-19 has us all on lockdown leaving us all frustrated and with much time on our hands so here we are….
I hope people enjoy my poems or are even moved by them. It would truly be a blessing if someone was comforted and reassured if suffering. Knowing with work things DO get better.
As the apostle, Paul said ‘We also glory in our sufferings, because we know suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
Smith Shine Poetry 