🌿 For Those with Difficult Families

 🌿 For Those with Difficult Families

They will tell the story backwards,
say you were the storm
when all you ever did was try to breathe.

They weave webs of whispers,
threads so fine you doubt your own skin,
and feast on your sorrow,
your pain bread for their hunger.

You wonder,
again and again,
if the fault is yours,
why unearned shame sits so heavy on your shoulders.

But hear me:
shame is not your inheritance.
It is the spell they cast
to keep you bound.

What is yours is different.

Yours is the courage
to unlearn their language,
to open the locked windows,
to let the sunlight in.

Yours is the strength
to stand tall even when your roots shake,
to grieve with honesty,
to love without lies.

And when you walk away,
whether with tears or trembling,
know this:

you are not abandoning,
you are preserving.

You are not weak.
You are finally whole.

Let your truth burn brighter
than the shadows of their stories.
Let your life become the proof
that survival can turn into song.

Inheritance

Inheritance

born beneath stained glass windows
casting shadows instead of color,
in pews that taught shame as faith.
My self portrait hung backward on the wall.

She smiled with soft hands
and carried a hidden carving knife,
cutting what I could not see.

I was told love
looked like walking on eggshells
and never asking why.

taught that secrets
were safer than sorrow,
that love meant loyalty
even when it burned.

When the truth left my lips,
everything buried rose in flame.

But my mother
held the match
and blamed me for the fire.

I was left in darkness,
so deep I became it.
A silent storm, building.
A haunted flame, turned ghost light.

Not heartless.
Just a soul hollowed out by hands
that called themselves love.

Still, I built a fire of my bones
to light my children’s way,
salvaging warmth from the wreckage.

This is my inheritance.
Not the silence,
but the breaking of it.