Poetry: Grief-Stricken Heart

Grief-Stricken Heart

While raindrops fall steady on a dark night,

The cold rakes through my body sending chills

Inward and throughout, as my heart grieves

In all its aloneness wailing, quietly in pain

With no guarantee of it ever dying down

Or any part of my heart surviving this

Seemingly endless flow of warm tears

Drowning all of me from the inside out,

That I dare not let them out all at once

For fear of flooding the earth and…

All the beauty that has potential to be

…In my life, once my eyes can clearly see

Through this despair that does blind me

My Soul and heart hope that truth would be seen

So that someday my dream will BE a dream no more,

And my daughter will once again be with me

Back in my life and cradled in my arms

So I can protect her from all harm,

And Comfort and soothe her when she cries,

Not fail again to miss another smile or laugh

And love her, not just from a distance

But I don't know that she'll embrace me

Now, again as her mother, since,

I don’t know that she even knows I exist.

I worry that her love for me is no more,

But lost among everything else in tragedy

That does not change my own heart

Although it seemed to be dead for a while

Because beneath the shattered remains

Of the grief-stricken gap that lay hidden

Within my chest… All pure love remains

Although very rearranged by the pain…

That is intensely and furiously blinding

The courageous heart that once was

Known to this very vulnerable soul

~Jessica

Author's Narrative About This Poem

I wrote this poem at 2:00 AM one morning in 2011 while grieving for my lost child. It was pouring rain, and my tears were flowing, as well.

When I was 19, a single mother with a toddler, I married a former member of the same cult

I’d left, on my own, when I was 16. I fell pregnant a month after moving in with him; and although he started to display extremely abusive behavior, I felt I had no choice but to stay with him. As my family remained in the cult I had no alternative means of support.

After four and a half years with him and feeling my spirit was dying, I finally left him; but in the process, he, along with his dad (who was a previous leader in the cult) took our daughter and denied me and my eldest daughter any access to her. He eventually took her to the United States without my knowledge, and I spent years searching for her.

This poem touches on the intense despair and overwhelming grief I have experienced through the loss of my daughter, which blinded me from everything else life had to offer, and also which nearly killed me. It is about not knowing whether she was all right, or even alive. It is about the lies she had been told about my not loving her or wanting her. It is about justice, and my dream of one day finding her and holding her in my arms and having her in my life and my daughter’s life again. In a way it is also about finding myself after this tragedy; and healing my heart, which was so shattered I often thought I’d die of a broken heart; learning to open my heart, and love again after such an enormous loss; and living life as opposed to merely surviving, as well as trusting again.

*Since writing this poem I found my daughter after 7 years of searching, and have been in contact with her mainly by telephone-which has been an enormous dream come true. My two girls and I flew to the US in 2013 to see my daughter for the first time in 8 years. She is now 13. I know that I would not and cannot get her back, partially because of the time that has elapsed. So a part of this poem now expresses what will always be an unfulfilled dream. But, I am so grateful that we were able to see her again, something that for years I deeply yearned for but at times doubted would ever become a reality.

~Jessica