Newsletter 21
Love, Loss, and Growing Pains: Words That We Have Put To Rest
highlights of the holiday season and new year
At Put It To Rest we believe in the healing power of putting your story to rest. Writing as a means of self-discovery, self-expression, and self-care is nothing new. From creative writing books like Writing Down the Bones to The Artist’s Way, writing as art therapy has proven to be a movement.
Though there are several reasons one reads and writes poetry. For some, it may be entirely more aesthetic in nature, or about storytelling, but for others, writing is more about working through something.
Personally, I used to journal, but I found that expressing myself in poetic form allowed me to tackle hard truths without a filter, and yet with the filter of figurative language, as explored in this poem How I Became A Poet.
Our writers all contribute to enriching relationships with the self, others, nature, the community, and the global village. The most recent submissions are about the mental health benefits of nature and the complexities of our relationships, and writing as self-knowledge.
Lastly, I would like to congratulate one of our writers Rebecca N. Herz on the release of her new poetry book.
Poetry
You deviant heart
Are you attempting to erupt or explode?
Why you hint at an illness but never show —
The world will never know
A Grower Of Good Health and Happiness by Ndaba Sibanda
He started to heal when he reached out to his partner.
He began to love life and cultivate love like a gardener.
kasey sparks I Know Loneliness Well
she wraps herself around me
like an unwanted blanket
she’s hard and gloomy
not cozy or comfortable
A part of me now
I will wear these ugly scars forever
I only want to be whole again
Rebecca N. Herz’s Pretending to read The New Yorker
he’s calling again from beyond
the page
asking
did you read the poem
about the girl with a broken heart?
Lindsay Soberano-Wilson’s How I Became A Poet
“I can’t;
it’s too painful,
but I can write a poem.”
Theodore McDowell’s White Headlights
The rage,
borrowing used books
from friends,
staying up all night,
burning his mind at both ends.
I can see the thoughts of men, you see
it’s like shooting ducks in a crate
I can see the heavens opening up
and swallowing men like slate
Essays
Anne Shark’s A House Plant Teaches Me About Relationships, Love and Joy
My desire for joy, for life, was strong and I was growing beyond the pot that contained my roots. Whether I stayed with or left my partner, I needed something bigger to hold my roots firmly so I could reach far for the sunlight.
Colleen Killingsworth’s I Was Crystalline Sugar, You Were Just A Foolish Boy With an Apron
I have to take this sticky, dense, messy version of myself and cast spells and weave magic into every fiber of my being so that I can extricate the trauma caused by your reckless heat and heavy hands. I must separate the damage you’ve done, pulling it out with surgical precision and mystical prayers so that I can be raw, glistening, and crystalline once more.
Stephanie Parry’s 7 Lessons In Self-Love & Connection In 2022
We embraced these moments of self-love as a gift to our souls. We were sad and learned we were the ones we could count on to care for ourselves while we hurt. We didn’t share this paradise with a lover, but we dedicated these moments to our own first love- ourselves.
Anthony G. O'Dugan’s The Curse Of The Wicked Siren
You saw me as your shiny performing monkey and lashed out with unexpected fury and venom the moment I broke the charm, finally revealing your true nature.
Dominik Formanowicz’s Doing All We Can — Are We? Finding The Deep Waters of Self Worth
The idea of deeds floating on the surface of my life’s events and the dark, deep, still waters of self-worth, safely existing underneath, was only a pretty metaphor. The waters of my self-worth had no density, no pressure able to crush individual events trying to dive too deep into my perception of self.
Margie Willis’s My Midwinter Maternal Void
I needed to separate myself from this simmering ambiguity. There’s no loving example I could derive from my family. It’s taken me this full ten years, since then, to retrain myself to be a more loving person. I’m not even close to being as loving as people regularly are, and most would take for granted as naturally being. But I’ve made progress.
Lindsay Soberano-Wilson’s Therapy Should Work For You
It’s like you spend so much time running away from hard truths or realities, and once you face them, you heal and have darkness pass through you…
Open for Submissions
Put It To Rest celebrate the light after the rain and inspires writers to explore their voices to tell their stories and finally “put them to rest.”
So if your writing is raw and vulnerable and you’re ready to put it to rest, then consider joining our growing community of poets, essayists, and short story writers.
Put It To Rest accepts personal essays, poetry, and short stories about life experiences that have weighed on your mental health and that you wish to explore through writing as a therapeutic endeavor.
House your work here to Put It To Rest where you can grow as a writer and eventually be featured on Our Writers page.
I am happy to be an editor and help others grow their audience and improve their writing. I want to also help those who consider themselves new to writing to tell their story and reap the benefits of this exercise.
I want to help you to tell your story.
*Please follow the submission guidelines so we can do so together!*
Support the Put It To Rest writing community by following us across all social media platforms, including Medium, Twitter, and Instagram.
Lindsay Soberano-Wilson is a poet, teacher, and editor of Put It To Rest and iPoetry. Hoods of Motherhood: A Collection of Poems is forthcoming in May 2023 (Prolific Pulse Press); it’s a book for every woman who ever had to learn to mother herself the way she mothers others. Casa de mi Corazón: A Travel Journal of Poetry and Memoir explores inner and outer travel in discovering self-identity as a Jewish Canadian. Her poems and articles have appeared in FreshVoices22, Embrace of Dawn, Poetry 365, PoetryPause, Quills Erotic Canadian Poetry Magazine, Canadian Woman Studies Journal, Running with Scissors, and Poetica Magazine. Find her on Medium, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok. Lindsaysoberano.com
