As A Child, I Was Killed, I Was Murdered, I Just Didn't Realize I Was Dead

The Grief that I must Mourn,

is a loss already gone.

I see myself,

a stately lie,

without the "Me" inside.

Confused about this sight.

I cry, but cannot shout.

The tears are dry,

my mind still wrought,

I cannot figure out,

all the "Why's" of "Won't."

What have I done so wrong?

To deserve this grave in stone?

Without a Marker for my name,

I lay upon that Basement Slab,

left for.....well, it's sad.

Years upon years I was,

so confused, I fled.

I ran from within myself,

to anyplace but here.

Today I separate!

I state my name,

my birth, this date,

the reason why I died,

and the Year I never cried.

The hidden fears with no release,

I place upon this Stone at Dawn,

so that my Fear of Life may be,

acceptance of the Death I see.

Love Always, 

From Me.

~

THE GRIEF THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME

SANDRA L. BLOOM, M.D.

EMAIL FROM AMERICA

When someone close to us dies, society generally accepts and even expects us to undergo a process of mourning. Physical death presents a tangible and comprehensible loss. Traditionally, mourning is not just an individual rite of passage, but a socially conditioned and approved pathway for recovery from loss enabling us to let go of those who have died, and prepare ourselves for new attachments.

Largely unrecognized is the necessity and value of grieving for other kinds of losses besides those associated with actual death. A common denominator for adult survivors of childhood abuse and neglect are less tangible, but nonetheless significant losses of hope, of innocence, of love and of joy. For adult survivors, the losses that accompany child maltreatment, are cloaked in silence, lost in the shrouds of history, and largely unrecognized. But these “little deaths” linger as unremoved splinters in the survivor’s psyche for decades. In general, the expression of grief for these losses is unaccepted, rejected, denied and stigmatized.