8 Comments
User's avatar
Okeko's avatar

@The Rewind thank you for sharing🌹what a gem, very powerful poem indeed.

Expand full comment
Tom Shaw's avatar

Blessed to know that @The Rewind brought you my way. I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Expand full comment
Okeko's avatar

Well Tom, 'enjoyed' doesn't really cover my experience of your poem! I find it hard to describe it. The synchrony of what I'm exploring and go on and on about in writing, probably too many pages, and talking with people around baffles me. You've catched it here, amazingly. Can you imagine what would happen if we would acknowledge the sinner, victim and people in us, and stop identifying with them, as in total and permanent, like the many other personalities we take on board to get accepted in a 'clan-culture'? Pain travels through families and I see it as a sacred job to feel it and let it heal.

To me, your poem is indeed a powerful call for healing. Thank you so much for sharing 🤗

Expand full comment
Tom Shaw's avatar

And I can admire and resonate with that idea of it being a divine duty to heal the compounding traumas of successive generations. Thank you for sharing this!!

Expand full comment
Deborah T. Hewitt's avatar

You are very talented ✨

Expand full comment
Tom Shaw's avatar

Kind words Deborah, thank you!

Expand full comment
Daniel Henderson's avatar

Great phrases and lines that make me rethink how I'm writing in my own poems. So well executed and great handling of a tough subject matter.

Expand full comment
Margaret Anna Alice's avatar

Thank you for referencing “Mistakes Were NOT Made,” Tom, as well as for sharing your succinct portrait of the crucible the sinner and victim find themselves caught in (I especially like “for he is stuck in a rhyme”) as they perpetuate the cycle of abuse together.

Expand full comment