LiveMindfuLee

I am learning to connect with the pieces of me that I had let be silenced by tragedy, grief, abuse, fear, anger, imposter syndrome, the voices of people who didn’t want to see me healed or succeeding, the weight of everything I had survived… and my own unfair judgements of myself. I help women heal, and in that process, they have to dig deep and reveal the parts of themselves that they hide from the world. I see you. I know you. I love you. You all inspire my own healing journey so much. Here is a poem I wrote about my healing process. You might find that the strength you admire in me is the strength I admire in you.

This is a free-verse confessional-style poem, which doesn’t have to rhyme. I hope you try to write your own and let yourself flow and heal in the process.

Pearls instead of Shackles – written by Brittney Lee Miller

I did not come to God with clean hands.
I came with shaking wrists,
with silent screams stitched into my throat,
with memories that fought back before I did.

The house I left still haunts my body.
Doors slam, and fists land in my nervous system.
Love once learned the language of death,
and grief became a second pulse.

Complex is the name they gave the wound,
as if pain needed a taxonomy.
But God already knew its shape.
He counted every bruise they named (72),
heard the prayers that sounded like panic.

I learned faith with a slow burn,
like learning to walk on a leg that forgot itself.
Some days, belief was a whisper or a question.
Some days, it was just staying alive.

Art became my altar.
Paint caught what words could not hold.
Charcoal traced the outline of fear
until fear loosened its grip.
Creation taught my body
it could move without permission.

Music rewired the night.
Songs rocked my nervous system,
and maybe the neighbors’ walls
Finally, I am awake.
In melody, my breath remembered rhythm.
In harmony, my heart found witnesses.

Poetry gave me language back.
Line by line, I reclaimed my voice.
Metaphor let me speak honestly,
truth wearing pearls instead of shackles.
Each poem said:
I am still here.
I am not really dead.

God was not the thunder in my healing.
He was the steady light.
The One who did not rush me,
who did not ask why it took so long,
who stayed when my faith lay distorted on the floor.

He met me in the art studio,
in the quiet between notes,
in the blank page that never demanded perfection.
He called me beloved
before I believed Him.

Now my grief sings,
but it no longer commands.
My body learns safety or something like it.
My scars do not disqualify me.
They testify.

I am not healed because I forgot.
I am healed because I am held.
By God.
By beauty.
By the brave act of creating
when destruction once had the loudest voice.

And this, too, is worship.

With so much love,

Brittney @livemindfulee