It pulls me under,
The Kraken born within.
Beneath the surface of face,
It dwells in the darkest recesses of self.
Born from the world,
But birthed within my own depths.
This mammoth creature,
Claws, scrambles and suffocates every moment.
My kraken, unseen by any else’s eyes,
Only felt, only re-traumatising my life…
For the kraken feeds itself on regurgitation
Of life, people and pattern.
I have starved it half to death,
By mindful awareness of its existing.
But the true death, requires I to die too,
To surrender my life, to be reborn.
A life for a life.
A tooth for a tooth.
The day the kraken came,
Was the day my death was decided.
Too soon that was, for the day was my birth,
Place, position, people, decided my fate…
As it will yours, and your children’s,
And their children’s too.
Only parents can kill the kraken, prevent its birth within,
Time will tell whether you saved another soul from sinking…
Into the blackness…
For into the bleakness, the kraken pulls…
Unrelenting, unwavering, without cause nor continuation of reason.
It simply exists, once birthed,
And will die when you die.
To kill the kraken,
Is to kill The Self…
Something unchosen, only willed by destiny.
Better to decide one’s fate at birth…
And kill that kraken with love.
Since it weeps for no one.
Takes all, swallows all, buries all,
In the depths of the hells from whence it was made.
Source: Santuario, Ana Maria (2023). Safer Shores of Me. Faith in Change Publishing, London.
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Being pulled under…
Many years ago an old friend said, “When life tries to pull you under, let it. Sink, release what needs releasing, and wait for the ocean to return you to the surface at its own will.”
Saying that is all well and good, but some people have not the skills and tools of resilience to make it through and survive the long drowning that is life sometimes. This is where the Self-Help Library comes into play… When life has pulled you under, reach out to the library for immediate self-support, safety tips and self-regulation strategies. Sometimes, surviving until you can access the right and long-term treatment is all one can do, but that can be challenging when you feel rotten, are isolating out of a need for safety, or you cannot do the leg work and research to find what you need in the moment.
YouTube can be helpful, but there are a lot of charlatans, triggering adverts, and far too often a video will lead to you being asked for a payment of some kind. Anamaria.org chooses to keep everything free and only asks that those in a position to make Honesty Payments or Donations do so when they feel ready and able. I have been poor, as well as in need of immediate treatment for trauma, but the help wasn’t there and I had to wait for close to 18 months. Nothing in the online world resonated because it was never targeted at a woman living in HELL! A place nobody could see me dwelling, a dark experience no one helped me find a path out of…
Only time pulled me out, sometimes that’s the key to it, being patient as your mind and body do their thing. Sometimes we have no power, not a single choice to make, we need only eat enough food to stay alive and curl up in bed for months on end, perhaps even years. Let there be no shame in having lived too much to be the world’s version of ‘normal’. You are allowed to have endured, survived, been changed even, by horrific circumstances… you are also deserving of support, compassion, treasuring, without having to tick boxes, plead for help, or sit on a waiting list for 18 months. I hope the website can offer something to those in need of a little light in their darkest hour, which is why no membership is required either, because who can be bothered with all that when they feel like dying?
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