Abstract
Five creative nonfiction, prose/personal essay excerpts from a longer story in progress called These Forevers. These excerpts are abbreviated pieces from personal experience with trauma and codependency, about growing up in an emotionally ill family and how the effects of psychological warfare have affected me. These Forevers, as a whole, is ultimately about hope, freedom, redemption, finding a way out after being lost for so long, after being deeply obsessed with and attached to my mother, attached through trauma, and born into trauma. It's about her sacrifices, her light, and also the dark sadness that she herself could never ultimately recover from. She died in February of 2020. People are not defined by the past but created from it. How can we truly know ourselves if we do not know our scars? How else can we know what we are capable of surviving? Along the way, we forgive ourselves, let ourselves breathe and give ourselves time to heal. We forgive because we know everything comes from the need to love and to be loved. It takes courage to love without fear and pain. It takes courage to decide to live, despite fear and pain.
Recommended Citation
strand, alicia
(2022)
"Excerpts from These Forevers: Hiding, Dancing, Sinking, Running, Sleeping,"
Survive & Thrive: A Journal for Medical Humanities and Narrative as Medicine: Vol. 7:
Iss.
1, Article 14.
Available at:
https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/survive_thrive/vol7/iss1/14