The Healing Game

 

Be proud, survivors

Be proud

Sing it out loud!

 

Whether it be poverty, abuse, disease

Infidelity, trauma or outside the paradigm of

Acceptable Normalcy.

 

I want you to learn to sing it out loud.

Let go of the hurt, the shame and the malice.

 

Look around and ask yourself,

Are those who judge or hold you down,

who cloak you  in the scars of your trials –

Are they so well in their soul

Look around

Begin to see it clearly.

 

You see, survivors learn valuable life lessons,

That are only attainable through the scars, the experience.

Lessons about Love, resiliency, priorities

Acceptance and Surrender.

 

Realize these are your greatest strengths when you have survived

And healed.

Use them, be proud.

 

Those who have not yet travelled the sacred ground

do not possess  these on their interior

for they have not yet been tested.

 

There is a freedom that arrives, once Pride has been squashed.

There is an advantage to not being attached any longer to

the illusions of Success.

 

Dig deep, know that surviving, loving, humility, compassion,

And wisdom born of survival are indeed

Success.

 

Come out, declare your honor!

 

~Lori Ellis-McKinney (2014)