And shit has been more and less together in the meantime, but at last I’m able to anticipate regular posting again. Hurrah! I thought I’d start with a simple one, partly because it’s about my other work as a therapist (which has swallowed a lot of my time in the last year) and partly because I’m chuffed that it was chosen as an entry in the Samaritans Book of Hope anthology. Here it is:

therapy: a paradoxical love                                                                  

I seek to become unnecessary.

I offer myself freely, lend my heart

to you, fellow creature; would help you start

over, understand, grow. Ordinary

rules are suspended: it’s my job to bear

being pushed away and yet not to leave;

to know your hurts, be glad when you can grieve;

to hold with warmest hope your chill despair;

to wait upon your readiness; keep pace;

being misunderstood, to understand;

rejoice when you don’t have to hold my hand;

to help you see your beauty. I’m a space,

a medium through which light, refracted,

can search and salve: where love is enacted.

I hope this doesn’t sound grandiose. I’m not talking about me as a therapist but about the shape and process of therapy itself. ‘Spite all earnest qualitative and quantitative research projects and analyses of Result and Outcome and Effective Intervention, therapy will always remain, for me at least, a mysterious process centred around the power of unconditional love, empathy and genuiness. (Rogers’ Core Conditions have always struck me as a pretty good, if unpoetic, description of love.)

I seem to have forgotten everything I knew about how to operate this website, so I’m going to sign off now before I need to throw the laptop out of window. But I hope this reaches you and that we can continue our journey round poetry together. Offers of guest posts and suggestions of poems are always welcome.

See you soon.

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