National Poetry Day - For Her

To mark National Poetry Day, support worker and poet Donna Smith has penned this lovely poem.

The poem highlights the problems that vulnerable people face and the real difference that our support can make.

For Her

Life didn’t teach her to dream or believe
so I did it for her.
Life brought her fear and shame and pain
so I believed for her again.
Life tore out her heart and threw it away
so I believed harder and stronger for her to believe.
For her to believe that life could be loving and fair and free but she couldn’t yet see
so I believed again.
I kept believing when it hurt me, when it took my strength, but I had been lucky, my life showed me love and faith and commitment so I knew how to keep believing and then to believe some more.
So I did it for her again.
I did it out of the sheer unfairness that life can be so cruel to some while lavishing others with everything a soul would desire.
I did it to balance some sort of karmic debt that I had been so fortunate and she had not.
And then I believed some more.
Then I saw it in her eyes, a tiny spark of belief
maybe it would grow, maybe it would falter in the years of pain.
Now was the greatest test of all for me,
For me to believe
to let go
to let go and let her believe for herself that life could be kind
that life could be fair
that her life could be anything that she wanted it to be.
I believe I can do it, I have to because life itself depends on it.
Belief is personal, it is not a given, it is to be taught, awakened, learned, earned but when it is achieved it allows you to live life to its fullest, to breathe, to fly, to be free.
Life wants that for her too
I believe.

A poem by Donna Smith