Choices or challenges in life regardless of their outcome should be viewed as stepping stones to a wiser and more beautiful you.

The more you’ve been through the more aware and sensitive you become of the hardships others might be facing hidden behind forced smiles.

Sadly not everyone is able to handle or overcome hurdles they are presented with in their lives, by mental illness or by sheer circumstance.

Those of us that have been blessed with the strength and fortitude to overcome must remind ourselves daily that there are those that may need that one act of kindness, a strand of hope to face another day.

Hope can be a powerful thing but only for those who know it’s there. Some need a helping hand to see it, find it and grasp it.

Hope... I pray I never lose sight of it and if I should that there will be someone like you with a kindness of heart impossible to ignore to pluck me from the shadows.

©

My hours are filled with business
To camouflage the gloom
That fills my mind with dizziness
At my oncoming doom.

There’s no way to turn the tide
I’d jumped off the dock.
I should have found a place to hide
Behind a nice safe rock.

In truth, I didn’t really jump
Someone came up behind
And gave my back a mighty thump
How could I have been so blind.

I always knew they hated me
And wished that I would die.
But I was where I had to be
To get my family by.

The water’s deep and I am cold.
I have no choice but to swim
I wish that I were not so old
But I will still show them.

I see the shore not far away
Much prettier than here.
It promises a brighter day
And living without fear.

I know that I can swim that far
And I’ll have the last laugh
When I excel in my new life
To spite that hateful staff.
ljm

There is an addictive beauty in sadness
It’s easy to get hooked on pain
It’s a one-way street to depression
With no way to get out again.

You feel so good after crying
You sometimes must invent a good reason
There’s some kind of comfort in sighing
It gets you through Holiday Season

The craving for sorrow is endless
It lures like a velvety shroud
That shields from the world’s melancholy
When the ache begins keening out loud.

A funereal smile may be moving
And earn you a pitying hug
But Somehow you must forswear Anguish
And stop yourself craving this drug.
ljm

Gravity of love keeps us grounded on earth

Kindling a fire like the warmth from a hearth

If that love should depart left hollow and cold

Tis the pain and anguish past poets foretold

The rain like tears trickle down both cheeks

Eyes closed facing skyward as heaven weeps

©