Healing In Nature

THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL: A PATHWAY TO RECOVERY FROM SEXUAL VIOLENCE

Resilient She desperately tries to stay above water

in a world constantly pulling her beneath the shoreline. She is drowning, clinging to the broken remains of a damaged soul, and she is not sure she will be able to recover. Recover at least to the person she was before. How? She asks herself. Do you continue living when mortality is already palpable? An oxymoron like none before. Alive but dead, a vague breath that inhales only to exhaust the body once more. She ponders this as a monarch floats by her head. Radiant beams of light canvas its skin. A creature who has flirted with the depths of death and still prospered forward. If this is so, she too can become a beauty again. She closes her eyes; an aphotic illusion strangles the emergence of light; she opens, sunlight beams warmth, drying her sweaty tears. She looks once more at the monarch and then down at her palm. A sedative calms her just as the waves silence the storm. Her body is youth, her soul innocent. With the acceptance of past adversity and an aspiration for a future, she gets up and goes on.

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