About the Sourceress The Direction of My Life:

Poem Soft reflections From deep within your heart You tell with kindness, insight, and Wisdom. --K. D. Bertrand

I grew up in a small rural town in Northern New York State where I lived with my parents, my two sisters, and brother on a small hobby farm.  I was sexually abused by my father and my brother until the age of 14.  We left my father when I was 12 after someone called a child abuse hotline.  He kept trying to abuse me during the supervised visitations I was court ordered to attend.  When I finally refused to go anymore, they were discontinued. I felt a lot of guilt, pain, shame and anger as a result of my abuse. I started cutting myself and often ended up hospitalized in a psychiatric center for my actions.  I also tried to kill myself many times because the pain was too much, the secrets were too many, the truth was too hard. I had started writing poetry in 6th grade, but didn't think much about it.  When I started writing poetry about what I had been through, about the feelings that I had inside that I couldn't share with anyone, couldn't get out any other way, certainly couldn't SAY, I started feeling better.  When I wanted to tell someone how I was feeling, I could read them a poem and I found that it was much easier than just telling them point blank.  I found the more I wrote, the less I cut, the less I thought of suicide, the more help I received. Though I continue to struggle with self-injury, and I have been hospitalized over 13 times in my almost 30 years, I have found the strength to go on to school, to finish a Bachelor's and a Master's degree.  I have found the strength to continue writing, to continue breathing, even when it hurts. I no longer have contact with my father or brother.  I have very limited contact with my mother who has not been the most supportive in my healing.  I live with my partner of four years with our four "children" named Max, Andy, Miss Puddy and Georgie.  I am still looking for happiness, I am still searching, but I am more apt to find it now that I am looking for it within myself, instead of trying to find it at the tip of my blade.

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