“Mother, you were a seed” by Anzareen Chaudhury
the seed holds a banyan tree
but mother you were only a seed when they treated you so harshly.
you birthed me from a broken body
and I was born with a broken heart
which broke the more I lived and the older I grew
my branches were split in thin halves
and my roots never grew quite deep enough.
I swayed too easily in the wind and the thunderstorms splintered me.
did you know love is the cure for every malady?
mother did your parents ever love you when you made a mistake or did they raise their hands and bare their fists and grind their teeth?
mother did your parents ever love you when you said your piece?
mother did your parents ever love you when you needed?
(in the ways you needed)
who are you in the darkness, all alone?
I was born and raised in the darkness of your womb,
I am your darkest reflection
the truest parts of you.
did you know love is the cure?
____________________
Share your response to this work, in any form, here
Anzareen Chaudhury Artist Statement:
I wrote this piece to heal my mother wound. I felt for a long time that I was living from the wound, that I had almost become the wound. I did not want to do that anymore. I struggled with forgiving my mother for many years for all her flaws and imperfections. For the negative stories she passed on to me. But I really wanted to stop letting that wound overshadow the rest of my life. So in writing this poem I totally grieved her life and her effect on my life. I forgave myself through her. I forgave myself for carrying a wound that was not truly mine, but passed down to me. I realized that to be true to yourself means letting go of all that is not you. So this piece is for my mother, for me, and for all women and girls who want to stop living from the wound and start living from their hearts.
I am an artist. An artist is born once, yes, but gives birth to herself a thousand times. An artist loves the universe the way she loves herself– with unshakeable clarity and vision. She sculpts the world around her with her choices, her opinions, and her thoughts. My creative identity can never be defined for it is continuously created and so continuously evolves. I define myself as a lover of the divine, and I believe my art and my writing is simply the divine remembering itself through its creation.
My writing changed my life. It is a pure life giving force without which I would have totally lost myself in the illusion of reality. My writing reminds me that I get to be the creator of my world, no matter what experiences I have gone through I am the one who gets to decide the meaning to give them. And I choose to let my words be my medicine, my healing, my remembrance of my true nature. My art reminds me of who I truly am, without the illusions of what others wish me to be.
