There’s something about poetry that I’ve never quite been able to explain and maybe that’s the point.

Poetry doesn’t ask you to understand it, It asks you to feel it, and I’ve always loved that.

Even if I don’t read it as often as I wish I did.

I don’t sit down every night with a book of poems.
I don’t have passages memorized or favorite lines ready to quote on command.

But when I come across a poem that resonates with me, something shifts. It slows me down, softens me. It lets me feel something I didn’t realize I was holding, and for a moment, there’s no need to explain anything.

Maybe that’s why this recent conversation stayed with me because it wasn’t just about poetry, it was about perspective.

I’ve been noticing something more and more lately, in conversations, in stories, in the people around me. This moment that happens, when someone learns later in life that they are neurodivergent and how often that moment doesn’t change who they are,
but changes how they understand who they’ve always been.

It’s not a beginning, it’s a re-seeing,  reframing, a quiet kind of “oh, that’s why.”

And I’ve watched what happens after that moment, there’s a deep reflection that follows, not just about the present, but about the past. But about childhood, relationships and about all the times someone felt different, but didn’t have the language to explain why.

And suddenly, the story starts to make sense.

Here’s the part that stays with me the most, it’s not just about understanding yourself. It’s about realizing how many people around us are moving through the world with stories we don’t see.  We are so quick, without even realizing it, to form opinions, make assumptions, and to decide who someone is based on what we see in a moment.

But what if that moment, is only a fragment? What if what we’re seeing is just the surface of something much deeper?

I think about that a lot, especially now, especially after hearing more and more stories
that remind me how layered people really are.  It’s easy to say, “don’t judge a book by its cover” but it’s much harder to actually live that way, because doing that, requires something different from us.  It requires curiosity, it requires patience, it requires a willingness to pause before we decide we understand someone.

And maybe, that’s where poetry comes in?

Because poetry doesn’t give you everything up front, It asks you to sit with it, to feel your way through it, to notice what comes up, without rushing to define it. What if we approached people that way?  Not as something to figure out quickly, but as something to experience, something to understand over time.

What if we allowed space
for the gray in between?

Because that’s where most of life actually happens, not in the clear, defined moments, But in the in-between. The parts that don’t always make sense right away, the parts we’re still learning how to name.

Poetry lives there, and maybe, so do we.

Healing with you,

Heather