Blog Voices from Our Community
Read stories, updates, and reflections from artists, staff, and survivors. Here, we share the heart of Awakenings — one post at a time.
Shawn Aveningo Sanders is a globally published, award-winning poet who can’t stand the taste of coconut, eats pistachios daily and loves shoes … especially red
- All Authors, All Formats, Poetry
Agnieszka Krajewska is a poet, essayist, and combat epistemologist. She received an MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University in 2004, and was
- All Authors, All Formats, Poetry
(Ma ma) sleeps with a knife under her pillow (her dreams are (safer than mines) I grabbed a butter knife, put it inside my
- Poetry
I can see you teaching him to walk. How his little feet stuttered How his fingers-unbelievably tiny- reached eagerly for yours, with your nails that
- Poetry
When he assaulted me, — but that is the wrong word Assault is what they do in video games, when the men shoot a volley
- Poetry
The author wishes to note that this poem was inspired by Litany , by Mahogany L. Browne INFERNO Today I am a Mormon Woman in
- Poetry
V. To a Survivor It wasn’t your fault. You hold guilt like a snowball in bare hands, the cold permeates through flesh into bone-stiffens. You
- Poetry
What magic transpires when in the grip of the puppet- meister … What sucked me in? What pulled me tight? What trapped my mind, believing
- Poetry
I don’t know why I’m here today, it wasn’t in my plan, but here we are, just you and I, and I don’t understand. We
- Poetry
When I was 10, we lived in a neighborhood that was always under construction My parents installed an alarm just in case anything were to
- Poetry
Stats say, one in every three girls will have experienced rape or sexual abuse in their lives I am one of three daughters. For most
- Poetry
There’s a sound that takes me back to my childhood. I’ll save you the guessing, it’s not rolling, clapping thunder or tap-tap rain. It’s snapping
- Poetry
When a highly respected British director tells me I am not feminine enough, I do not immediately understand. I wonder if this is an
- Poetry
Loud red, fire-engine red alarm on his arm screaming. Emergency dispatch, please send one of each: a cop, an ambulance, and a fire-truck. We might
- Poetry
once upon a time i watched and waited as mother sewed, her nimble fingers stitching the last now one, two, three stitches, and then she
- Image, Poetry
I sit cross-legged on her couch, running my hands up and down the sides of my thighs like a small child who has been asked
- Essay, Poetry
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Find your place in our circle of creators, where every artistic choice is valid and every emotion is welcome. Healing isn’t linear, nor a path you have to walk alone.