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The realisation was blunt and brutal:
He couldn’t listen.
Immediately, my heart fell out of my chest.
And sank down into the cold, dark earth.
Unheard meant unknown.
Unknown meant unloved.
And unloved meant despair.
And so my heart lay buried for thirty years.
Many a time I yearned to crawl underground to reunite myself with it.
But hope on this side always held me back.
Thus I languished in life.
Neither glad to stay nor committed to leaving.
So much suffering - the result of a terrible ignorance.
I didn’t know I could listen on his behalf.
That my sadness was the listening.
I didn’t know there was honour in being the child who felt the hurt into form.
So it could dissolve once and for all.
I didn’t realise that my heart was busy feeding itself to the roses.
Generating fresh beauty.
Not gone. But reassigned.
My loss broke the curse of pretence.
I learnt to listen to the wails of all the wretches who’d gone before me who’d never been heard.
The uncherished ancestors.
Dead, but no longer forgotten.
Brought to life through my woe.
And that’s how my heart found its way back into my body.
My listening showed it the way home.
My listening was the way.
Thus his legacy was healed.
And I became whole once more.
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