Most exceptional individuals – geniuses, if I dare say, all arrive at a stage in life where they feel as though they have no reason to continue on living…

About two decades ago, I was at that stage of my life and poetry was one of the only things that helped me through it.

I wrote how I felt: 

MY experiences, my pains, my sorrows;

I just wrote – consistently for days;

It was therapy!

Looking back, I realized that I would have become someone entirely different, or given up on life totally – if not for the saving grace of poetry:

It ability to be relatable, to soothe and comfort, to encourage, and also to correct; it rude awakening, it loving chastising,etc…

Poets like  Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Rumi, Maya Angelou, etc, had a charm about how they tell – no help you imagine- that life can still be beautiful inspite of it thorny pains.

So yes, indeed poetry can save lives;

It could be you writing out your heartaches,

Or reading the pains of other poets captured in pages of history/time,

Or it could even be both writing and reading and more…

One thing is for certain though:

Poetry had once saved my life!

-J.E