sultry

Striding into gendered combat

A fight for my rights against

Restraints around a constricted identity

Labelling the able incapable

A toxic mantra that turns our strength flaccid.

Your validation is our suffocation.

My confidence has consequence,

Spitting out saliva from your tongue

You shoved it down my throat so forcefully

Taking advantage of my liberalism,

Misuse of my trust and sexual positivity.

That now suffocates my ovaries, unable to produce the fruit of femininity.

The skin I bare invites you to stare,

An uninvited touch and a whisper in my ear,

You viewed my promiscuity as a promise

Sexual consent seemingly superfluous

I am not ashamed for my performance

Dancer from a young age,

I have learnt to adore us.

My body and soul, we are a unity,

Just because you see one you choose to see through me

My personality has a power of invisibility

Do not cheapen me

My motivation is not to be desired

I am more than an object of your affection

I am a statute erected upon a pedestal.

That you cannot reach

My female qualities are untouchable

Sanctimonious in my struggle.

And active in my activism.

I see strong sisters question themselves,

Play a blame game as you place them on shelves,

More disposable than the fashion you wear,

You claim to be in gods image

But our body is art

We are reflected in nature

Our folds are found in flowers

Cherished curves in contoured valleys.

You made them nothing

In their own self perception

Made them believe they are something short of perfection.

My sisters have limitless power within them,

From many religions, race and origins we stem.

Your conventional close mindedness

Causes exclusivity and erasure

Wonderful women are not from a mould,

Your sex does not set your identity,

When gender is a separate entity.

I am a woman and I am proud.

Unapologetically female.

I am more powerful than this society,

We are better than you ever let us be.

When Rapunzel left the tower and the evil witch she thought was her mother, she stepped into freedom and found adventure. But despite her escape, when she looks back, there will be an irreversible damage that lingers. Healing from dysfunctional families hurts. There’s no way around it. Even when you leave them and find another home elsewhere, you’re still carrying the weight of emotional baggage that scars you for life.

I don’t think it ever gets easier, but the best part about life is that we have the ability to create what we want from it. We can still do the things we love and go on. Healing comes from a place of understanding. If you grew up from a toxic background, we want to shed light on patterns and situations that are hard to understand, mainly because it’s painful. Psych2Go shares with you 6 side effects of toxic parenting:

1. You have a higher risk of developing an anxiety disorder.

When you grow up in a dysfunctional family, you’re at a higher risk of developing an anxiety disorder. According to a study done in 1998, researchers discovered that people who are exposed to toxic parenting on a consistent basis are more likely to develop generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), regardless of whether they were young or in their adulthood. Out of the 940 adults who participated in the study, researchers found that factors, such as income, education, and country of origin had no impact on whether they would develop anxiety, but the element of toxic parenting did.

When I was a young child, I often worried about setting my mom off. I was a clumsy kid, constantly knocking things off the table or tripping over my own feet. I would often spill juice on the tiled floor in the kitchen or on the hardwood in our living room, and the sugar would leave a sticky residue behind every time. Instead of telling my mom what happened, I…

—

Byron Katie

(via

flowgently