You are my terrible twin.
We were knotted together even as I slipped,
womb-blinded, from the darkness into light,
the cord severed.
We will always be as Janus was,
selves torn between the ancient face
that looks forward from the doorway
and the young one that looks back,
into the shadows,
different sides of the same shiftless coin.
No closeness has ever felt further.
No mirror glitters so cruelly
with false promise
as the one you hold up for me.
.
About Sarah
Sarah Frost is 45 years old and mother to a 14-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl. She works as an online editor forJuta Legalbriefin Durban, South Africa, and lectures News Writing part time at the Durban University of Technology. Sarah has been writing poetry since she was 19 years old. She has completed an MA in English Literature and a module in Creative Writing. Her debut collection, Conduit, was published by Modjaji in 2011. Last year she participated in Joanne Fedler’s Author Awakening course, in which she was inspired to take herself seriously as a writer.
Joanne Fedler Media blog joins the global women’s campaign, the16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, which starts from the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (25th November) up to Human Rights Day (10th December). We would love you to share these stories on social media (using the hashtags: #OrangeUrWorld #OrangeTheWorld #HearMeToo #EndVAW), with your girlfriends, mothers, daughters, friends and sisters.
During this period, Joanne Fedler’s book, Things Without a Name (10th Anniversary Edition), can be downloaded for FREE.
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Things Without a Name(10th Year Anniversary Edition)by Joanne Fedler
Book Description:
At 34, Faith has given up on love. Her cleavage is disappointing, her best friend is clinically depressed and her younger sister is getting breast implants as an engagement present. She used to think about falling in love, but that was a long time ago. Having heard one too many love-gone-wrong stories from the other side of her desk, Faith is worn thin by her work as a legal counsellor in a women’s crisis centre. Then one night, an odd twist of fate brings her to a suburban veterinary clinic where she wrings out years of unshed tears. It is a night that will slowly change the way she sees herself and begin the unearthing of long-buried family secrets so she can forgive herself for something she doesn’t remember, but that has shaped her into the woman she is today. Faith will finally understand what she has always needed to know: that before you can save others, you have to save yourself.
In this hands-on, intimate workshop (an eclectic mix of teaching, instruction, writing exercises, meditations, ritual, sharing and other joyful activities), I will teach you how to take the material of your life – the moments that counted, no matter how shattering or modest – and weave them into a memoir that makes sense of it all.
Categories: 16 Days of Activism