Healing Through Poetry

Psychological trauma comes in all shapes and sizes, and affects people in a multitude of ways. When someone is subjected to an extremely difficult or dangerous circumstance, the painful memories of their experience can have lasting impacts on their mental and emotional states. Whether they are a survivor of a near-death accident, war crimes, street violence, domestic abuse or sexual assault, the traumatic imprints of these events can drastically alter the way they relate to themselves and others.

One individual who has experienced severe psychological trauma is poet and inspirational speaker, Andreena Leeanne. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, Andreena struggled for many years with the emotional scars her Stepfather had left her with after he began abusing her at the age of five.

“My Mum’s had a history of abusive partners.”, Andreena tells me, “It was my Mum that caught him abusing me when I was ten years old. She was the one who called the police and she got him arrested. But then she accepted gifts from him, she saw him in prison.”.

Although the imprisonment of Andreena’s Stepfather meant he could no longer abuse her, she was left to deal with the impacts of his cruelty on her own. With a dismissive and unsupportive Mother and internalized pressure to keep quiet about the abuse she’d endured, Andreena moved forward in life with many painful and unresolved emotions.

“Keeping silent for thirty years was quite difficult.”, she says, “All the issues that I’d experienced came out in my behaviour. I wasn’t a nice person. I wasn’t nice to myself and I was quite self-destructive.”.

Many years later, things took a positive turn for Andreena when her partner introduced her to writing as a way of expressing her thoughts and feelings.

“I wasn’t very good at communicating how I felt. When she introduced me to writing, that’s what got me onto a healing journey.”

At first, Andreena used writing as a personal practice to express how she was feeling about her day-to-day life, work and relationships. Without sharing her words with anyone else, Andreena found this creative exercise to be incredibly cathartic. After five years of regularly writing, she then felt ready to write about her experience of childhood sexual abuse.

“When I’ve written it’s taken off my chest, off my head, and onto paper. It’s like the words have come out of my body. It feels like I’m no longer holding that burden.”, she tells me.

In March 2018, Andreena’s healing journey escalated to new heights when she decided to share a poem she had written about her traumatic experience at an event for International Women’s Day.

“I felt very vulnerable and exposed. I was crying while reading it, I was shaking.”.

Despite the overwhelming vulnerability she felt, Andreena continued to speak her truth, courageously posting her poem on social media and sending her work to The Survivors Trust to share on their website.

In October 2020, a collection of Andreena’s poems were published in her book “CHARRED: A Survivor Speaks her Truth to Inspire”. Filled with raw, honest and reflective pieces about her relationships, personal identity and mental health, Andreena’s book is bound to connect with a diverse range of readers. Using simple yet impactful words, as well as including notes on self-care, useful contacts for readers to find support and space for them to write their own thoughts and feelings, CHARRED is an accessible book and an incredibly supportive resource for those who have faced any kind of adversity in their own lives.

But Andreena’s work to speak her truth and support others who have survived trauma does not end with her book; she has also led a number of writing workshops, including a weekly online workshop called “Speak & Write Your Truth”, and she is the organiser of “Poetry LGBT”, an online space for people from the LGBTQ+ community to share and listen to each other’s poems.

“I create spaces where people can be their authentic selves and feel free to express themselves.”, Andreena says, “It’s really helped them to not feel alone.”.

Through writing about her feelings and using poetry to express her truth, Andreena has not only managed to transform her life into a safe, loving and nurturing experience, but also created platforms for other survivors to take steps in their own healing journeys.

Thank you, Andreena, for all the healing work you do through poetry.

Andreena Leeanne

Andreena Leeanne is a poet, writing workshop facilitator, lived experience speaker and Trustee of Action Breaks Silence, a charity which raises awareness of violence against women and girls.

Her book CHARRED can be purchased on Amazon and is available at multiple bookshops across the UK.

You can follow Andreena on Instagram @survivor.andreena.leeanne or see her website www.andreena.co.uk.