Extract from 361 Recovery guide for women survivors out March 26th by Alice Smith teacher, writer, survivors and above all optimist.
We will remember them. In the Invisible War they fell unnoticed.
Poppies are significant for me. They are remembrance – stage 2 of our recovery (stage 1 is Safety and stage 3 is Reconnect.) I spent a couple of years remembering and mourning my life, my self as they were before abuse. I miss her. I laid poppies around the world in performance with a poem ‘We will remember them.’ The poppies signified the fallen from a different war – a gender war. The poppies remembered the 2 women a week killed by their partners in the uk. But now I realise that the poppies also remembered my old self. I was laying her to rest.’
‘Poppies for peace, pieces of myself fallen on the floor.’
This year, as I completed the 361 recovery programme I also realised that the poppies symbolised something else. The seeds of recovery. Hope. I was lucky enough to live by the coast where poppies flourished, I got to see hundreds of wild poppies scattered in fields by the sea. I got to see that the poppy’s petals are beautiful. But they are not the most important part of the flower.
Did you know that they only last for a week – less if it’s very windy? It’s the stem that is the powerhouse. It stores the seeds that will spread as the poppy dies and multiplies onto more and more poppies next year. Inside the poppy there is new life. Poppies symbolise life after death. They are a perfect survivor flower.
Why did you leave? This answer is the perfect seed for recovery. Find the one seed of recovery that will grow into something special. You. A new version of you. But remember the old you. Miss your old self sometimes. Find the one. The 361.
Alice Smith 2023
361 