Poetry | Free Verse

You don't know me but I know myself. I dig deep down to the depths of my core to the place where I am who I am. It's the heart of my inner forge and I know that's where she will be tending the hearth of my soul - my great-great-great grandmother. We've never met but we know each other like we know ourselves, eons apart yet bound together by a helix string of DNA. I speak for her words she could never read or write, she speaks to me of myself. "Be kind. Be strong. Be fair. Be true. Take care of the children love them like your own they are our tomorrow, give them a voice that they shall be heard make their lives matter because when you do that for them your life will matter too." My soul is nourished by her words and fortified by her spirit. She dwells in me, she is my touchstone and my deliverance.

© Carolyn Hastings 2021

My great-great-great-grandmother is Margaret Kelly (née O'Neil). I didn't know anything about her — not even her name — until a few years ago when I started fossicking into my family history. When I learned of her story, what there is of it, the sacrifices she'd made, the opportunities she'd never had, and the commitments she'd undertaken, a piece of the 'me' puzzle fell into place. It all made sense. 'I' made sense. I've always had a presence-of-self but it was only then that I came to understand where it had come from. I identified with my great-great-great grandmother. She was me and I am her. Knowing that I will find her at the heart of my inner forge, fills me with an indescribable warmth. The warmth of being wrapped in a quilt of wellbeing, love, purpose and place. My eudaimonia quilt.

I won't take up your time telling you my great-great-great grandmother's story because that's not important right now, but in case you're interested, I mentioned her here in a recent article about family.

Thank you to Victor Sarkin and the editorial team at Genius in a Bottle for another excellent prompted writing challenge: The Soul. You can find the guidelines for the prompt here –

With all due respect and felicity, I would like to invite these deep thinkers and creative wordsmiths to share their thoughts on the topic of soul — Jonah Lightwhale | David Rudder | Suntonu Bhadra | Kevin Johan Wong | Joseph Lieungh

Heartfelt thanks and gratitude, as always, for reading. 🙏 💕