If you had the chance to start over and to begin again, this time doing it in an altogether better and more advantageous manner, would you take it? And if you did, what would you do with it that you didn’t do that first time in order to ensure a more favourable conclusion?

That’s a big question, and it might take you a while to find the answer, travelling backwards through the story of your life, until you reach that first point where you feel it started to go wrong.

Never one to shy away from doing what I ask of others, I sat and thought this through to see how it applied to my own experience. It brought forth this answer. I wish, more than anything, that I was powerful enough to do this, for both you and myself.

 
All that has been taken and destroyed

I wish I could turn back time,
reverse all that has happened,
thereby altering the course of what is yet to come.

I wish I could wave a magic wand
and render it all irrelevant,
rewriting the parts that swallowed me up.

I wish I could pick up a pair of scissors,
cut out the darkness and the decay,
the pain and the conflict.

I would return to that child,
hold out my hand and pull her inside,
wrap her in strong arms.

Whispering sweet nothing’s –
messages of love and words of encouragement –
I would mother her in a way I have never known.

Giving her everything I was denied,
I would raise her again,
from start to finish,

and this time I would do it right,
returning to her
all that has been taken and destroyed.

by Rebecca L. Atherton

 
To keep up to date with my progress and receive a copy of my newsletter, send me your email address.

• View or buy my work at my online portfolio
• Save 30% and buy from me direct
• Learn more about my work and the inspiration that guides it
• Keep up to date with my progress and receive a copy of my newsletter