Welcome to Litsy!

"It takes solidarity and generosity of spirit to build a society in which anyone can feel safe. Empathy can be hard to find, especially for people who look or sound different, or believe different things to us. But when we allow ourselves to be pitted against each other, and to be ruled by the meaner emotions, we dig our own graves alongside those of the people we abandon. ??

"You want to lash out at the parts of your self that seem to hold you back. At moments like that, it's important to be able to sit down and speak gently within yourself, as if saying a prayer or reading a poem. Whichever part of you is unhappy, reassure it: accept your many selves, and allow them to speak both to you and to each other."
- William Sieghart

"We are made beautiful and glorious not by the ways in which we differ from the rest of the biosphere, but by our place, perhaps unique in the universe, in this community of living things."
- William Sieghart

Your ancestors did not survive
everything that nearly ended them
for you to shrink yourself
to make someone else
comfortable.

This sacrifice is your warcry,
be loud,
be everything
and make them proud.

"I Am My Ancestor's Dream" by Nikita Gill
Prescribed for: People-pleasing; lack of confidence

My own ancestors were farm hands and shrimpers working the Ribble estuary. This photograph is of the 1913 "Shrimp Strike" protest.

“Woke up this morning with
a terrific urge to lie in bed all day
and read. Fought against it for a minute.

Then looked out the window at the rain.
And gave over. Put myself entirely
in the keep of this rainy morning.

Would I live my life over again?
Make the same unforgivable mistakes?
Yes, given half a chance. Yes.”

- "Rain" by Raymond Carver
Prescribed for: Unkindness to Oneself

"He visits my town once a year.
He fills my mouth with kisses and nectar.
I spend all my money on him.

Who, girl, your man?

No, a mango."

- Amir Khusro
Prescribed for Romantic Exhaustion

"I was never a pre-Raphaelite beauty,
nor anything but pretty enough to satisfy
men who need to be seen with passable women.
But now that I am in love with a place
which doesn't care how I look, or if I'm happy,
happy is how I look, and that's all."
- "Weathering" by Fleur Adcock
Prescribed for Insecurity about Aging

"Now that your worry has proved such an unlucrative business,
Why not find a better job?"
- Hafiz

Poetry prescription for Overthinking