Words in the Wilderness

How can we write when words fail us?

When we face extreme stress or trauma the part of the brain that helps us to put words around the experience goes offline as our brain goes into survival mode.

Often we are told 'It's good to talk' when we're experiencing difficulty but that is not always possible.

So is there another way?

In this episode Jacky Power shares how poetry can be used as a form of somatic witnessing; a way of tuning into the sensations in our bodies and giving them...

In this episode, Dufflyn Lammers shares her journey toward embracing vulnerability, love, and authenticity through her personal stories, writing, and spiritual reflection. We discuss stories from her book You Had Me At Bonjour as she shares how she has navigated complex relationships, self-acceptance, and attachment healing, all with a beguiling humour and lightness.

What we cover

 In this episode, Jacky Power talks with Mohammed Moussa, a Palestinian poet, journalist, and founder of the Gaza Poets Society, about the role of poetry in bearing witness to displacement and grief, writing across English and Arabic, the link between place and memory, and the art of noticing. Moe reads from his forthcoming poetry collection, Where to Lay This Heart, and Jacky shares two of her own poems in response.

About Moe Moussa

Moe Moussa is a Palestinian poet and freelance journalist from the Gaza Strip, and the founder of the Gaza Poets Society (2018) a...

Most couples struggle with invisible labour, resentment, and unspoken expectations - until they discover a simple, powerful system that transforms their relationship.

 In this eye-opening episode, Dr. Sharmila Logothas reveals how the Fair Play method,  created by Eve Rodsky, offers a clear, card-based roadmap for redistributing household and caregiving tasks, dismantling gender norms, and fostering true equality at home. But it’s more than just chores; it’s a tool to tackle toxic masculinity, create intimacy through honest conversations, and reclaim your time and emotional well-being.
 
You’ll discover:

Content note: this episode discusses childhood sexual abuse, addiction, self-harm, psychiatric systems, and suicide attempts.
Please take care of yourself as you listen.

What happens when the unspeakable has no language? When every time you try to speak, someone turns away?

Sophie Olsen is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, a trainer, and the author of The Flying Child — a book that took a decade of being labelled, medicated and told there was no recovery before it could be written. She was eventually told by a psychiatrist that she would never live without community su...

Every parent asks some version of the same question. Am I damaging my child? Have I already damaged them?

This episode is Jacky's answer. It's not an answer that reassuringly bypasses the truth, but an answer that holds the truth.  Because the question isn't how do I never hurt my child. The question is: when I do hurt them  - because I will - how do I repair?

Ruptures happen in every relationship. They're part of being human. They're even part of healthy relationships - they show that each person has their own separate sense of...

Wait! Before you read another article about screen time, before you spiral about whether you're doing enough, before you outsource your child to a therapist and hope they come back fixed Jacky and Nicole Runyon want you to hear something first.

You are more powerfully positioned to help your child than any professional will ever be. That's what Nicole - a therapist who has 23 years of clinical experience with children and families - wants you to know.

Nicole is a psychotherapist and author of Free to Fly - a book that traces what happened to...

The standards expected in motherhood are impossible. And most of us don't even notice we've signed up to it until we feel burned out and miserable. .

This episode starts with a poem Jacky wrote called 'Yummy Mummy' - all the ways in which we can try to show we have 'got out shit together' as mothers, whilst nothing goes according to plan.  Because that's what it's like when you deal with frustration by 'upping your game'. YOu keep trying. It looks like effort. It looks like caring. And underneath it is one quiet, relentless message: if I c...

'Matrescence' is a word that has been around since 1973. It only made it into the dictionary in 2022. That gap tells you almost everything you need to know about how well we've been holding the experience of becoming a mother.

Lucy Wylde is a matrescence activist and coach who works with women navigating the identity shift of motherhood - before, during and long after. She's also a poet. And in this conversation, she and Jacky go deep into the places most parenting content never reaches: birth trauma, the inner split of wanting to be two people at once...

Do you ever feel the urge to cry out, but swallow it back down instead? That specific, lonely feeling when you want to howl but it feels pointless, so you gulp it down instead — and there's no one to reason out your sadness, your guilt, your fear with.

This episode maps the journey from that swallowed feeling all the way through to hope using the unexpected power of poetry to witness, name, and navigate what we're really going through.

In this episode:

You were probably taught that poetry has a meaning, and your job is to find it. That's exactly why so many of us decided it wasn't for us.

In this episode, Jacky is joined by Dr. Stephanie Aspin  - poet, therapist, academic, and author of Poetry and Therapy: Why Words Help  - for a conversation that might just change how you think about language, feeling, and what it means to be witnessed.

Stephanie describes a poem not as a text to be decoded but as a little machine  -  a kinetic object where meaning shifts and...

You know that moment when something rises in your throat - a howl, a truth, a need - and you just... swallow it back down?

Jacky has a word for that. Hulp. A howl and a gulp combined. And this episode begins there; right in that frozen, swallowed place, because that's exactly where Jacky found herself when she sat down to record!

This is an episode about what it actually feels like to start something. A behind the scenes look at the recording and deleting, the shame that crawls up when old wounds surface, the "...

For the scared souls, the never-dared souls, the lost and double-crossed souls — the ones sitting in the wilderness of change, wondering if anyone else feels this way.

Words in the Wilderness is a podcast for people in the messy middle of becoming who they really are.

Hosted by therapist and poet Jacky Power, this is the space where we stop performing and start witnessing. 
Where your feelings aren't problems to solve - they're wisdom to decode.

Through poetry, honest storytelling and real conversations, Jacky accompanies the changemakers and cycle-breakers who...

Understanding Addiction, Recovery, and Transformation

In this powerful episode, we sit down with Thomas Delaney, who shares his deeply personal journey from ketamine addiction to recovery and advocacy. During his recovery, Thomas has spoken to audiences in the thousands and reached an online global audience of over 20 million people.  He has spoken at some of the UK’s most significant wellbeing events and the world’s largest performance arts festival, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Thomas's story offers a raw and honest look into the complexities of addiction, the challenges of recovery, and the potential for profound...

A mother's journey through addiction and loss.

EFT practitioners Aga Kehinde, who is originally from that town and  and Jessica Mór, who until February 2022 had been living in Ukraine due to her spouse’s work, join me today to talk about their experience of co-creating  ‘Support for Slupsk’ The project has now delivered training to more than 800 people working for the services of the town of Slupsk, Poland who are coming into direct contact with the Ukrainian refugee population. The training has involved participants learning tapping and somatic trauma relief tools, the neurobiology of how they work, and the confidence and skills to use and share this knowl...

In this episode we chat about what sustainable fashion is; how to get off the trend treadmill; Sophia's experiment in which she is not buying any new or preloved clothes (except for vital undies and socks!) and how 'sober dressing' can be creative, empowering and fun. Sophia's mission is to help you restyle and rework your wardrobe using what you already have. She makes up "new to you" outfits from clothes that you may have forgotten about, discarded, or loved... but never been sure what to put it with. She creates outfits that are true to your sense of style ...

There is much more to his story, so let’s welcome him to share some of that and also to create hope and inspiration with sharing how he moved through such severe intergenerational trauma and adverse childhood experiences to be the inspirational coach he is today; from trauma to triumph. As he says, ‘The trauma may be our foundation, but it is not our future.’

We talked about her 3 discoveries with the research that she has done, how betrayal is a different kind of trauma because of how it feels so intentional and personal and therefore relates to trust, how it affects one physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally - and she shared some really sobering statistics around that and how it is possible to move through from betrayal to breakthrough with her five stage process.

I met Dan when we were at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2022 and I went to his show 'Patience Zero'. The description of his show was: 'Dan's always wanted to be a father. But now he and his wife are going through constant loss and IVF, he starts to ask the question: is he good enough? But in a year with a serious accident, an NHS-induced bad K-trip, a letter warning of impending death and, oh, aliens, he begins to wonder - is the universe telling him no? It's a comedy. Somewhere between stand-up and theatre, this show explores...

Redefining what it means to be emotionally resilient, Josh in an ambassador for NACOA, the National Association for Children of Alcoholics. He works with individuals and corporation to help people improve their emotional resilience. His down to earth, highly informed videos on social media have attracted hundred of thousands of followers. He joins me on The Therapeutic Poet podcast to talk about being a child of an alcoholic, addiction recovery, what it means to really listen and the importance of community.

We cover: Trauma Bonding Being on the receiving end of the silent treatment Emotional abuse Narcissistic abuse Covert sexual abuse Addiction Complex trauma Trauma responses Toxic shame Going from not having a voice, to reclaiming it Parenting The healing power of writing.

A podcast episode detailing Jacky’s experience of performing her show, ‘Stop the world I want to get off’ at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2022.

In this episode we begin with my poem 'Tell me your story' I wrote it about trauma; how trauma needs to be acknowledged in all its grittiness, not diminished or dressed up as ‘not that bad’ in order to be healed. As today’s guest Lucinda Gordon Lennox says, we all have some trauma and trauma can be healed. Part of what can hinder that healing is the denial of that trauma. Other people, or even ourselves can try to minimise, justify or rationalise what has happened to us and the impact that it has had. What if we let our st...

This episode is the second part of a conversation that I had with Julia Warren. Julia is a mother, yoga teacher, writer and recovering addict. In September 2021, she lost her husband Doug when he relapsed and died of a drug overdose. In this episode, Julia shares her own writing, documenting her thoughts and feelings as she grieves her husband. We talk about what's helpful and unhelpful when someone is grieving. What the shittiest things are about grief, and how through fully surrendering to our grief, it's possible to find joy, and hope.

Today I am talking to Julia Warren. Julia is a mother to her two boys, a trauma informed yoga teacher and a writer. She is also in recovery from drug addiction and recently stepped into the role of widow as in September 2021 her husband Doug overdosed when he relapsed from his own addiction recovery. In this episode we talk about Julia’s recovery from drug addiction. She talks about how she went from the loneliness and isolation of addiction to recovery with the help of fellowship from other women in recovery. We talk about Doug’s relapse and what that was...

In January 2017, Lara came out of a long-term relationship, and felt broken, lost, stuck, lacking in direction and purpose. In November She read a book about vision boards, created her own and 4 months later she was running her own, with 10 participants. She has since trained in NLP and expanded her knowledge with studying about neuroscience. Last year she published her first book The Mighty Book of Motivation Magic and she is here to chat with me about vision boards and motivation.

When faced with an empty nest, Kari Gillespie decided to spread her own wings. She gave up a job that she loved and set off to walk across Spain and then she wrote a book about it called Pilgrim. I loved the book and am excited to share this conversation with you. In this episode I started with my poem I start from where I am today.

Leslie Davies, author of ‘You can’t eat love: learning to love yourself can change your relationship with food’ is here to talk about her relationship with food and how she realised that the emptiness that she was feeling inside and trying to fill with food was to do with her relationship with herself. She shares how she used her relationship with food as a signpost for changes that she needed to make in relationship to herself, healing the wounds that she had encountered through emotional neglect in her childhood.

John was the son of a heroin dealer, and he himself ended up falling into drugs and alcohol and became homeless. In 2012 he sold his own drug treatment facility for $45 million dollars and he has helped 1000s of people in their own addiction recovery. In this episode, we discuss addiction and the story behind the label of being an addict. John shares how he turned his life around from growing up amongst a family that seemed like it had come straight out of an episode of The Sopranos to now being an international speaker on science based holistic treatments in...

In this episode about belonging with Vanessa Belleau I started with my poem The Secret to Belonging. We discuss the evolution of diversity and inclusion as buzzwords to the necessary action that's needed in order to help people feel like they belong. Vanessa shares her own personal experiences of the importance of representation from a random man on the street to her own mum, and how that can be life changing. I certainly learned so much from Vanessa about how we need to strive for unity, but also the importance of celebration of each other. So listen in, I think...

In this episode on creativity, we began with my poem, Nothing rhymes with purple. Caro Gomez shared her creative path which involves tenacity, grit, criticism, self doubt, and concrete blocks, metaphorically, not literally. I think that the take out of this episode is the importance of consistency and perseverance and that we cannot not be creative. When creating there are no endings, just detours. But as Caro has shown, each detour can enhance our creative output.

Joining me on The Therapeutic Poet podcast today is Jenny Alexander. Jenny is a prolific author and some of the books that she has written about tackle the subject of bullying. Some of these are for children, like her book '70 ways to bully proof yourself’, and others for adults, such as ‘When you child is bullied: an essential guide for parents’. Jenny explains why she wrote a book about bullying, the impacts of psychological (as well as physical) bullying and what can be done to build resilience, even when bullying is going on. You can find out more about Jenny...

Today on The Therapeutic Poet podcast I am joined by neuroscientist, science communicator and storyteller Dr. Paula Croxson. Paula is also an open water swimmer regularly swimming marathons, a flautist with the band Marlowe Grey, senior producer of the science based storytelling platform Storycollider and, she is also my cousin! We started with my poem ‘As I stood on the shore of my memories.’ We spoke about how memory are changes that happen in our brains based on our experiences. Paula explained how memory can be explicit and implicit, supported by different parts of the brain, but all parts of the...

Something that none of us want to experience, and yet we all do, is suffering. In our western mostly secular society it is easy to see why we see suffering as an affront to our human rights. We all want to live tidy, prosperous, fulfilled lives and can see why we would regard suffering as a threat to that and that it needs to be controlled and managed away as quickly as possible. Some may say, "how can there be a God that allows so much pain?". But suffering is everywhere and every life will have tragic episodes, so how...

In this episode I am joined by For Women Who Roar founder Megan Febuary. She describes how writing a poem to reconcile the silence of her rage and grief lead to the creation of a movement to help other women tell their stories. We spoke of the importance of the healing process through writing, rather than focussing on the finished piece. How we can let our writing write us, shedding our defences to get to the truth, a complicated disorganised process.

How are you with boundaries? Do you know how to set them and how do you deal with the consequences when your boundaries are pushed or crossed? Are they something you shy away from or embrace with gusto? Whatever your experience with boundaries so far you are in for a treat today because I am joined by Kari Kwinn, author of the book Better Boundaries: You don’t have to be broken to be better. We start with my poem ‘Positively negative’.

Joining me today is professional declutterer Belinda Knox Spinks. On her website Home of Hidden Treasures Belinda says ‘I help people find the hidden treasures of space, time and happiness. We start with my poem ‘All at Sea’