12th July, 2026

Featured POETRY ...

Extract from WHAT SURVIVES THE LULLABY

By Heeya

Far away, in the menacing night,

a child’s cry of agony sounds by—

a moment of visible pain in her features,

a scrunch in her expression,

discomfort dressing those tears.

It’s difficult to point out the exact cause,

yet suffering arrives as an inevitable pause.

And the mother holds her close to her chest,

whispering sweet nothings,

soft syllables meant to rest.

It’s easy to detect a child’s pain

only because they do not hide in vain—

they don’t mask their grief

with a lid of somber temperance,

but give themselves to lullabies,

drinking in borrowed bliss.

And yet the child grows, bit by bit,

learning postulates of manufactured grit—

unsure of the moment

when signals cloak themselves in plain sight,

unsure of the clause

that seals suffering airtight,

into rehearsed patterns,

into engineered chaos.

One day she shows up wearing a smile,

drinking her pain with a whiskey-on-point denial,

drifting inside the mirage that everything’s fine,

while a phoenix murmurs dead cries

through the wreckage of time ...

You can read the rest of Heeya's poem WHAT SURVIVES THE LULLABY in the book PTSD.

ABOUT HEEYA: Heeya is the creative pen name of a final-year medical student at Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College, Kolkata, India. Her poetry serves as a bridge between the clinical observation of the mind and the lyrical reality of the heart. Heeya examines the emotional cost of holding space for another’s pain—the 'aftermath' that settles in those who stand watch. She seeks to articulate the quiet, ongoing exhaustion and the fractured peace that remains when the 'lullaby' of caregiving becomes a heavy, persistent reality. Her writing is an attempt to alchemize the weight of empathy into a language of survival.

Featured POETRY ...

WHAT DO WE DO WITH THE ANGER?

By Gary Shulman MS. Ed.

When your very being is deemed to not matter

By powers that are spewing venomous chatter 

Resulting in rights being obliterated and torn

Throwing souls into a tailspin, your spirits forlorn

What shall we do with the anger that’s growing?

What bromide do we ingest so our rage won’t be showing?

When hatred is allowed to reign unchecked

Good lives will be ruined and souls will be wrecked

To all who are feeling this horrific pain

Know that there is hope in this land yet to reign

We go to the polls and vote for compassion 

Bring back the love, make justice “in fashion”

Right now it is painful, right now devastated

We’ve been hurt before, lord knows we’ve been berated

But rise up we shall and rise up we must

In this I must believe, in this I must trust

For good humans are out there who will refuse to cower

And our votes yet to come shall place them in power

The anger is valid, the anger might remain

But just sitting on that anger will all be in vain

If not used to morph the future into something more grand

A place of justice and kindness in this great land

Let us take that pain and use it for good

Change the future we can, change the future we should

Turn the venom to compassion, make the land once more sane

It has happened before, it will happen again

ABOUT GARY: Gary Shulman, (MS. Ed.) has spent a lifetime supporting vulnerable families and children. He began his career working with children with and without disabilities in an inclusive Head Start program in Brooklyn NY. He then transitioned to become the Special Needs and Early Childhood Coordinator for the Brooklyn Children's Museum for 10 years. His passion for advocacy grew as he worked more and more with parents of children with disabilities. For over 24 years he passionately advocated for the needs of these parents as the Social Services and Training Director for Resources for Children with Special Needs, Inc. in NYC. The last years of his working life, Gary served as a private Special Needs Consultant conducting hundreds of training sessions throughout NYC and beyond to help parents and professionals find and access the services and systems required to facilitate maximizing the potential of their children with disabilities. 

You can read Gary's other poems A HOLE IN MY SOUL, and A SIMPLE REMINDER in the book PTSD.

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Click on the below button to read extracts from personal stories and more poetry featured in PTSD.

→ PTSD is the EIGHTH in the acclaimed Poetry for Mental Health book series! ←