Wounded Eagle: Now She Soars

By Karen B. Fridie

I was born free: a child of the Universe.
So I breathe and stretch; breathe and stretch.
Spreading wide my wings, with a final thrust, I lift off
Into the unknown of life’s great expectations.
Toward the mountain peak of my identity …
Buoyed by an unbiased spirit, Karen Fridie has overcome many painful whys in her life to emerge from her murky past and reach her God-given purpose.
In a debut compilation of poems and essays, Karen explores the raw topics of domestic violence and rape in order to bring awareness to what has become a pandemic of abuse around the world. Her poems and personal stories reflect on the emptiness of fading ecstasy, the path to becoming a survivor and Eagle Woman, an emotional closet that hides dark secrets, and a painful purging of the soul that emptied old beliefs and replaced them with euphoria and a new pledge to bless others.
Wounded Eagle: Now She Soars is a volume of free verse and essays that candidly explore the raw topics of abuse, faith, forgiveness, healing, and self-love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665527453

Karen B. Fridie

Karen B. Fridie was born in Tobago and migrated to the United States at an early age. After launching an Interior Decorating and Organization business, she became involved in social activism where she mentored incarcerated women and served as a mediator between the women and their families. This is her first book.

Book preview

© 2021 Karen B. Fridie. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/26/2021

ISBN: 978-1-6655-2746-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-2745-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021910871

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in

this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views

expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version

(Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic

Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Dedicated to all victims of Rape and Domestic

Violence. Male and Female.

CONTENTS

Emptiness

The Beginning

Confused!

My Closet

Dead End

Repair Me, Lord

Maybe I’m Wrong

Tormented

Looking Good on the Outside

Nothing to Give

The Gardener

Spring-Cleaning

The Luxury of Forgiveness

Decisiveness

New Creature

Lessons Learned While Growing New Feathers

EMPTINESS

Empty me all over:

Walking through crowded streets,

Staring into empty places,

Searching for what or who has emptied me.

Empty body lies in empty bed,

Feeling the emptiness of fading ecstasy

That mockingly floats out of empty room,

Like vanishing dream when one awakes.

Empty lips, stripped of sounds.

Empty heart; no thump thump.

Empty mind that cannot think

Of what to do with all this emptiness.

THE BEGINNING

I can vividly recall the periods of my life when I often felt like a cadaver: frozen stiff and tucked away from the normal cycle of existence. I seriously believed so after a huge chunk of my soul was the first part to go missing, followed closely by my conscience.

I learned from the pages of certain books that when the latter dies, you’re as good as dead. Yes, that was me in the early and middle stages of my life: stone dead but still like a dead man walking, if you know what I mean. Looking extremely good on the outside, like a beautiful, impeccably dressed zombie, but on the inside, I had sufficient empty space to build a miniature city.

I was defenseless from the day I was born. By the time I was four, my mother had decided to become a generous giver, donating me to her maternal aunt and her only sister—the latter, a buddy of Cinderella’s stepmom.

Great-Aunt Winnie was the best of the whole bunch of all