Welcome To The Heart Month

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First, I want to say I did do one writing thing for January. I entered a contest writing about my happiest moment as a caregiver, (one of the times I took my daughter horseback riding). It wasn't a writing contest per sé but it did have the requirement of 300 words or more, so I'm counting it as a writing thing. Not sure when or if I'll hear back, the deadline was the 31st of January. Hopefully I'll be able to do another writing thing in February, whether that's working on my book(s), or submitting poems for publication, or writing reviews, or anything that has anything to do with writing. I'm working hard on focusing on the positive, I'm internally criticizing myself so hard. That's not very good for my nerves, or heart. And of course, February is the heart month, both the physical and emotional heart.

I'm sure the emotional part is thanks to Saint Valentines Day. I'm guessing that people wanting to bring awareness to heart health decided it would be congruess having the physical heart month attached to the emotional heart month. To me personally, they are very intertwined. Sometimes my heart is heavy, (pun intended,) because my Grandmother died of a heart attack when I was a young teenager. Not only that, most people have to live through the pain of their grandparents dying, but practically all of my Dad's family has heart problems, and my Dad has had many heart attacks. Fortunately he is still alive and doing everything he can to keep his heart healthy. According to my echocardiogram, my heart is doing well despite the occasional bout of heartburn. So what's Heart month got to do with poetry? Well that's easy to answer, poetry is the language of the heart!

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Poetry is the expression of emotion, a word which is often a synonym of the word heart. While I named my first poetry book "Un-Clenched Emotion" it could have easily been "Unclenched Heart". I poured my heart out when I wrote those poems, just like whenever I write any poem. I'm sure any poet would tell you the same. The other reason I'm writing out the theme of the month of February is because it's something I would often do in my poetry classes: ask the students to write about the month we're in or about a Holiday we're near. That got me the idea,  and many written poems, for "Seasons of Sensation". If your struggling with ideas to write this month, write about February. If you're a reader, read some poetry in celebration of the month. 

  

                                                    

Photo by Ahmet Yüksek ✪ on Unsplash

Or don't read poetry at all, read other stuff that has to do with February. Since it's African American History Month as I well, I do reccomend reading some poems by Phillis Wheatley, a Women African American Poet from the late 1700's. She was a slave who became educated and then later freed. Of course, there are also many more things you can read for African History month as well, like Fedrick Douglass's autobiography, or the speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. February is also the awareness month of many things. For breveity's sake of this blog, we'll just focus on February being heart month. If you want, you could read non-fiction medical books on the heart. You never know where a person's interests lie, I happen to like physics books, both science fiction and non-fiction books. Be sure to take care of your hearts, both emotional and physical!