Rachel Kelly, a successful journalist with a thriving family, had her life torn apart by depression and found poetry was, and still is, her best coping mechanism. She now runs workshops with two mental health charities (United Response and Sane) where she takes poems or prose. Rachel chooses poems that help people find a more compassionate and more forgiving voice for both themselves and others to help them through every day life. The book she has written may be found in the ‘Valuable Links’ section of this website.

We wanted to include poetry that we thought might speak to your troubled heart. True poetry comes from deep within ourselves and we hope that perhaps one or two of the following poems may have a connection for you.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you about mine
Meanwhile the world goes on
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
Are moving across the landscapes,
Over the prairies and the deep trees,
The mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clear blue air,
Are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
The world offers itself to your imagination,
Calls to you like the wild geese,
Harsh and exciting –
Over and over announcing your place In the family of things

Mary Oliver, from Dreamwork In New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, Boston, 1996 

The Journey by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
What you had to do, and began,
Though the voices around you
Kept shouting their bad advice –
The whole house
Began to tremble
And you felt the old tug at your ankles
“Mend my life” each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop
You knew what you had to do,
Though the wind pried its stiff fingers
At the very foundations
Though their melancholy
Was terrible It was already late
Enough, and a wild night,
And the road full of fallen branches and stories.
But little by little,
As you left their voices behind,
The stars began to burn
Through the sheets of clouds,
And there was a new voice
Which you slowly
Recognized as your own,
That kept you company
As you strode deeper and deeper Into the world,
Determined to do
The only thing you could do –
Determined to save
The only life you could save.

Mary Oliver, from Dreamwork In New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, Boston, 1996 

Love after Love by Derek Walcott

The time will come
When, with elation,
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror
And each will smile at the other’s welcomeAnd say, sit here. Eat
You will love again the stranger who was yourself
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved youAll your life, whom you ignored
For another, who knows you by heart
Take down the love letters from the bookshelfThe photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your own image from the mirror
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott Sea Grapes 1976 

The Beautiful by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

The most beautiful people we have known
Are those who have known defeat
Known suffering
Known struggle
Known loss
And have found their way out of the depths
These persons have an appreciation
A sensitivity
And an understanding of life
That fills them with compassion
Gentleness
And a deep loving concern
Beautiful people do not just happen

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Amo Ergo Sum by Kathleen Raine

Because I love
The sun pours out its rays of living gold
Pours out its gold and silver on the seaBecause I love
The earth upon her astral spindle winds
Her ecstasy producing danceBecause I love
Clouds travel on the winds through wide skies
Skies wide and beautiful, blue and deepBecause I love
Wind blows white sails,
The wind blows over flowers, the sweet wind blowsBecause I love
The ferns grow green, and green the grass
And green the transparent sunlit trees Because I love
Larks rise up from the grass
And all the leaves are full of singing birdsBecause I love
The summer air quivers with a thousand wings 
Myriads of jeweled eyes burn in the lightBecause I love
The iridescent shells upon the sand
Take forms as fine and intricate as thoughtBecause I love
There is an invisible way across the sky
Birds travel by that way, the sun and moon
And all the stars travel that path by nightBecause I love
There is a river flowing all night longBecause I love
All night the river flows into my sleep
Ten thousand living things are sleeping in my arms
And sleeping wake, and flowing are at rest

Kathleen Raine Selected Poems 1988

A Morning Offering by John O'Donohue

Benedictus

May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more

John O’Donohue