“Freezing,” “Volcanoes,” and “The Sky Below”

Kelsey Christine McConnell (2014-2017, updated 2020)

A poetry collection of the female experience, encompassing an arc of the pains and fears of sexual assault, moving into the strength and resilience of rediscovering self-worth, and the hesitance and insecurity involved in falling in love for the first time in the aftermath.

I’ve been a writer since I first learned how to put pen to paper, but I don’t think I ever started healing the wounds I carried until I let myself boil my strongest emotions down into poetry. The three poems included in this submission are ones that I consider landmarks in my journey of finding peace with the experience of being a woman. At least, with my personal experience of being a woman. A lot of my history is marked by an oversexualization which I never asked for—especially as a child and adolescent. The way people acted on this perception of me in ways both verbal and physical manifested in pervasive ways for me. I was terrified of every little thing, and quickly losing touch with my last shred of self-worth.

The first of these poems, “Freezing,” marks a period in which I was near my lowest, living very presently in my fears and what I considered to be my own personal failings. In my second poem, “Volcanoes,” I transition into a space where I replace the churning in my stomach with an aggressive and abrasive acceptance of who I am—an acceptance which still somehow put me at odds with my happiness, keeping most people at a distance in order to protect myself. My final poem, “The Sky Below” brings me into a time of softness, as I discover that not all fear has to be bad. The struggles of letting healthy love into your life after the mind-warping trials of sexual harassment and/or abuse is something people often overlook, but it is perhaps one of the most profound moments of growth a woman in such a position can experience.