Poem Written By Crystal Hart, CityHeART’s HeART of Survival Director
When I grow up, I want the devil to start shaking, knowing that a slayer of traumatic demons as well as a soul healer is here.
Fear.
Do not fear, for I am with you through all lifetimes, my dear.
May the perfect love of self and the Divine, cast out fear, become your guide
and
into new caverns of self awareness you will dive.
Do not fear your tears.
Every tear holds a story,
Feel.
Do not move to hide it, fade it, or fix it.
Feel the complete weight of each tear.
Collect every story tied to the grief they bear.
Your tears carve rivers of compassion across the cherry hued tops of your cheekbones.
Let the tears drop until your story is told.
Let them fall until your heart is known.
Let every tear be bold.
Let them all flow until the silver lining of healing is
seen and sewn.
When I grow up, I want to be the safety that I lacked and was not shown.
I want to be a medicine woman who spreads healing by never shying away from feeling.
I want to be that warm embrace that comforts oceans of tears as they’re flowing.
I want to be both a lucid dream and a restful pillow.
I want to feel the pain in others the way I wished someone had felt and seen mine.
May I grow to be a way shower, a light in the dark, a best friend more soothing than a therapist or medicine.
May I be the remedy, the balm that soothes.
May I be the cup that catches every story held within each tear shed across a Millenium of years.
I want to be the warmth of a smooth cup of tea and honey, that warms the hands who hold me dear.
I want to be innocence and love personified, to honor every inner child and keep them near.
I want to be the antiseptic that cleanses deep woundings and dissolves infectious fears.
I want my poetry to become the anthem that the survivors sing with trembling lips, hands lifted to the heavens, fountains of tears, and shaky voices shying away from fear, making sure that their every boundary is heard loud and clear for all to hear.
When I grow up, I want to be both art and therapy, while making healing my career.
Crystal Hart Biography for CityHeART:
Crystal Hart rediscovered her love of writing poetry as an adult after she was in a major car accident that left her with a traumatic brain injury. Through years of watching movies with subtitles, relentless reading of library books, and writing, Crystal lost her stutter, found her voice, and relearned how to read, write, and speak proficiently again.This led her to begin her poetic journey, when she met Long Beach, California’s very own Philosophy, Shyy But Fly, Black Charlie, and Jragonfly of the NeverSpeak Spoken Word Crew. When she first watched Philosophy’s spoken word performance on a streetlight lit city sidewalk outside the Art Exchange, she was awestruck to witness just how much empathy can be created through poetry. Knowing this, she decided to share her own story of struggle and miraculous resiliency, which brought her to writing her own poetry and challenging her to perform Spoken Word at Open Mics in hopes of losing her stutter under moments of excitement and stress. Beginning in 2013 at Long Beach’s longest running open mic, The Definitive Soapbox with Antonio PazOne Appling, she took to the stage with bravery and jitters, finding a great amount of catharsis while releasing her emotions to a captive audience. Antonio created such a warm, loving, safe, and spiritual environment for her to debut her newfound talent. Crystal then gained her poetic wings under the close direction of Kimiko McCarthy and O-Smith at The Flight School Open Mic in Culver City, CA where she would visit The Industry and Jazz Cafe, every Tuesday night for years. There she met the phenomenal, international political poet laureate, Matt Sedillo, and mental health advocate, artist, and poet, Jaha Zainanbu, who both gave her a vision of what resilience and true passion for poetry and people looks like. Since studying literature and humanity both in the classroom and at open mics, Crystal Hart has written a large body of poetry covering such topics as chronic illness, being differently abled, mental health awareness, being unhoused, interpersonal relationships, sexual assault, domestic abuse, surviving incest from infancy and childhood, being kidnapped, being held hostage with a gun, social justice, feminism, spirituality, near death experiences, and more. Crystal’s resilience was not given, but rather, she believes it was miraculous, divinely orchestrated, hard fought, and won. Crystal is currently compiling her poetry and poetic prose into a manuscript titled, “Survivor’s Song,” which is dedicated to her fellow survivors who boldly sing their own survivor songs and stories daily. Writing this manuscript in progress was the inspiration for her to present the idea what is now of CityHeART’s HeART of Survival Program, which debuts in January 2025 to benefit trauma survivors with healing creative outlets and coping mechanisms that they can benefit from in community with other survivors as well as on their own healing journeys. All of the programming and curriculum will be overseen by licensed therapists and various forms of creatives and holistic energy healers.
Crystal first found healing in creating multimedia art when she was unhoused and an intern at the Art Exchange in Long Beach in 2013. She felt that she could finally express her deepest emotions when the various traumas of life had left her speechless. Since then, Crystal has created, then, donated about 90% of her artwork to various causes, charities, art auctions, hospitals, hospital workers, friends, children, and chosen family. She has taught art to children at the Art Exchange and has tutored children in art ever since 2013. Crystal also has a knack for face painting and occasionally lends her hidden talent to various non-profit events. Currently, Crystal is working on developing more artwork inspired by her resiliency as a trauma survivor to be published alongside her poetry and prose in her book, titled, “Survivor’s Song.”
One of Crystal’s proudest accomplishments was graduating from Cypress College with Honors, a 4.0 GPA, and two A.A. Degrees in Arts & Humanities as well as Social & Behavioral Sciences before transferring to Cal State University Long Beach in 2015, where she went to school for Human Development, before having to leave school during the Spring semester of 2018 when she experienced a traumatic sexual assault as well as the resulting physical and emotional wounds that she endured at that time. Later that year she would go on to shatter her knee cap and be raped by a domestically abusive ex, for which she sought and obtained a 5 year restraining order, then, then testified to the D.A. who failed to pick up the case and obtain the rapist’s court recorded confession. For many years following that injustice, she struggled with severe health ailments, including acute kidney failure, dialysis, congestive heart failure, transient ischemic attacks, an eventual stroke, a blood clotting disorder, and much more. She is now off dialysis and chemotherapy, is managing her blood clotting disorder and heart failure with medications, feeling better overall, and she plans on going back to college for her pre-art therapy bachelor’s degree online at Lindenwood University where she has a good standing acceptance that she was promised that can go back to at anytime she’d like. She fully intends to leave a legacy of love and healing behind on Earth, finishing strong someday by leaving her foundation of CityHeART’s HeART of Survival Program in CityHeART’s capable hands to continue healing trauma survivors long past the span of her lifetime, for she believes the measure of a life is not found in the number of days, nor worldly success nor riches, it is measured in the greatest amount of a loving, lasting legacy one chooses to create.
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