On Movement: A Becoming

By Dr. Patty Gently on September 26, 2024

Bright Insight Support Network founder and president Dr. Patty Gently (Formerly Williams) is a trauma therapist and coach who specializes in EMDR, ND-Affirmative DBT, and IFS modalities. Through Bright Insight she works to counsel, coach, and advocate for gifted, twice-exceptional, and neurodivergent persons, along with other marginalized populations.

I am doing A LOT of self-reflection. I suppose I always am. I am also reading Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead- a prolific offering. I read it first in High School (a million moons ago) and was moved to write poetry then. The entire book reads like poetry, so being impelled as such makes sense.

I share below an autobiographical poem, inspired by the beauty of everything Rand ever created, particularly those first momentous lines of The Fountainhead.

Enjoy if you might.

On Movement: A Becoming

She stood at the edge of an open glade.

The wind breathed through the trees, bending the grass at her feet,

its roots hidden beneath the earth, anchored in silence.

The sun poured over the hills, turning the sky into molten gold,

and the mountains stood behind her like sentinels, still and waiting.

Her eyes scanned the horizon, where earth met sky,

where nothing was lost, only transformed, growing.

She felt the weight of years on her shoulders—

a lifetime of understanding, of pain and healing,

and the quiet wisdom she carried, like stones smoothed by time and rushing water.

Her body, rooted like the earth,

was shaped by moments of reflection, of knowing and unknowing,

as she stood within the flow of life’s currents,

meeting them not to control—

To witness.

She stood, her hands over her heart,

the air filled with the steady hum of existence.

The land before her was raw, open to possibility,

like the souls of those she encountered—

each with its own path, its own rhythm, whole unto itself.

She thought of her work,

of walking in step with others as they unfurled,

offering space for recognition, a breath of connection.

These minds, she knew, existed not for her,

but for themselves, rich and vast,

each a world unfolding,

not to be shaped, but to be seen.

Her laughter came gently,

not from certainty but from awe—

a sound that rose like the wind through leaves,

as she looked at the ground beneath her feet

and knew her place within it.

She was part of the silence, the stillness,

a presence in the vastness of what already is.

And she would be the one to break the silence,

to stir the stillness,

to craft new life from the bones of the past.

The earth was hers to mold,

and she, the force that would move it,

Lest she stop.