If all four of us as siblings told my dad to go to therapy,
not just one of us, he’d actually do it.
It took all four of us as siblings to tell my mom of her husband’s abuse,
not just three of us, for her to leave him.
Each time my parents said, Let go and let God,
it was an act of spiritual bypassing, according to my therapist.
My brother once told me God is his therapist.
I told him God was the one who told me to go to therapy.
The whole “Let go and let God”
phrase, and others like it,
is a tool to repress feelings rather than express them, I told him.
Sometimes, it is a tool used for abuse.
My stepmother doesn’t know she uses her words to abuse.
Pyschobabble is how she described the advice of my therapist.
My dad, she thought I only needed therapy to process boundaries with him,
not her too. She liked it better when me going to therapy
had nothing to do with her. My sister has been going to it;
using it to her advantage while reclaiming Let go and let God.
The phrase Let go and let God
is not the only way of spiritual bypassing. Substance abuse,
grinding under capitalism, plethora of ways to do it.
Spiritual growth is a goal my therapist
wants me to add, which makes me nervous in therapy.
Which means it probably needs to be done, according to him.
According to him,
I need to continue unpacking my family’s Let go and let God
mantra. It’d be different if my family couldn’t afford therapy,
but the majority of them can. Abuse
is what the majority of them don’t want to talk to a therapist
about. It’s also what they don’t want to call it.
My brother urges, I don’t think all of it
was like that, and I agree with him.
He refuses to go to a therapist.
Maya Williams (ey/they/she) is a religious Black multiracial nonbinary suicide survivor who was selected as Portland, ME’s seventh poet laureate for a July 2021 to July 2024 term. Eir debut full length poetry collection Judas & Suicide (Game Over Books, 2023) was selected as a finalist for a New England Book Award. Their second full length poetry collection, Refused a Second Date (Harbor Editions, 2023), was selected as a finalist for a Maine Literary Award. They won two chapbook prizes: What’s So Wrong with a Pity Party Anyway? won Garden Party Collective’s chapbook prize in 2024 and Feminine Morbidity won The Headlight Review’s Chapbook prize judged by Olatunde Osinaike in 2025. You can follow more of Maya’s work at mayawilliamspoet.com