Poetry 'part of healing process' for local woman

Debra Walker writes from the heart to deal with her Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The Poplar Bluff woman didn’t plan to compose a book of poetry. She never dreamed her work would be published, but the book, “If Not Me, Then Who,” is scheduled for release in April.

The 43-year-old wife, mother and grandmother explained, “I had a very, very hard childhood. A lot comes out in my poetry.”

At the suggestion of her counselor at the Family Counseling Center, Walker sought other women who are dealing with the same issues.

Walker

“I found a group on Facebook,” she said. The group has more than 6,000 members.

When Walker shared some of her poems, one person asked “do you have more of your work?” Walker didn’t realize the Facebook friend was an editor, who would ask her to submitt a collection of poems about feelings. Her poems were about the emotions she “had to deal with all my life. I have struggled for a long time and you can see it in my writing.

“This is a part of the healing,” she added.

Walker was molested the first time when she was 3 years old and she was 16 the last time she was raped.

“In my family it is not talked about,” she said adding, she believes some think “it is OK for this to happen to little girls.”

One of five children, Walker struggled with molestations, rapes, the alleged “kidnapping of two younger sisters” by a family member and the death of a stepfather whose body was found in a creek.

She was notified of his death while she was in school, which Walker said, “School was my safe haven. At school I worked my --- off. I was going to make sure I graduated and go beyond.”

School also was a place to eat until she became anorexic at 15.

“Food was the one thing in my life I could control,” she said.

When Walker graduated from Doniphan High School in 1993, she was married and expecting a child.

Walker worked after high school, but she wanted to go to college. Her social anxiety prevented her from doing many things. Anxiety became disabling, Walker said, glancing around her living room, “this is my safe place. What happens here I allow to happen.”

Calling herself “a home body,” Walker said, “I stay at home a lot. I do a lot of crafts, sew, woodworking, paint, write poems and cook, just to feel normal.”

As an adult, Walker confronted adults who she felt should have helped prevent problems in her youth. Their response was there was “nothing I could do about it.”

She and her husband Eric have been together 25 years and will be married 22 years in April. She has two sons, Cody and Michael; a grandson, Carter; and two granddaughters, Debbie and Tiffany.

“I taught my children, be honest with your feelings. I tell them the way I feel and to deal with what you get and take it from there,” she said.

When others read her story and her poetry, Walker said, ”I don’t want people to feel sorry for me.”

She wants them to “know there is a lot more to a person than what you see on the outside. I want them to walk away with understanding, a sense of self worth and self reflection. As long as you can put one foot in front of others that is all that counts. Just because your past is still with you, doesn’t mean you have to live it every day.”

A poem in the book, shares her grief of losing a close friend, Cheryl Hancock, in November. While another poem is the inspiration for the book’s cover. Growing up in Ripley County, she developed a love for the free flowing Current River.

“It was my outlet. I could go and set for five minutes or five hours and it would wash away my anxiety and I was peaceful,” she said.

Walker said of her book, “I never dreamed any of this would have ever happen.”

When it is printed, it may be purchased as an e-book or as a print edition anywhere books are sold.