Brroken Heearts Cats as sentient beings keep the memories of traumatic events that happened to them. They are impacted by bad domestic situations, abusive environments and neglect. Veterinarians and Animal Behaviour Experts proved that animals can suffer from post-traumatic stress, trauma-driven fear and anxiety. Traumatized cats often try to escape when they are frightened or become aggressive when they are interacted with or forced to do something. They can show different behaviours such as hide, freeze, shaking or jumping up. Despite the pieces of evidence of emotional trauma in cats, researches are lacking in that field because of the language barrier. Like Dr Frank McMillan, a research veterinarian and director of wellbeing studies at Best Friends Animal Society of Kanab, Utah, says: ‘‘The animal can't tell us what happened to him earlier in life and whether his fears now come from a traumatic experience or something else.’’ Amanda Lovelace, poet by day and cat lover by night, believes in women independence and shares it with her series of three collections of poems titled Women are some kind of Magic. The most well-known collection of poems “The Princess Saves Herself in this One” published February 14th, 2016. She declares in an interview by Bustle, ‘‘if there is one thing I'm trying to do with this particular poetry series, it's to show the richer inner lives of women with a focus on our hidden everyday struggles.’’ The winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for ‘Best Poetry’ is a poetry collection composed of four sections: the princess, the damsel, the queen and you. The three first sections are an exposé of the author's life and struggles. The last section, ‘You’ is written like a note from the poet to the reader. With the use of recognized female archetypes, Amanda Lovelace retells the narrative of these different women seen in fairy tales and princess in danger story in a modern, feminist and empowered way. In ‘The Princess Saves Herself in this One’, Amanda Lovelace tackles various subjects such as love, loss, grief, healing, empowerment and inspiration. The first collection’s narrative follows a princess who is learning to become her own saviour, focuses on the resilience of women in the patriarchal society often abusive towards women. The four sections are showing the princess's progression in agreement with an overlying theme which the growth of a woman. The part called ‘Princess’ focuses on the author and her battles in the past, her relationship with her family members, her childhood. It tackles the abuses committed by her mother. In the poem ‘You may be gone, but I still have a stomach-ache’, she gives a definition of abuse based upon her own experience, ‘‘That is what abuse is: knowing you are going to get salt but still hoping for sugar for nineteen years.’’ It ends with the princess locking herself in a tower and waits for a ‘knight in shining armor’ to come and rescue her. It is followed by the ‘Damsel’. The Princess confronts the issues that have come in her life. They are represented in the idea of the 'Big Bad Wolf' which the man who she thought was a prince but transformed into a monster, symbolizing an abusive relationship. They are also characterized by dragons, like in fairy tales, who terrified her as well, they are people, more particularly men with “half-truths” that pretend to care and love when they used and added more to her list of trauma. Furthermore, she comes back to her childhood and the abuses that her mother, who just passed away at the moment of the narrative after the oldest sister killed herself, committed on her and her sisters. The mother’s death raises sadness and anger: because of the trauma and abuse, the author wonders who she would have been without her mother. Moreover, death takes away the possibility of having a do-over, having the mother she deserved and will never have. After the pain and the tears, it is a moment of reflexion that rises with the poem “She never needed those wings”. The princess jumped from the tower & she learned that she could fly all along. ‘The Queen’ is the part of the acceptance, of self-love and worth. It is the realisation that after everything that happened and her survival, the author can survive anything. She is the Queen, powerful and in control of her life and destiny in “How’s that for a happily ever after?” Once upon a time, the princess rose from the ashes her dragon lovers made of her & crowned herself the motherfucking queen of herself. Finally, in ‘You’, Amanda Lovelace takes the time to speak to her readers, ‘‘I will take the blood-tipped thorns they stuck in you & from them I will teach you how to weave together the crown deserves’’ She exposes the abuses she has faced in a really vulnerable way, to a point that it can be almost uncomfortable for the people reading. She encourages the reader to be vulnerable, true to themselves. She highlights that they can deal with anything as long as they believe in themselves and their strength. The title of the series is not chosen for anything: women are, truly, some kind of magic. To sum up, for this Valentines ‘day, be your true, best, most confident self, confront the world with strength and greatness like Amanda Lovelace. And since cats are better than most people, get yourself a furry companion. When treated right, it will be your most loyal friend. Composed by, Cécile Fardoux, Undergraduate of English Literature and Creative Writing
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