I mindfully chose the title of the poem so it would always be associated with a project bearing the same name inspired by the artist Deirdre Kashdan, called The Missing Project  www.themissingproject.co.uk  I wrote this poem two years ago but then lost it. I knew it was somewhere inside my computer but couldn’t find it.

However, in that time, the project has grown exponentially and now connects and empowers over 320 women across the UK, women whose lives are affected by the enduring mental illness of someone they love. Deirdre reflected on her own experience and recognised something, that these women were likely to feel and be treated as if they were invisible, ‘missing’ in full view. She also knew that every one of them would have a story inside them, a story searching for a voice so they could tell. So, she set out to find them, with careful listening, she would help them find that voice. Whether art, poetry, music, audio/visual or singing is your thing . . . now we’re not missing anymore! 

Well, as the late, great storyteller Maya Angelou once said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” As a poet of course I absolutely know this. So back to my lost poem. Imagine my surprise when serendipitously it reappeared with a day to spare, just in time for me to read and share it at a Missing event called Bearing Witness. I was grateful for another opportunity to gather and heal in a safe space, to see, hear, to be witnessed & bear witness, alongside other brave women, who now had their own stories to tell. Nothing quite like a shared experience, a shared reality so personal, so intimate and so profound. A privilege to finally get to read my poem out loud and time to acknowledge just how lost I was and so very glad to know that now I’m found.

Mabel J Williams