Grandmother never called it therapy

This poem reflects on the therapeutic power of storytelling, metaphor, food, silence, and intergenerational care within everyday family life. Centered on the figure of a grandmother, the poem suggests that healing does not always occur in formal clinical spaces or through explicit therapeutic language. Instead, it may emerge through acts of listening, shared meals, remembered proverbs, prayers, songs, and stories that allow pain to be held without being forced into explanation. The poem engages with themes central to poetry therapy, including narrative healing, symbolic communication, bibliotherapy, and the use of language as a gentle medium for emotional repair. By foregrounding a culturally grounded and domestic form of care, the poem also invites reflection on non-Western and community-based understandings of therapy. It positions the grandmother not as a trained therapist, but as a keeper of relational wisdom whose language creates safety, restores dignity, and helps the wounded self return to speech.