Kaila Shabat

People talk about coming out of the closet, but I literally emerged from a pill box to write my books.  In deep despair, with a daily regimen of a dozen pills to combat psychiatric, psychosomatic and age-related conditions, a glimmer of insight led to my first poem, “The Pill Box.”  I realized that the drugs were suppressing my poetry and the natural rhythm of my daily life.

Women performing domestic tasks seemed to have the energetic rhythm of a healthy mind that looks positively to the chores ahead, whereas I was always full of dread. When I dispensed with the pill box and replaced it with poetry,  healthy nutrition and daily sport, I finally found my rhythm in the juxtaposition of domestic activity and creative endeavour.  For me, the one generates energy for the other. Finally, in my sixties, I reclaimed glowing health, joy and clarity and published four books of poetry. With my memoir,  ‘I Missed the Spring,’ I am finally telling the story I have always wanted to share.

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I was born in London in 1947 into an artistic family.  My father was a violinist, my paternal grandfather an artist, my paternal grandmother a poet and my maternal grandmother an opera singer. For many years, due to my mood disorder, I had no interest in music, though it was a part of my early years.  Recently, I have begun to sing and to play the harp. Enjoying a talent for languages, one of my great joys is translating my poems into other tongues.

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 In 1967, as a volunteer, I came to Israel where I met my husband.  It took us many years to realise that separation from my parents at an early age, was at the root of my mental illness, a situation which was perpetuated by my settling, far from them in another country. 

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 I have been to the other side, peered into the pit of insanity and seen the vacant eyes staring out of the inferno of the mind. I have plumbed the abyss of despair then scaled grassy heights and, for a few precious moments, held the key to the universe.