I was extremely close with my mother and my grandmothers, we shared our lives - fully, honestly - and it was heightened as each succumbed to cancer. Little was hidden between us. No time. And what was hidden, turned inward. I made a vow to speak. Speak or die.

I am not so interested in religion or dogma of any kind. It is too restrictive for me, too organizational, too hierarchical, and too tied up in power and being right. You call it a "rabid evangelism."

A shadow is never created in darkness. It is born of light. We can be blind to it and blinded by it. Our shadow asks us to look at what we don’t want to see

If so, then it was also here where I came to know I can survive what hurts. I believed in my capacity to stand back up and run into the waves again and again, no matter the risk.

I appreciate all of the unexpected places, internal and external, that my writing has taken me.

Through revision, I enter the realm of the unspeakable and find the words that have eluded me.

Our kinship with Earth must be maintained; otherwise, we will find ourselves trapped in the center of our own paved-over souls with no way out.