​​Some things just take a long time to come. They percolate, ruminate and hesitate for so many reasons. I am so happy that the next book you will see my name associated with is one that I believe will help so many people.  Concussion and Mild Bain Injury: Not Just Another Headline has been in the works for a very long time. A book comprised of 19 people's stories, you can get more details at our publishers site. www.lapublishing.com/concussion-mild-brain-injury-survivors/

Well I really do believe that I have run out of words this morning. For a writer it seems like the worst possible thing and yet for now it seems ok. Maybe it is just one of those times when I am living between creative spaces, when I am functioning in the realm of being rather than doing. Recently I was asked to submit to The Cherry Muse, an on-line journal, so I know my words are still around. I have started to send them out again after a long hiatus of hoarding them to myself. I also wrote three poems this week for the event Wordwhips at the JCC last Tuesday. I really liked two of the three.  Llife is filled with small successes, provocative discussions and some fun. Tomorrow maybe something entirely different.

I have been thinking a lot about distance lately. The distance it is to the moon and how much energy humankind has put into getting there. The distance from a tree’s roots to the tops of the newest growth as it stretches towards the sun. How far the nutrients have to travel to reach the tips of branches flung out in a blue sky. The distance between ourselves and family or friends who live other places and the different ways we try to fill the gap. We use phone calls, plane rides, and email. The distance we put between ourselves and someone we love; a lover, a parent, a friend. We have fights, we have desires and we need to be understood. The distance our children create as they grow older and the manner in which we try to keep our love wrapped around them while still giving them space. The distance we sometimes put between the outside world and ourselves when we are having bad days. The distance we have with our past and how it can weave itself through our bloodlines and into our bones. Mostly however, it’s the distance we put between our feelings and ourselves when we want to escape something we don’t want to feel. The lengths we will go to create that distance (from here to the moon). How long it takes to bring ourselves face to face, to close that distance, to let ourselves feel whatever it is we are avoiding (a full tree length or an entire country) and find our voice.  
For me when I can feel these things creeping up from below my belly, into my chest, into my throat and out of my mouth, I throw myself into work, take long walks and make my days as busy as a person can possibly be. I have gotten really good at running and putting a moon between my feelings and myself. When I finally stop, having simply run out of steam or devices which afford me the ability to keep all memories and knowing at bay, I collapse into tears. The tears, as much as I fight them, release the pent up emotion I have not wanted to face. They allow me to actually confront what is really at the crux of all this. The focus that has been in shadow is the discovery of that small child who was never loved, never held, never given voice, of letting her come out into the light and be. When I sit down to write it all comes out and I am moved further along my path.

Asiide from feeling, I find that writing is effective for closing the distance between my inner self and my outer self.

Poetry is the place I go in the world to sleep in beauty, to be moved through suffering, to have my breath taken away over and over again. Trying to shed the skin which I have carried unconsciously all my life, of that which runs through my marrow, has not been easy. In trying to resolve the conflicts of my inner and outer worlds, trying to understand that there is a place inside myself that is wholly mine, that I need not fear, has been one of the greatest challenges I have ever faced. Through my poetry I am able to make meaning of those stories of my life; meaning which sometimes I cannot find elsewhere.

Poetry allows me to move through these memories, to remember and to let go. It is in the act of creating that we are best able to release. It is this epiphany, this moment, when I have planted the seed, seen it take root that I know something significant has changed for me. I am excited. The language of poetry allows me to believe.

Writing to me is a necessity; there is no getting around it. There have been times when writing has brought tears and other times when I have been stunned into silence by the recognition of something that I had never noticed before.

My words open doors and close distances. Individuals thrive after some of the most devastating events. Earthquakes, wars, genocide. Where is the beauty in any of these things? It is in our ability to survive. It is in our hearts as we open up once again to others and let them find space by which to touch us.  It is in our faces as we search the sky for a shooting star in the blackest of nights. It is in the strength of our hands as we grab hold of something as our world rocks underneath us. Finally, it is in our words, as we close the distance between the outside world, and ourselves, giving voice to things which need telling.

It is in the stories we share and the poetry we create. We bring beauty back into a world sometimes without realizing, sometimes with purpose, opening opportunities for love, hope and shifting in a world that often needs to find these hidden gifts once again

I co-founded Pandora’s Collective, a charitable organization in the literary arts. What began, nearly ten years ago, as a small writing group sitting around my kitchen table every week, has evolved into a whole gamut of weekly, monthly and yearly events which reaches many hundreds of people. We feature  poetry contests for all ages  with entries coming from as far away as Italy and Egypt. We award a scholarship each summer to enable a teen to attend the Vancouver Public Library’s Summer Book Camp. With Pandora’s Collective, I have facilitated workshops in alcohol and drug rehabilitation centers as well as at Covenant House, The Gathering Place, and throughout the Lower Mainland in schools.

Part of Pandora’s mandate, from the beginning, was to provide a safe space for all writers to be heard. This has personal importance to me, as I understand the need to be heard. I will strive as long as we are doing this, to keep Pandora’s an inclusive place for all writers, where they can find community, where their words are taken seriously and they are able to continue to find their voice.

I started The Summer Dreams Literary Arts Festival because I thought it was important to bring the writing community together to showcase what it is we do on an on-going basis to the public. The festival has grown into a multi-day event now in its 10th year. It is comprised of 27 literary groups with over 100 performers.

I’m still doing all of this because it is my passion. Pandora’s for me is community. It is the people who email me to say that they feel connected because of my e-newsletter. It is the girl who stopped me on the street a few Christmas’s ago to tell me that she had done our workshop in a drug rehab centre and was still straight and still writing. It is all the volunteers who come out year after year to keep the festival running. It is the poets; established, emerging and beginners, who grace our stage at Twisted Poets open mic, or who read their poems at the end of Word Whips Writing Series or who give their thoughts at the drop of a hat at Book Talks Book Club. They are what keep this whole thing alive. Some days, when I am tired, I wonder why I continue. The answer when I really take the time to think about it is very clear. It is because of this great community, with all its positives and negatives, of which I have become a part. I am so thankful for this.
It is through my own stories that I remember I am still alive and I do have a voice. Unaware that it was always there, this voice has remained alive in my bones even in the darkest of nights. It is in the transformative power of words, my poetry, where I find solace, hope and some form of truth. For as the images bounce between the spaces of these pages my heart is released.