In a high school English class, I remember studying different types of poetry, but the only one that captured my imagination was Edgar Allen Poe, and his creepy poem “The Raven.” It was many years later before I encountered poetry again. While doing a three-year apprenticeship to become a Vision Quest guide, my teacher would often hand out lines of poems to highlight and deepen the experiences we were having out in nature. One of the students read “Sleeping in the Forest” by Mary Oliver while we were camping in the White Mountains. That poem drilled right down to my soul, and soon I began writing my own simple poems. I took a few local poetry writing classes. Then in the winter of 2001, I enrolled in an adult evening college course on Creative Writing. But right in the middle of the semester, my mother became ill. As she became sicker and sicker, I wrote to help process the experiences. When she died, poetry became a life raft I could cling to in the midst of my emotional maelstrom: I experienced first-hand the healing effects of writing in general, and poetry in particular.

Poetry, for me, became not only an art form, but something I could use to help others in my work as a nurse and wellness practitioner. I extensively studied narrative medicine, journaling, poetic medicine, bibliotherapy, and the benefits that writing can have on health. As the years went on, I wrote more and more poems about my experiences as a nurse, then decided to create a full-length poetry collection to open a window into that world.

I truly believe in the profound healing capacity of poetry, of speaking truth, of creating amazing art with the written word. So…here’s to health, world peace and beautiful heart-to-heart communion through poetry!

My poetry appears or is forthcoming in Rattle, The Healing Muse, Marin Poetry Anthology, California Quarterly, Ars Medica, Pulse, American Journal of Nursing, and Nursing2023, among other journals and anthologies.I am a founding member of two writing groups: a poetry critique group which continues to meet monthly after twenty years, and a group focusing on study, writing and critique, that still meets weekly after more than five years. I am also a co-host for the monthly poetry reading series, Rivertown Poets. My first full-length collection of medical narrative poetry based primarily on her nursing career, entitled “Standing in Their Fire,” will be published by Kelsay Books, summer of 2025.