“Them’s the facts, ma’am; however…”

I was torn about publishing this particular post, until a certain little voice said, “What are you afraid of? Go ahead, keep it to yourself if you like, but remember, you can’t help anyone else unless you let an open, loving heart prevail a little over that closed, fearful mind…”

Sonnet on Time

They’ve come and gone again, these endless Ides*
That ebb and flow relentlessly as tides!
Thank God they’ve lapped again upon my shore,
Each crash of waves unlike the ones before.

Expressive Arts Therapy: “Body Project”

(…continued from My Introduction to Expressive Arts Therapy).

There we were, six of us chemo-balded ladies, hung all in a row, faceless and pale, with our backs flat against the wall, waiting for colour. How had it ever come to this?

My Introduction to “Expressive Arts Therapy”

This post has been simmering for a long time… Heartfelt thanks to blogger Maria Holm of Health from One Heart to Another for encouraging me to write a post about my experience with this therapy, as a patient, and for her patience in finally getting this response. Maria was a public health care practitioner; she has a big heart for people, loves the arts, travel, and has many other interests too, as you’ll see from her blog.

I hope this post will encourage you to embrace creative activities as natural and essential to your daily life!

What is “Expressive Arts Therapy” anyway? By definition, all the arts are expressive, but what makes them “therapy”?

Why Try to Describe Nature?

I love walking around in nature– out in the open or in gardens– breathing fresh air. Well, I mean I love it when there are no mosquitoes, and when it’s not too hot, too humid, or too cold! Under those circumstances, I still love viewing beautiful scenery through a window or from behind a mosquito screen, or barring that, vicariously through poetry, prose, photography, or art.

The Solitary Tree. “Caspar David Friedrich – Der einsame Baum – Google Art Project” by Caspar David Friedrich – VgEo9JDzFjfGGg at Google Cultural Institute. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons –

It would be easy to leave it at that, but then

Red is for November

Tree of Life (Austrian cross-stitch folk-art)

It has been one of those “roller-coaster” months for me, seeming a whole lifetime of profound events crammed into thirty days. It’s been a time of grieving, remembering, rejoicing, recoiling, rethinking, refreshing, repenting, reaffirming.
Here are some of my thoughts.

My November calendar has scarlet outlines, squares marking the life-blood throbbing and oozing through our decades–beginnings and transitions, overlapping marked time with eternity:

Mindset – Reflections En Route is published!

Introducing Mindset – Reflections En Route  – a book of poetry with photographic images:

A personal path travelled: enjoying nature’s beauty in four seasons with reflections on life, treading through dark ravines of adversity (including my personal experience of breast cancer), finally coming to a place of profound Light. 

The positive mindset of hope, patience, and joy underlying all situations emanates from reliance on and thankfulness to God.

The variety of traditional structure, free form, haiku, and tanka poems together form a cohesive “story line” enriched by the skillful blend of images.

Dear friends, the winter was long, the publishing learning curve steep (pretty much straight up),