A MEDITATION ON IDENTITY, CULTURE, AND HEALING IN CHILDREN SEPARATED FROM ORIGINAL FAMILY Millions of our world's children are forced through the curtain of separation from original family. Among the numerous causes are poverty, abuse, neglect, natural disaster, epidemic, immigration, incarceration, addiction, war, genocide, oppression, and child labor. While each experience is its own, all such separations cleave the child heart and mind into a common root wound of vacancy and drift. In the face of such woundedness, our children have the power for healing and growth waiting within them. Every aspect of their lives is affected by an often solitary quest for beauty and belonging. We who raise and serve these displaced young, through our embrace, are a vital factor in their ultimate healing. Jaiya John has shared time with thousands of uprooted children through his human relations work. Reflection Pond offers us his personal meditation, a looking glass for what these youth have whispered into his spirit. They have shared their need for reflection ponds: people, places, and experiences through which their own beauty and purpose are reflected back to them. Through allegory and parable, poetry and prose, Jaiya John draws from the natural world around us to unveil the magical inner life of children and youth. Here is a revelatory positioning of the human mirror. In its face we glimpse magnificence.

The many fictional voices of displaced children in Beautiful are inspired by youth Jaiya John has worked with over a lifetime. This second edition contains 8 NEW POEMS. Beautiful is much more than a source of inspiration. Its words reveal the majesty and vulnerability of all children. Beautiful is an empowerment anthem for youth, a resource for those who love, care for, and work with these purposeful souls. Child light shines through these pages, asserting the demand of our young for their dignity, while portraying their limitless power to heal, grow, and flourish. A poetic companion to Jaiya John's Reflection Pond, Beautiful is the kind of treasure we polish repeatedly, its truth seeping into our compassion. Struggle and triumph. Solitude and belonging. A journey of sunflowers toward the sun of selfhood. In these pages we find Beauty born.

LEGENDARY is Jaiya John's celebration of teachers, social service professionals, advocates, caregivers, counselors, mentors, and the like. Those compassionate souls who honorably serve youth devalued by society due to material poverty, heritage, language, family separation; or challenges with learning, behavior, mental health, or physical ability. Here are poetic stories to awaken your spirit, massage your heart, and remind you of the reasons you do this work. Your service touches lives, and miracles are born. Your grace endures forever. Are you experiencing COMPASSION FATIGUE, VICARIOUS TRAUMA, BURNOUT, DISILLUSIONMENT, DOUBT, LACK OF APPRECIATION AND SUPPORT, LOST DIRECTION, FEAR, EMPTINESS? You deserve relief. LEGENDARY is well water drawn from the very soul of your compassionate endeavor, offered back to you in your own yearning voice. Come here and drink to your replenishment. Regain your spark of purpose. Word by word, renew your wholeness, your humanity, and your vital health. Take a dose daily. Soon, you will be breathing freely again, like the first time you answered your sacred calling.

July 15, 1968. It is only three months following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the nation is burning. Black and White America are locked in the tense grip of massive change. Into this inferno steps an unsuspecting young White couple. Neither had truly known even a single African American person while growing up. Now, a child will change all of that forever. In this fateful moment, a Black baby becomes perhaps the first in the history of New Mexico to be adopted by a White family. Here is a brazenly honest glimpse into the mind and heart of that child, a true story for the ages that flows like a soulful river-separated from his mother at birth, placed into foster care, adopted, and finally reunited with his biological family in adulthood-an astounding journey of personal discovery. Jaiya John has opened the floodgates on his own childhood with this piercing memoir. Black Baby White Hands, a waterfall of jazz splashing over the rocks of love, pain and the honoring of family. Magically, this book finds a way to sing as it cries, and to exude compassion even as it dispels well-entrenched myths. Destined to become a classic, this stirring account is sure to find itself well worn, stained by tears, and brushed by laughter in the lap of parents, adolescents, educators, students, and professionals. Here comes the rain and the sunshine, all at once.