After over 25 years of working with people, and attempting to help them, as a psychotherapist, trainer, and teacher, I have not only walked through the joys and struggles of my own life experiences, and those of family and friends, but I have had the benefits and privilege of learning and living vicariously, while listening to untold hours with literally thousands of clients during their own struggling and searching. I have been encouraged by and privileged to watch the healing, growth, and transcendence from life's struggles of thousands of people, and I have felt pain and sadness in witnessing the deterioration, resistance and self-destruction of countless others. I have come to believe that the primary determining factor of whether one experiences transcendence or deterioration is a determined willingness to go through the struggles, and to develop an attitude: "...that looks courageously into the eye of the storm, and says assuredly: 'You will not break me...'"

These poems are captured moments of my own experiences, and reflections on the journeys of others, as we have separately and together enjoyed the sunrises and sunsets, while sometimes weathering the storms in between. May these poems help you better understand yourself and your fellow travelers, and no matter how difficult or deep your own abyss of darkness, may you always find Hope

THE RHYTHM OF LIFE

Today could not have been
Without yesterday's haunting wind,
Blowing by and changing my life,
Stirring up realities and other sundry strife.

The happenings of this hour
Would rightfully have no power,
Without the joys and pains of past,
Shaping and creating me at last.

Had even one conversation been altered,
Or one person or event faltered,
This moment in which I now breathe
Would not now be, as is, conceived.

There is a Great Choreographer, somewhere,
someplace,
Who orchestrates my moves and your every pace,
Matching our steps in infinite, perfect time;
Then, this dance, once confusing starts to rhyme...