Tonight I am editing my free verse poems, admiring those who write in forms. I have, hopefully, one more set of comments to go through before I am finished with SEVEN.

My grandmother passed away May 8th and I went to Texas for the funeral. This poem makes me reflect on death, to go peacefully raging seems apt. My adoptive step-father died very, very afraid. Well deserved I say. We create our own heaven or hell. Trauma blinds one to their own behaviors and fears I think. We press forward growing and learning to have compassion for ourselves. It's a difficult journey. I am mourning the many years I lived in a fog, forgetting trauma, repressing trauma, and having it come out in all the wrong ways, unknown to my self, but probably clearly seen by others. We do indeed fight our demons. And what is the purpose if any of trauma? We mourn the loss of innocence, the wounded ego fighting to learn its way to acceptance and self-compassion.

My family is radically religious, so wounded in their own traumas, it seems religion soothes their souls, which is a good thing, yet it can be an overzealous means of covering up trauma, ignoring it, seeing the world in black and white, good and evil. Yet, evil exists. Not sure how I feel about Pema Chodron's philosophy that we do away with good and evil tonight. It does seem good to move away from black and white thinking and judgment, yet the problem of evil exists. Perhaps evil is born of such wounds, and it is our choice to become a perpetrator or not. Yet, when I was living in Lethe, forgetting what had happened to me, I was so not my self, so separated from loving myself, it was difficult to love others. We fight our past, yet must move on past it. It is good to mourn though the things we've lost. Maybe then we can feel strong, find the strengths and values and creativity that our wounds helped create. I am writing these things for myself?

I am lucky that when my adoptive step-father died, I remembered. I remembered with glaring clarity, unsure where the images were coming from initially. Perhaps I need to write some prose about it as the poetry took a lot out of me.

In any case, I am still editing SEVEN and a little burned out with it as I've tinkered with it for so many years. I very much admire people who can churn out books, but apparently that wasn't my destiny for these collections.