These poems represent my emotional journey that began with the loss of my parents. After I had processed some of my grief from the deaths of my father in 2006 and my mother in 2014, my feelings flooded onto paper in these poems. I have found great transformational catharsis in pouring my emotions into these writings.

 

    The poems tell a mystical, lyrical story about my experiences. It follows in a line from start to finish, culminating in an uplifting conclusion that I hope will bring peace and nourishment to your soul in your bereavement.

 

    The message of the book tells us not to get trapped in the past, but persist in moving forward into the future on our life’s journey. In the early years of my grief, I found that I wanted to suspend time, stop it, return to my childhood and renew the beauty of the earlier seasons of my life as they were, but I was unable to. During my grief I didn’t want anything to ever change, for all to remain the same. But change comes regardless, relentlessly, and can’t be resisted. Eventually it leads to evolution and new life, a positive thing.

 

    These poems reflect my belief that no one ever really dies. The physical flesh we inhabit is temporal. We are not our bodies, we are souls that inhabit a body for only a short time. Our souls, not temporal but eternal, survive independently of our bodies. I also believe that we have many rebirths. We have rebirths during our physical lifetime here on earth, where a new life is always possible for us if we can let go of the past and accept change. We have rebirths in metaphysical terms, in our soul’s eternal life where we still continue to learn and grow even on the other side, moving ever closer to perfection.

 

    I am bringing my poems to you, my readers, in the desire that these heartfelt works may help those of you who, like myself, are grieving, and traveling on your own journey through love and loss. I hope that you will find some comfort here. Perhaps these poems will cause you to contemplate your own lives and experiences and think about them in a deeper or different way.

 

    We will all experience loss in our lives if we live long enough. It’s not about whether it hurts, because it always does. It’s what we do with that pain that makes a life worthy of living.

 

                                                                                 Sharon Arthur