Facing Into the Wind

Facing Into The Wind: A Mothers Healing After The Death Of Her Child is a collection of poems written for parents and families who are coping with the terminal illness of a child. The poems are written about Elizabeth a 14-year-old child who battles a rare form of bone cancer and her mother Faith who struggles to survive after her daughters death. Drawing upon metaphors with the natural world Faith remembers the transcending wisdom imparted by her dying daughter healing Faiths brokenness and awakening her strength to reach out and comfort others who are suffering. Facing Into The Wind is about the alienation of being in a hospital where the doctors speak a language that Faith does not understand and the fear she feels following each new devastating diagnosis. Faith writes about Elizabeths exhaustion after 12 months of medical treatments and how Elizabeth slowly loses her connection to this world. Struggling in an abyss of loss Faith realizes that her ability to survive depends on her ability to find moments and places of comfort and peace to release her lost dreams and to develop new understandings from the lessons of loss and suffering. Facing Into The Wind poetically reflects a devastated mothers slow transformation as she begins to recognize the eternal rhythms of the natural world and connects to the new world around her. Facing Into The Wind will offer the readers the solid presence of a parent who has endured similar pain yet has survived; someone who knows that loss is a profound teacher about the preciousness of living.