Introduction

These poems are all very personal, many having been written while events were occurring, others in retrospect. The order of their arrangement, rather than the time they were actually written, chronicles the life of a child abuse survivor.

A few people have been disturbed by the content of some of my poetry. But then, child abuse is a disturbing issue. For me, writing them was therapeutic, as was their editing. I also want to point out that the situations described in many of my poems are not as disturbing for me to remember, or to talk about, as they are for others to learn about. For me, that's just how life was. Also, my childhood (as is the case for many battered and abused children) was not always at its lowest point. There were happy times throughout, like little sunsprinkles in a redwood forest, that gave temporary solace. Since it was a very sheltered life as well, there was no point of comparison for me. For that reason I was not aware, during those growing up years, that those years were as distressing as they are in retrospect.

A few years ago, as I was recovering from spinal surgeries, I met Dr. Marilyn Hahn at a Pain Clinic. She inspired me to write again and encouraged me to (actually insisted) get my old poems out, study and edit them. She commented one day that I had created a book about surviving abuse "from the inside out" and that what I needed next was a foreword for it. I asked her to write it, but she insisted that I should be the one to do it. That was when I wrote the poem that begins this collection titled Prelude, in the first segment titled Forword - Summarizing the first years .

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