When I was 2 years old, my dad's mother would shout at me to "Stop it Stop it " as I lay on my back rolling my head from side to side over and over again. She shouted and I stopped it, but as soon as she left the room, I'd start doing it all over again. Years later, I learned that particular behavior was a form of self comfort. Left on my own from early childhood I had no choice but to live in constant fear and fight it, face unbearable loss and bear it, I had become the unwilling target of vicious child abuse and endured it as best I was able until I could escape it and painstakingly find and return to my biological family. That is what my poems are about, survival, strength, triumph, joy, grief, and redemption. Many years later, I still find myself lying on my back, turning my head from side to side, waiting for my grandmother to shout at me to stop it. She might have added," You should have outgrown that by now "