I have been a nurse for over 30 years, many of those years with severely ill or handicapped children. I took a break from nursing for about 8 years and became a journalist. But I have been a poet my entire adult life, and really started writing in earnest at the beginning of high school. I never called myself a poet until I was writing daily. As much as I thought journalism would help my writing, it almost made it impossible! I took a 20 year break from writing while I raised my daughter, and then couldn't find my way back to it for a few years. I was almost believing that little lie that poetry is only written by the young, just like they say great mathematical ideas are only the territory of young minds. Now it seems I can't stop writing, and during that 25 year break, all the thoughts, all the images I captured, all the emotions that flowed through me, and I thought,"If I were still a poet, I might make something of that," now have come back in a flood! Like scraps a quilter saves for future quilts, these pieces are in a great hodge-podge heap, and slowly I am untangling it.