This Book Was Born On A Mountaintop
High on a mountain outside Jackson Hole, the idea for this collection began to take shape. My son was getting married there, and memories of my daughter’s own mountaintop wedding years earlier came rushing back. As the wind moved through fields of wildflowers carpeting the mountainside, stories, images, people, and emotions from a lifetime seemed to gather all at once. That was the beginning of The Light That Stayed With Me. It grew from a lifetime of people, experiences, memories, and connections. Some of the stories are mine. Others belong to people I have known, loved, watched, learned from, and carried with me. Together, they became part of the way I understand love, loss, friendship, aging, and the extraordinary ways people leave pieces of themselves within one another. It is also, in many ways, a love letter to my husband and my children. It’s been said a lifetime can’t be spent with one person while remaining happy, romantic, connected, and deeply in love. I know differently. People can love and respect one another quite literally until death they do part, while still maintaining romance, desire, laughter, tenderness, and physical connection. Growing older does not require becoming emotionally or physically invisible. Love does not have an expiration date. Neither does desire, curiosity, wonder, or the ability to feel completely alive. I have the proof. Through more than 140 poems, original artwork, and a musical playlist inspired by the narrative poetry, The Light That Stayed With Me explores and recounts the pieces of one another we carry forward and the experiences that continue shaping us long after the moment itself has passed. Together, the poetry, art, color, and music create a multisensory journey through memory, love, sadness, humor, desire, and Light. It is about refusing to believe that love, desire, wonder, or connection must diminish simply because the years accumulate. And it is heartfelt gratitude for the friends, family, and even foes who have touched a life, taught us, laughed with us, made us stronger, wiser, and hopefully, in the long run, happier, with a full heart of Light to shine into the world.
