I have been writing down my dreams since high school. Scraps of paper, many without dates, pepper my files and journals, filling a file drawer I call “half-baked ideas”: stories that I haven’t finished, children’s books, television and film treatments that never took off or haven’t been written, an erotic novel and hundreds of poems.
After I had finished writing my first book, Ashes in the Milk, I encountered a creative pause. Not quite a vacuum but rather like the threshold of a doorway where I found myself wondering, “What’s next?”
And then I dreamed the vagabond playwright, telling me to take up my dream journals and make poetry from them, tend them, animate and eliven and walk around in them day after day into night after night until I retrieved what was lost in the underground of me, buried safely in my unconscious.
When people think of trauma, they think of the extremes: veterans of war, survivors of genocide, or malnourished refugees. Our minds instinctively consider those who have been exposed to the harshest realities our world has to offer. But in truth, trauma whether endured in childhood or experienced in adulthood, is rather common and impacts millions of people. Trauma is often caused by interpersonal conflict, inflicted by one person on another. Unrealized, these traumas are passed down from generation to generation even when most parents insist they will do better than their parents did.
Drawing from my own personal experiences and professional expertise, Ashes in the Milk bridges the gap between self-help, vulnerable narrative, and prose. Ashes in the Milk will remind readers that their greatest path to healing and wholeness lies within – if only they are willing to walk down the path.
It’s dawn at my mother’s house.
I am up very early.
Looking out the sliding glass door in the dining room
I see a big yellow hard mover slightly moving
tearing up the backyard he loved to putter in.
I slide the door open, but not enough
that his big burly Beagle escapes to run and greet me.
Day light fades this dew wet grass and dampens
platting, joyfully, quiet in her early morning glow
Marble double to run wild.
The man who worked the yard, so beautifully the man made
He and his loved landscaped area beauty and peace.
How do we mourn the wonderful life the mother knew?
All that I know: how to leave the impression of his life
On the here in the here.
Breathe!!
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“A poem that reads like a novel, Ashes in the Milk captures the wild roller coaster ride of a life that led one woman to become a respected Los Angeles psychotherapist. It is a journey through the rebellious free love days of the Seventies and Eighties, incorporating memories from infancy and the vivid dreams of her later years to make sense of a life that was nearly cut short at multiple junctures.”
– JIM CIRIGLIANO, documentary producer/writer
Ashes in the Milk is now available in Indie California, a collection of books from local indie authors available exclusively on the BiblioBoard Library mobile and web platform.
