I have been a nurse for over 25 years, but a writer for as long as I can remember. As a young child, I wrote short stories and plays, mostly featuring my pet hamsters, and as I got older, poetry. I feel most alive when working to transform thoughts into language, and my house is littered with random scraps of paper with jottings of an image or idea for a poem yet to be fully formed. Many mentors and peers have helped guide and shape my writing along the way, and I am grateful for the invaluable support of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Lighthouse Poetry Collective. I live with my family in Charlottesville, Virginia and am faculty at the UVA School of Nursing.