This poem was written during the recent years I was hospital writer in residence at the Victoria Hospital in Prince Albert, working often on the adult and youth mental health wards. I facilitate a Writing for Your Life group with Canadian Mental Health Association and volunteer on the board of the local branch of the CMHA. It has become a huge part of my life, working and writing with people with mental health problems. I don’t feel separate from it at all, and I don’t write as an observer, but as a participant. It is my desire that my poems give voice to those living with mental illness and speak to not only the suffering but the courage and hope that is so clearly there as well.