Poetry Compilation: Go Softly

At the start of 2019, while working as part of the staff of a mental health treatment center for youth, one of the teens learned that I wrote poetry. This teen asked if I would write them a poem to share at their graduation after they completed their time in treatment. I did.

This meant the world to them and to me. I was asked again by the next teen that graduated, then the next, and the next, until I had a year of graduation poems written for extraordinary young people who had claimed their lives back from cycles of self-sabotage.

This is that collected year of poems, one for each teen who requested one, raw and preserved as they were back in those moments of courage and healing and celebration.