Doe Songs A Poetic Odyssey

This book is a poetic odyssey chronicling the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of an African/American woman of part Native American ancestry as she navigates the challenges of living life as a Black woman in America. She is guided on her journey by Deer, her Totem and Spirit Guide, and the Spirit of the Great Mother Goddess, who come to her in poems, some introducing new stages in her life, some celebrating joyful moments, and some guiding her through difficult and challenging experiences. The poems in this book encompass both wide-ranging and intense breadth and depth. They are raw, intense, passionate, tender, and revealing, ranging from plaintive pleas of desperation to joyful songs of celebration. These poems capture the author's fears and hopes, joys and sorrows, passions and despairs, and loves and losses. They bear witness to her experience of life, starting from a shy and alienated teenager, through the intensities of love and marriage, and her descent into drugs and depression; through the devastations of infertility, early menopause, and divorce, to new loves and losses; the joy of experiencing motherhood and raising a child, and finally into her now twilight years. She has been guided through it all by seeking and listening to her Spirit Guides and her optimism and faith in both the Divine and humanity.