Ann YatesAnn lives in Anchorage, Alaska, where she works as a psychiatric nurse practitioner, providing medication and psychotherapy, participating and facilitating groups in mindfulness practices in the community, and teaching nursing students at the Universty of Alaska as her time allows. She walks her talk by using various methods of meditation, mindfulness skills, and spiritual beliefs in her daily living, including soaking up the natural beauty around her. She never intended to write poems but the poems came to her, born out of the challenge of cancer, which triggered a number of old but very powerful past traumas she had worked for years to resolve. In reading over her poetry, she realized it carries the theme of mindfulness and, more specifically, her own approach to mindfulness that she developed as a simple and easily accessible tool to use in times of emotional pain. With this in mind, she wrote about her experiences and her mindfulness approach to share with readers both her understanding of life's difficulties and ways to better be with and manage them. Ann feels her poetry motivates her to continue to grow and expand into its truth, knowing it is a lifelong process with many challenges along the way. Read More Read Less