Leilani Grajeda-Higley became a nurse and a healer; a writer and a teller of stories that light a path through the labyrinth of life and death. As a child her own path emerged from an old Army surplus tent her parents had bolted down to the scorched earth of California's Mojave Desert where range cows roamed free. There, in the solitude, wind, and clouds the path led her to discover that power is all that is and all that ever was--that the lack of power is the cause of all suffering.

Torn from her Mexican roots and punished for them; An American viewed as alien in a segregated Anglo school--she had a vantage point on society's edges to question the assumptions and magical thinking those around her embraced as true. She saw that every relationship, both small and large, fleeting or enduring, is about power. In the smoothest, all agree who is in charge, in which areas, and for how long. In the bitterest, there is no agreement--only struggle and strife.

Her path led her to prehistoric Mexico and the cosmic event that made humanity possible. She traced the path of the genetic mother of all her mothers, who left Africa, wandered the face of the earth, trailing DNA in the daughters she left behind, and eventually settled in a garden of eternal spring in her native Mexico. Curious about the brain's role in memory, fear, dominance, and submission, her path took her through years of brain exploration and the electro-chemical impulses of thought and movement. In vignettes she shows families and strangers acting out struggles for power. Leilani's path led her to understand how we become who we are, and the value of our behavior. She observed the enduring gender conflicts of patriarchy, power and dominance. She saw how the lack of power causes us to suffer when ill, helpless, or oppressed; how it manifests in grief, depression, and dysphoria--or in seizing a mantle of power to compensate for perceived deficiencies. Paradoxically, the path through death, though sad, was also up-lifting. Indeed, her path led her to wonder at, to laugh at, to question, and ultimately to celebrate the human condition and view it with optimism that we can turn away from grasping for power--that there is enough power for all of life's creatures.

The stories in Power: A Memoir, Mexico and More, light the reader's path through the labyrinth of life.

Leilani Grajeda-Higley, R.N., M.F.A., Ph.D., Emerita of San Diego State University