Secure your dreams for they are the wings of your soul, and, when vulnerable, flight is inconceivable.

Death was a smokescreen between Life and myself.

When I discarded the idea that God was not a man (as I had been raised to think and believe without question), I grew distant, and the flame that once lit my path began to flicker and hiss like a candle burnt to its wick, making longevity impossible without a new energy source.

Death descended like a theatrical storm over the Drakensberg Mountains, stranding me while it ran its course.

There are those whose love awakens our own and those whose love undermines. As long as we are blind to this fact, true love will elude us.

In the end, it was the secrets that held me hostage and fuelled my depression, but, once released, emancipation - from fear, shame, guilt and judgement - was finally possible.

Change blows through the branches of our existence. It fortifies the roots on which we stand, infuses crimson experience with autumn hues, dismantles Winter’s brittle leaves, and ushers Spring into our fertile environments. Seeds of evolution burst from their pod cocoons and teardrop buds blossom into Summer flowers. Change releases its redolent scent, attracting the buzz of honey bees and the adoration of discerning butterflies.

Death is the great disruptor; it thrusts us opposite life’s mirror, invites our truthful exploration, and reveals the naked truth; from which rebirth is possible and we are free to reinvent ourselves anew.

I was lost in a void of perpetual darkness. Disconnected from myself. Turned inside out. No sign of life. Eventually, the darkness was my light and the void a haven – a quiet place where I could nurse my secret and lick my wounds.

I walked to Mairangi Bay beach, day after day, seeking companionship in the roar of the ocean, and contemplating the shipwreck of my life. There, in that isolated wilderness, amidst the screaming gulls, and consistent rhythm of the tides, I channeled my chaotic thoughts through my pen and released them into poetry, until the quiet desperation passed and I was secure in the knowledge that I had made it through another day.