Introduction

Welcome to Issue 3 of Touch: The Journal of Healing.

In this final issue of our debut year, we reflect on the path we have traveled for the last twelve months.  What began as an idea to bring together a diversity of voices to speak about empathy and healing has grown into a family of artists and readers open to exploring the human experience.

We are reminded of the journey taken by those who have suffered losses of the heart, of the body, the mind, and of the soul.  We have experienced the suffering of solitude and the compassion of loved ones.  We have tasted the ashes of displacement and the elation of newfound strength.  We have walked with the storytellers, peered through their eyes, and felt their pain, knowing that what unites us all is the touch of humanity.

In this issue, we come full circle to the point where we began.  We learn that from journeys past, we may venture forth with a greater understanding of our frailties and our strengths.  For what is it that forces us to go on, but the need to take that first tenuous step?  We chose to begin this issue with the Chambered Nautilus, whose home is a progressive growth of segmented chambers.  Not unlike the stages of our lives, each chamber represents a period of growth to the point where our prior experiences can no longer contain us or carry us forward.  We must move on, close off the past, and grow into a new rendition of who we are.  Unlike the Nautilus, however, we are able to revisit our past selves, sometimes remembering and dwelling for a time, until we are ready to let go.

Many of the poems in this issue speak to that taking of the first step, as their stories recount the passage from one stage of life to the next.  At times, our steps may stagnate or lead us aside, but eventually, that next step moves us in the new direction of a rediscovery of self, sometimes redefined, and sometimes reaffirmed.

O.P.W. Fredericks, Editor

Daniel Milbo, Assistant Editor