Introduction

Welcome to the Autumn 2013 issue of Touch: The Journal of Healing.  For those of us living in the northern hemisphere, the coming winter can remind us that all things must come to an end.  Gone are the warm, sunny days, the longer hours of evening sunlight, and the smell of freshly cut grass and blooming flowers are but distant memories.  For many of us this is a time of reflection, and so, we find ourselves reflecting on what or who we have lost over the course of the past year and what those losses mean.  Like an empty shell that once held new life, loss can be felt as a hollowness within our hearts and our souls, but those empty places can also serve as vessels where we hold and protect our most cherished memories, bittersweet though they may sometimes be.

At times the days move forward whether or not we are able to move with them, and this can make our struggles even more difficult.  Though we may be surrounded and supported by others, we can still struggle to incorporate these losses into our lives so that we can move forward. In the end, recovery is still a solitary process, dependent on our own unique abilities.

Each of the poems and prose in this issue speaks to a loss, be it the loss of a person or even a piece of ourselves.  They remind us that healing is an ongoing process that can span months, years, or even a lifetime.  They remind us that sometimes it’s all we can do to simply hang on, but this is ok because in time, healing does come, even if only in increments.

We invite you to join us on this journey of remembering.  We hope that what our writers have shared will serve to remind you that you are not alone.

O.P.W. Fredericks, Editor

Daniel Milbo, Assistant Editor