Out of the Shadows reflects a time in my life when, struggling with depression, I found the capacity to drift through each day by writing about my visions of life with the internal conflict of hiding my emotions from family and friends, hiding this inner turmoil consuming my thoughts and my outward smiles and bright eyes facade for others to see. My poems in my first collection, Behind the Shadows, are fictional, created by an empathy for the human condition of many different issues of social unrest in the world. The depression I experienced heightened my emotions, allowing me to create such poems as I Still Wonder Why, which is about a child in foster care, bouncing from one home to another, wondering why he was taken away from his parents. New-Found Sense depicts someone who recently lost her sight and is now realizing how keen her other senses are in helping her see with a new-found vision. My second collection, Into the Light, was inspired by the love and devotion of my husband of forty-five years, James, and that of my family and friends. Look Back and Smile reflects the inner thoughts of a bride as she walks down the aisle, conversing with her mom and dad to be comforted, knowing how much her new groom will take care of her and love her. And Then There Were Three is a conversation between a pregnant woman about to give birth and her child still yet to be born. I wrote this poem seven years before I had my first child! I share my poems with anyone who has had loss and love, who has cried and laughed, and mourned and rejoiced in their lives. May you be inspired to know that even at your darkest moments, you, too, can come out of the shadows.