Our Shared Breath

In Our Shared Breath, Carolyn Chilton Casas explores themes of daily life-family, connection with nature, evolving beliefs, impermanence, energy healing, and reflections on the 2020 pandemic. Carolyn's poetry expresses her belief that awareness and gratitude are at the heart of healing. In this first collection of poetry, she writes about the alchemy of being alive. We all encounter joyful and difficult times, but by looking for a silver lining in a hardship, we are able to reshape the story we tell about these experiences. She believes... "each time we respond to an encounter it is from a choice of fear or love," and she urges you to "...remember the remarkable being and body of light that you are." Carolyn's younger years were spent in a rural setting on a dairy farm in a Minnesota. She speaks to that idyllic childhood- "I come from a farmhouse stoop at dusk, cocooned in the comfort of grasshopper symphonies..." Other poems point to experiences of being a mother or are narratives on places traveled with her family. For her, nature and her relationship with it, is sacred-the plants, trees, deer, rabbits, squirrels, whales, elephant seals, the much-loved ocean, and hills where she lives. She even writes about an obnoxious cricket. This collection takes an honest look at losses endured. In her meditation practice, as she explores how to live with impermanence, poetry is a natural extension. In contemplation of her energy healing practice, she begins a poem, "Bring me your sadness, your worry, your pain," and in another she refers to this energy as "...liquid warmth of compassion coursing from heart through hands." In the last section of the book, Carolyn reflects on what a possible gift of the 2020 pandemic year might be- "a clearer sight is within our view, more easily pictured since an act of nature quieted the outer noise." ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Carolyn Chilton Casas' poetry has appeared in Energy, The Art of Healing, Reiki News Magazine, Snapdragon, and other publications. She is an Usui/Holy Fire® Reiki Master practitioner and teacher with a background in metaphysics and a great interest in fostering spiritual connection through mindfulness and meditation. Her spark to write and her spark to help others live more comfortably through energy healing serendipitously struck at the same time. She enthusiastically devotes herself to these two practices, believing one inspires the other. Follow her work in abbreviated form on Instagram at mindfulpoet_, where she has been posting short photo poems with mindful messages since the time we were asked to start sheltering at home.