A Kaleidoscope of Healing

A Kaleidoscope of Healing

By Annette Camp 

June 30, 2025

My spiritual and religious journey

has been a path of light and shadow.

I've come to see that my soul was shaped

by those who mirrored the sacred in me.

The ones who were supportive,

valued wisdom, fostered a sense

of community, and modeled the

importance of service and justice work.

My journey of spirit was also once

marked by immeasurable pain, where

others' judgments cut deep, and their

rejection left me silently aching.

Feeling powerless, grieving, and resentful—

carrying wounds where love was longed for.

The hurt ran far beneath the surface,

a quiet void where welcome should've been.

I’ve taken these piercing fragments

and pieced them into a mosaic,

spinning in patterns of beauty.

Now, I have a kaleidoscope of healing.

Between Streetlights and Screens

Between Streetlights and Screens

By Annette Camp 

June 25, 2025

I was born in the 1970s.

I’m Generation X.

And I’m proud to be one.

We are the original latchkey kids.

The ones who walked home from school

with a house key around our necks

and a note on the counter that said,

“Dinner’s in the fridge.”

We learned independence early—

because we had to.

Our parents were working, divorcing,

or just doing their own thing.

So we figured things out on our own—

quietly, creatively, and with grit.

We were raised on three TV channels,

Saturday morning cartoons,

and streetlights as curfews.

We played outside until

the dusk buzzed us home.

We are the mixtape makers.

The Walkman warriors.

The ones who rewound VHS tapes,

recorded songs off the radio,

and waited weeks for film

to be developed.

We grew up with

Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street,

Schoolhouse Rock,

The Brady Bunch, The Muppets,

and Soul Train.

We also watched

the Berlin Wall fall,

the Challenger explode,

and MTV actually play music.

We watched the world change, fast.

We saw the end of the Vietnam War.

Lived through the Cold War,

the crack epidemic,

“Just Say No” campaigns,

and the AIDS crisis.

We’ve seen technology evolve

from Atari to AI.

We danced to vinyl,

then cassettes,

then CDs—

memorizing lyrics

long before Google could help.

We survived rotary phones,

busy signals,

floppy disks,

and dial-up modems.

We printed pixelated banners

on dot matrix printers

that took all afternoon.

We learned to code, just to

change our MySpace page.

We were the last generation

to grow up without the internet

and the first to raise kids

in a world that never shuts off.

We lived before likes, hashtags,

and constant comparison.

Privacy was real.

Mistakes were our own,

not viral content.

We straddle two worlds:

Analog and digital.

Pay phones and smartphones.

Common sense and constant scroll.

We entered adulthood

through recessions,

layoffs,

downsizing,

and broken promises—

but we kept going.

We never expected life to be easy—

just real.

We were told to keep our heads down

and get to work.

No hand-holding.

No “safe spaces.”

Just figure it out.

And we did.

We’ve seen empires fall,

systems fail,

ideals shift—

but we’re still here.

We’ve been raising families,

caring for aging parents,

and learning how to feel

in a world that told us

to toughen up.

We are the quiet rebels.

The underdogs.

The skeptics who still hope.

We’ve seen enough to question everything

but we still believe in doing better.

In showing up.

In authenticity

over image.

We’re breaking cycles.

Drinking water.

Going to therapy.

Healing.

Still raising hell

when it matters.

We are Generation X.

The quiet force.

The resilient bridge

between Boomers and Millennials,

old school and what’s next.

We’re not trying to go back.

We’re building forward—

with wisdom,

wit, and

weathered hearts.

We are Generation X.

And we’ve got this.

Everything Hangs in This Moment

Everything Hangs in This Moment

By Annette Camp 

June 18, 2025

He sat on the edge of the bench

wood hard beneath him.

Men shuffled in and out,

sentences trailing behind them:

time, fines - one word 

enough to change everything.

He waited.

Back straight.

Hands clenched in his lap,

gripping the outline of hope.

Don’t unravel.

Then, his name echoed through the chamber.

As his mother silently pleaded:

Don’t lock him away from the very soil

that’s just beginning to ground him.

Let him keep building the life 

that now calls to him

of second chances.

She wanted the judge to see

the man he was trying to become,

not just the moment of his worst mistake.

She had watched him fall

hard and often, but she had 

also seen him rise in rehab.

Don’t take this from him,

she begged with her bones.

Not now.

Not when he’s growing like

the agriculture around him.

Let him keep his place at Harvest Farms

not because he’s earned it yet,

but because he’s trying.

Because he’s showing up every day

when it would be easier to run.

She wanted the judge to see

the quiet miracle of him 

showing up each day to do 

his work from the inside out.

He stood when his name was called.

Not confident,

but not crumbling either.

Each step forward

was its own small vow:

I’m not who I was.

Not anymore.

He didn’t glance back,

but if he had,

he would’ve seen her—

his mother,

anchored in stillness.

He would have seen in her eyes

not fear,

not pity,

but belief.

The kind that doesn’t waver

when the world does.

She carried it for him.

After the public defender

stated that he had started

the New Life rehab 

program, the judge said, 

“That’s a great program.”

Those words felt like 

more than mercy. 

It was a lifeline.

Healing in His Eyes

Healing in His Eyes 

By Annette Camp 

June 10, 2025

Tears swell in his eyes

not from pain, but 

from something gentler, 

something newly born.

He sits beside me,

words trembling out

like leaves shaken loose

by a sudden gust of truth.

“I feel happy,” he says,

as if tasting it for the first time,

as if happiness were a language

he never knew he could speak.

And I listen —

so deeply it stirs something raw —

because this is not a phrase

he would have said before.

My own eyes fill,

not with sorrow,

but with the unbearable beauty

of watching someone return to themselves.

This is no longer the image

etched by years of restless nights,

the scream of anger, and

echoes of trembling with fear.

With this new truth,

healing begins —

a happiness reborn

within both our hearts.

This is a man carrying his 

soul with intention,

moving toward something greater

than simply making it through.

This is a rebirth,

a rising of purpose

carved from the hardest 

stones of struggle.

Hope for His Recovery

Hope for His Recovery 

By Annette Camp 

June 3, 2025

Tonight, I whispered to the moon:

Let him come back whole.

Let him come back happy.

Let him remember how it feels

to sleep without worry,

to wake without pain.

This silence aches, but it’s

softer than the anxiety that 

used to gnaw me awake at 2am,

wondering if he was cold,

curled up in the backseat of a truck,

or scared in the back of his van.

I imagined him in the corner of the

crowded shelter, shoulders hunched,

eyes darting, trying to sleep.

And zipped inside a damp tent,

pitched beneath trees that

offered no comfort, only cover.

And holed up in a cheap hotel,

where the TV hums in the background

but can’t drown out the storm of

thoughts that rumble like thunder,

crashing one over the next,

memories and regrets colliding.

And crouched behind bushes,

praying not to be seen or woken.

And curled up behind surfboards,

just to steal a moment of rest,

while the world moved on, unaware

of his hidden suffering.

Nine months feels like a lifetime

when my arms are empty, but

I would rather miss him here

than lose him out there to the

quiet drowning in the fast

undertow of addiction.