Using my “poets lens,” I am able to “speak” volumes of feelings when I often cannot. “Research shows” that the creative process elevates mood. With each expression, in the moment, I get less bogged down. “Seeing” and “being seen” are themes I explore often, along with “bearing witness” to the “big picture” as well as to tiny fragments of this, my journey here on earth, above ground. My mother taught me to “see trees” and appreciate words and poems. For the poet Adrienne Rich, it was necessary to speak of trees, in times like these. I need to take photographs of them. My father was an optometrist with a yearning for G-d. For me, in the Reconstructionist Jewish tradition, I have come to understand my artistic expression and my creations- and re-creations, of images, collages, re-purposed hardware for jewelry- as blessings; I feel blessed for the ability to “see” even when just for me, if not to “be seen”. In my collages, I connect disparate elements, often seeking to unify them in a “both/and” perspective, sometimes successfully, sometimes not- but usually trying see the “garbage in the rose.” The creative process feeds my soul more than the Jewish chicken soup I was raised on; I like to think that my photographs reflect the “conceptual simplicity” of meditation spoken of by Pema Chodron, while through my collage, the “truth” of my feelings often “outs.”