Overview

From a traumatized psyche pours the therapeutic poetry of a licensed marriage and family therapist, a new genre of poetic design called 'meta-symbolic encoded verse'. As a trauma survivor the author speaks to the hearts of humanity 'From Behind the Other Chair' in a gesture of peace and healing. Three consecutive volumes are autobiographical and begin with the present, flowing backward in time to the original severe traumas of commitments to a mental ward and jail sentences to the mental health unit of a correctional facility. The experiences gained by these atrocities inflicted brutal damage, but also taught valuable lessons in survival and endurance. Poetry is this therapist's therapy. As d'Orr tells her tragic story it is her hope and purpose to touch the soul of the reader with the tenderness of a fellow wounded spirit, yet also with a firmness demanding that society reexamine the abysmal treatment of the lowest echelon of our culture, the mentally ill adult female. She has no advocate and suffers the nightmares of the mentally afflicted locked into a prison she herself inadvertently constructed. You will perhaps think it could not happen to you. As did she. Her human rights were stripped and her dignity obliterated. She could not defend herself, nor could she comprehend the chain of events. Her world became surreal and horrific as she spun into a madness she could not control.