Night Flights

"We are being built as we sleep. Valerie Johns has written a brave and honest collection of poems, each based on a dream she has had, honoring the vast gifts and challenges our unconscious minds offer us-if we have the courage and determination to take them seriously.

"Looking back at her child self, her adolescent self, and her traumatized and lost younger selves, Johns-deeply inspired by Jung, Buddhism, mythology, history, feminism, and collective suffering-confronts her Shadow and engages with it. Her dreams carry themes of rejection, separation, abandonment, and the need to face danger with resolve and even wonder.

"Despite repeated impulses to run away, Johns does not look away from pain or loss. As Rilke wrote, Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Johns allows both. Read these poems, resonate with them, and stretch yourself out into your life."

-Anita Barrows, Ph.D