I spent my adult life married, raising twin sons, and teaching high school in the inner city. But although I was Teacher of the Year for AHS in 2011-2012 and 2017-2018, a Claes Nobel Educator of Distinction and a University of Chicago Distinguished Educator, and my kids were healthy, well liked and well behaved, I was miserable. Worse yet, I was inauthentic. I'd just done what I was told. At 43, I decided that life no longer was healthy or fulfilling. I got divorced and started a healing journey. That journey led me back to poetry, journaling, and becoming a spoken word artist. By 2020, I'd performed poetry more times tha I could count at over 50 venues, hosted, and organized over 50 live music, comedy and poetry shows, Laughz and Lyrics, to both handfuls of adoring fans and wall to wall, standing room only crowds. I became the Houston organizer for 100,000 Poets for Change, and I was honored with a Congressional Award for activism. My poetry and prose could be found in over a dozen anthologies and magazines including, “ Let’s Talk about Being Human,” “Selfhood,” “Restless,” “Five 2 One magazine”, “Caravel”, and “Switchback”.