Gail Warner, MA, MFT, is heart healer and hearth keeper of a small retreat center called Pine Manor, a gathering place and creative canvas for therapists, body workers, artists, energy healers, musicians, spiritual teachers, poets and writers. Gail’s vision, along with her invitational and collaborative style, has allowed people from all walks of life to deepen their connection with self and others in this sacred space. Gail has been a psychotherapist for more than forty years. She has accompanied others through the inner journey of unfolding inquiry, grief, discovery and transformation. She has offered countless retreats that provide time to step outside the demands of life and focus on what really matters through self-reflection and creative processes that include Sand Tray and SoulCollage®. Mother, grandmother, earth mother, poet, dreamer, decades-long group facilitator and body-centered psychotherapist, Gail guides others into deeper connections with their soul and the soul of the natural world while endlessly and humbly walking the same journey herself. Weaving Myself Awake: Voicing the Sacred Through Poetry, a collection of Gail’s poems, is available on Amazon.

You, ominous echo of death,
have numbed me.
You sit on me like a giant boulder
I cannot escape.

You inhabit me, uninvited guest,
in dark, cold nothingness.
I rage without sound in helplessness,
wanting to drown awareness of my separateness.

You strike and crumble my earth.
Tears soak the ground.
Compassion and tenderness
slowly form an earthen lap large enough to hold me.

Absorbed into a larger ocean of tender holding,
I feel this sacred mystery opening my heart.
My vessel softens with a new capacity for gratitude.
I am clay ready to be shaped.

Click below to listen to Gail read Uninvited Guest.