Stillness in the Storm

(Virginia Hines with Patricia Burke) I am a mother, grandmother, spiritual seeker, medical practitioner and psychotherapist.  I have passionate interest in the mind-body-spirit connection, from my experiential learning in different healing and spiritual traditions, as well as from studying Western research models. As a child in the countryside of Maryland, I was able to experience and appreciate the delicate relationship between people and their environment. I began writing poetry about my own relationship with the natural and social world around me, and went on to college to major in English with a plan to be a writer. What happened was quite different. Rather than finish school, I took some time off to live in California in the late 1960s, becoming involved in the anti-war and civil rights movements. These activist days planted seeds in me which germinated underground while I was in school to become a physician assistant, raise three children, work in the medical field and later return to graduate school to study psychology. During this time my husband and I settled in Concord, Massachusetts and were pretty content with our lives. There would have been no way for us to anticipate what would happen in the summer of 1997.