One Word, One Day At A Time

“Through poems, journaling, storytelling, song lyrics and other literature,” asserts this evening’s PoemAlley guest reader, Barbara Bethea in her professional listing with Psychology Today magazine, “poetry therapy is helping people to heal and grow, one word, one day at a time.”

Herself a survivor of sexual assault and domestic violence, Barbara applies a subjective approach to both the emotional struggles and the spiritually reconstructive power of creative self-expression in helping clients as a Certified Rape Counselor Advocate with Mt. Sinai Hospital’s Sexual Assault & Violence Intervention program (SAVI) and as licensed creative art therapist at North Brooklyn Health Network, where she has worked since 2007.

The first African American Registered Poetry Therapist certified through the National Association for Poetry Therapy (for which she was formerly president), Barbara finds opportunities to combine her work with her spoken word craft as Therapist/Poetess for Poetryworks Entertainment and, in particular, Like Manna for the Soul, a 2007 CD release of inspirational recordings (with a companion book to follow), delivered with a gentle but necessary boldness.

Click here to watch a preview of her loving on-stage insight in the persona of “Afrikana Madonna”, recorded last year on "Can We Talk TV" out of New York, where Barbara slides from one powerful and compact scenario into another of equally intimate peril--and the circumstances that put women in those situations, simultaneously celebrating the support, resiliency and heart to rise beyond them.

Barbara is an adjunct professor at the College of New Rochelle/School of New Resources, Brooklyn Campus. Find out more about Barbara and her work on MySpace and on Linkedin; Barbara can be contacted at afrikanamadonna1@aol.com.