Wilma Derksen
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Broken, Shattered - Fragmented

1/28/2023

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It was one thing to deal with the issues surrounding the search for Candace, it was another thing to deal with what was happening to us inside.

As a child I had been steeped in the horror stories of the Russian Revolution so when my parents came from BC for Candace's funeral, I thought they would be able to help me understand myself. They just shook their heads - murder was different than war. They did mention shell shock. 

No one seemed to help me identify the issues I was feeling - not the church, not my friends, colleagues or the support group. 

However the penny dropped when one of the parents  brought in a guest speaker to our support group -  a returning soldier from Vietnam who shared his experiences and introduced us to the word "trauma." At the time it was a new word -  he called  it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder  PTSD.
 
Research tells us that when a person experiences severe trauma, their identity, personality, emotions, belief systems, everything, goes through a process of fragmentation. "This is when the body divides traits and feelings, and groups them into smaller sections, keeping some of them hidden until a safe space for expression is provided."
 
What did this look like?  

We didn’t eat the day that Candace went missing after school. I think it was around 10 o’clock at night that I realized that none of us had eaten Nothing about the body was important.  Only Candace’s life was important. It was the beginning of body fragmentation
  
I remember walking around the house unable to concentrate (mind) on any other problem other than Candace missing. World news was unimportant. I could only focus on information that was pertinent to the situation - if that.  
 
Our social world was fragmented.  Our world was divided instantly into friend and foe. Our innocent neighbors were immediate suspects.

When the police came and found out that Cliff was a former pastor, they accused him immediately of being to strict causing Candace to run away. (Spirit)  We downplayed our faith ever after. 

Inside and outside our world was broken, shattered and fragmented.
 
If we look at the Garden of Eden with this new understanding of trauma – we see it being played out in the beginning of time.
 
After eating the fruit and being infected with fear -  everything changed. Adam and Eve hid. They donned fig tree leaves to protect their vulnerability, distrusted God their Creator and turned on each other playing the vicious blame game. They were in fighting mode. We can see them being fragmented.

It was all there -  fight, flight, and freeze. Frenzy came later when they were totally immersed in their new crazy world. Because they were now fragmented - they had to leave the garden which  is pictured as the perfect place of harmony. The two realities were now incompatible.

God then clothed them with animal furs and introduced them to the rituals of sacrifice - a rather primitive metaphor of forgiveness that will be explained and completed when the Messiah comes - centuries later.  

What a fragmented mess we are born into - and continue to create!

​We need the golden glue!

​The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.  – Ernest Hemingway


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Where do you live?

1/26/2023

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Survival mode... that's what it felt like when they arrested a man for the murder of our first-born - 22 years after the fact.

As the trial loomed, we as a family knew that we had to prepare ourselves - a trial can be just as traumatizing as the murder itself -  so we drove down to Kansas for a conference.  The road trip down and the conference we attended was the best preparation we could have received - spiritually and emotionally - but it was the trip back that cemented us. The storm of the century blew in just as we were driving home -  blowing snow, piercing snowflakes, glittering black ice, strong gusts - sending all the cars into the ditch.

It became so bad they were closing down the highway. We had a decision to make. Did we want to hunker down or drive through? It was unanimous, we couldn't spare the time – we wanted to get home.

We assessed. I assessed.

I remembered that after the Indigenous elder described the characteristics of the four personality quadrants on the medicine wheel, he said that even though all of us possess all four we each priories them differently. The secret he said, was to ask ourselves; "In what quadrant - body, mind, heart and spirit - do I live?"

Fascinating question! Where do you live?

Soon after that insight, I took a leadership course and learned  that if you really want get something done, don't choose people who are similar but choose people who live out the four personality types and if you can get the four to work together in harmony - you can accomplish anything. 

In our family we had all four personality types represented which meant we could do anything.

There were at least two main highway closures. Each time we would pull into a town, we would spill out into the rare store that was open on New Year’s Day and work the place. The locals would know where to go, so we needed to access local wisdom. Larry was good at talking to strangers – connecting. Syras was a wiz at the computer to get the official notification of closures. Odia would shop for sustenance to keep us awake. Natasha, was the mood moderator and enhancer. (It can get stressful in these moments of crisis.) Cliff looked after the vehicles, scraping the ice, filling up with gas and talking to the attendants for any advice. I prayed.

​By the time we got back into the cars we knew which back road to take – who was driving – etc. It was working. 

When we finally got to back home to Winnipeg, we heard that some people on the same trek as us had been stuck in Fargo, North Dakota, for days.

We were exhilarated and filled with a new confidence that as a family we could do anything - if we worked together. We were ready for the trial.

Happiness is when, what you think, what you say,  (what you believe) and what you do are in harmony.  - Mahatma Gandhi


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Standing on a stack of books

1/26/2023

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I have two exquisite views.  I'm living on the ninth floor of Adamar Manor  which gives me a view of the river and the city. I'm also standing on a stack of about nine books I've written - all documenting my journey in forgiveness.  

The perspective one gains from writing a book is almost as exquisite as a river view which is why I feel everyone should be writing a book. After I had written my first, some potential writers asked me to help them write their life story, I desperately wanted to help them. I tried and failed. Over the years, I've discovered that these novice writers get stuck and stop writing around chapter four - around the time when life gets too complicated to organize. If only there was a simple way to organize life. 

Later in life when I was given another opportunity to teach life writing, I remembered my visit with an elder who described to me an indigenous medicine wheel that was  divided into four parts -  body, heart, mind and spirit

The concept of four parts is as old as recorded time. Hippocrates in 400 BC referred to them as the four Humors, Aristotle as four sources of happiness, Eric Fromm as four orientations, Keirsey Bates as four temperaments and eventually Stephen Covey brought them back into business modernity as the four dimensions, the quadrants of body, heart, mind and spirit.

It's biblically based as well. In 1406 BC, Moses referred to them. “What doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear (respect) the LORD thy God, (mind) to walk in all his ways, (body) and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy (heart) and with all thy soul. (spirit)"

In 27 AD Jesus refers to them as well, , "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul (spirit) and with all your strength (body) and with all your mind.”

I wondered whether this simple organization of four would help novice writers so when I began teaching the life-writing course, I started using the four quadrants as a way to help organize life. It worked - novice writers were pushing past chapter four.

Then I remembered how the all-encompassing concept of 'forgiveness' had also defied organization. Was this the map we had been looking for?

Cliff, who was taking my writing course, agreed to help me with organizing forgiveness into four quadrants. We even started to map it out on blank papers taped to the back of my office door. He became very excited about it. He had more to forgive than I did. Then he was diagnosed with stage four gallbladder cancer....

"If you wish to fly to new heights, begin by setting your sights on a destination you can reach and then create a flight plan, a map, that will be your guide." - Debbie Ford




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We called it the "F" Word

1/25/2023

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The sky is clear and I can see the Museum with the glass finger. If I were a bird I would have no problem flying straight towards it to experience it up close. But if I didn't know the city and I were a pedestrian, I would get lost almost immediately. There is a "confusion corner" just north of here. 

We had a bird's eye view that first evening when the stranger came to visit. We saw the trauma on the bed and somehow leapt high enough to glimpse the glass finger of forgiveness on the distant horizon and flew frantically towards it. It was simple.

We lost sight of it two days later at a press conference when we told the journalists that we were going to 'forgive.' To our surprise this became the lead story. Forgiveness trumped murder - who knew!

Suddenly we were pedestrians. The long view was gone as we encountered the controversial side of forgiveness. Our choice to forgive was misconstrued by some of the public as giving permission to murder another person.

Another assumption was that we would now be friends with no boundaries. We were seen as hippies again - flower children - irresponsibly declaring love and no war.  We weren't sure how that all applied because we didn't even  know who had murdered our daughter - not even a suspect.

In fact I'm not sure of all the controversies, I just know that one of our friends, who defended our forgiveness choice, lost his job.

Confused, Cliff and I kept our head down and kept walking in the general direction of forgiveness. However, when I wanted to join a support group for parents of murdered children my now public choice to forgive preceded me, and I was told that if I really wanted to join the group I would have to "lose the forgiveness word." Forgiveness was unacceptable to this group.

So I lost the word. I promised that I would never mention the word. They could - I wouldn't. They talked about it constantly - I didn't have to.

Once I was on the inside as a a member I began to understand the unrealistic expectation of outsiders. Forgiveness was a solution for those who were suffering compassion fatigue. "Why don't you forgive already - and move on?" they would tell the group. Unable to deal with the issues that felt unforgiveable (and research substantiates this that the murder of a child with sexual intent is considered the most unforgiveable act) so unable to forgive and justly so, the group felt only the rejection. Forgiveness was then designated the "F" word by the group.

With the storm of controversy swirling, I decided to just keep walking the streets of my life in the direction of the finger of hope. I knew forgiveness was out there. I knew it was a miracle worker I just didn't know where or what it was all about - I didn't have the words. I needed a map - a comprehensive simple description of forgiveness, the processes necessary and the expected benefits that would help to convince others and explain our decision.

So I was absolutely delighted when I had the opportunity to attend a theological discussion on forgiveness in Washington DC. There for two days, sitting at a table with the most brilliant academics, I waited for the lightbulb moment – for the map with the directions to be unfolded onto the table.  But the definition - the map-  did not come. Someone else at the table even voiced their own frustration at the end of the weekend demanding a map with a definition of forgiveness. Panic ensued but no one had a map. Not even the brilliant had the answers. We went home empty handed.

It's true the Bible makes a comprehensive attempt to unravel the concept of forgiveness – but the book is long and complicated. The theologians and authors who are meant to be the guides - often only confuse the issues.  Even the historical stories of Menno Simons, though encouraging  seemed out dated and irrelevant - addressing war but not murder. The lens of the murder of a child requires  a no nonsense approach. Pat answers don't cut it.

In desperation, I held a conference in Winnipeg and invited all the high profile cases of parents of murdered children from across Canada to come to this two day consultation on forgiveness. We called it the "F" word conference. We didn't come up with a map either. We didn't agree on anything except to add the other "F" words describing our plight - the survival-driven words of fight, flight, freeze and frenzy…. It was strangely comforting just to talk about it and declare our "frustration" - another "f" word by the way....

At the end of the conference, I remember clearly the speaker who was also frustrated, just looked at all of us and said, "I know what you need. You first of all need to forgive yourselves!" We promptly discarded the "f" and fell into each other's arms - forgiving ourselves and becoming a beautiful healing circle of love.

After that the walking was a little easier but we still had no map. 

In hindsight, there is something to be said about having no definitive map - no agreed upon formula - and taking the pedestrian route. In the end we have to just walk it by ourselves anyway.

For Cliff and I - our biggest claim to success is that we didn't get stuck. We just kept on moving. We were on a life's pilgrimage through the trauma wilderness towards the promised land of forgiveness and freedom.  Well maybe we paused - here and there for a bit - stumbled - took wrong turns. None of it was pretty but we kept on moving.

Eventually - just the walking became an act of forgiveness. 

"Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship. Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start and a new beginning," - Martin Luther King Jr.

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Trauma Compassion

1/24/2023

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There is a hierarchy in prison -  the person who has murdered the most become a King Pin.

After joining a support group of Survivors of Homicide,  I discovered that there was also a hierarchy in victimization. Experiencing the murder of a child with sexual intention is close to the top. Am I a victim of status? A queen in the world of victims? If so - are there some acts of violence unforgiveable?
 
I remember years ago when a friend of ours received a simple invitation to travel overseas to visit some friends but decided not to go. Cliff and I were confused, so, one evening as we were having our night time snack, we dissected this dear friend of ours. We both knew him well enough that by combining our insight we could put the pieces of his decision together and were astounded at what we discovered. On the surface what looked like a simple decision was entangled with every type of issue imaginable. For him, it was like a perfect storm of triggers -  traumas, past and present, conflicts, and heart break, It was so perfectly designed that we couldn’t help wonder if there was a “designer?"
 
Looking at our traumatic experience, our victimisation seemed perfectly designed for us as well.
 
After that I went on my own quest to find a person who didn't have a "designed trauma."
 
I thought I had found a perfect candidate, when, after telling my story at a meeting, a woman approached me in the parking lot and thanked me, commending me on my courage and saying that she had “never experienced anything like it.”  I studied her for a moment. She did look annoyingly perfect and well put together. I had a few minutes so I started asking about her life. In remarkably little time, I unraveled an astoundingly issue-laden life – which again seemed perfectly designed to undo her - another perfect storm. The tables had turned – I was now admiring her courage.  

This became a research question of mine. To this day, I have yet to meet a seasoned person that doesn’t have a "trauma designed" story to tell and as a therapist I am privy to many stories.
 
In my darker moments, I have this wonky idea that perhaps God and the "Serpent” have a "Job" conversation over every life.
 
In the book of Job, it appears as if there are many sons of God who meet regularly at a heaven-designed board room to report on their spheres of influence. Lucifer, the Serpent, or Satan, appears and reports on the earth – his sphere of influence.
 
It seems as if God’s agenda is to enjoy the good, protect, and set limits, so he begins the conversation by celebrating Job. Lucifer’s agenda is the exact opposite. The Serpent, who gained power after seducing Eve and Adam into eating the fruit of good and evil  and continues to have power over the human race - now living under the curse of their decision, had just come back from roaming the earth. He too had noticed Job, except he doesn't wish Job well. He has always been jealous of God's love of humans and continues to want to torture them, break them and destroy them.

In the ensuing conversation, poor Job, unknowingly, becomes a pawn in the continuing universal war of good and evil which has now become a power struggle of cosmic interest.

The Serpent – does not give up -  until he has proposed and customized a "trauma design" to break Job. Fortunately after suffering amazing losses, Job does not "curse God" and die, as his wife suggests, but comes out the stronger for it because he chooses to remain loyal to the goodness of  God and the plan of forgiveness.
 
Through this story and many others, I have gained a new respect for the individualized and designed trauma that I see in myself and others. Life is not just a fun game of competition of who is more traumatized – this is a life and death struggle for everyone.
 
No one seems to be spared.
 
We need to exercise trauma compassion realizing there should be no hierarchy in victimization. At some point and in some way we are all victimized - and we need each other to survive. The learning here is that we need to continue to practice forgiveness and compassion when we see others struggling in their custom-designed trauma. 

Trauma fractures comprehension as a pebble shatters a windshield. The wound at the site of impact spreads across the field of vision, obscuring reality and challenging belief. - Jane Leavy


 

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The Ultimate Challenge

1/22/2023

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 I think I had just started as program director with MCC Victims’ Voice when I was asked out for coffee by a stranger who wanted to know how to forgive. Forgiveness was  now part of my job description = so I accepted.
 
I remember his hollow eyes of pain.
 
We talked for about an hour as I tried to explain how forgiveness had given us freedom.
 
Then he said, “I can see that there is a difference between you and me and my loss isn’t even as severe as yours.”
 
When I asked him what the difference was he said that I believed in –“life thereafter”  He didn't.
 
I nodded. It is the essence of forgiveness - that there is "life after loss.”
 
He shrugged. “I don’t have that kind of faith.”
 
I think that is when I realized that I couldn’t persuade anyone to forgive.
 
Forgiveness is a crazy idea. It’s counter-intuitive! It has the same senselessness as the idea that we combat small pox by inoculating ourselves with the virus that threatens to harm us in the first place. It is like the idea of chemo therapy.
  
In forgiveness we fight fear with fear. We give up the fear- based natural primal instincts to survive – fight, flight, freeze and frenzy – because we fear the on going irresponsible trauma they create.
 
It’s the hardest thing to witness a person in “fight mode.”  Anger consumes them – “I have rights” they will announce to the world. “I am victim see me roar!” They will say, “I am defending my moral goodness,” again and again as they carelessly  and viciously destroy what is around them and create more victims. Forgiveness means learning to subdue these fierce emotions so as not to victimize others.
 
It’s hard to watch others in flight mode – wanting to leave the danger behind and find a safe place. They are in such a panic to escape their fears they can’t identify the real threat - especially when the real threat remains inaccessible or even invisible. They choose to flee the trigger rather than the enemy. They will choose any trigger usually someone safe, someone in their proximity and someone who isn’t perfect, vilifying them - often their unsuspecting partner. family and friends.  Good marriages are broken - good relationships are destroyed - because of the need to flee anything that triggers the memories of the pain.
 
Then there are those who succumb to the power of their pain and let it rule their live. Somehow, they make friends with their pain and make it work for them. They are the broken victim that no longer remain invested in life. They make shrines of their pain and hide in their pain. By withdrawing from life, they are immobilized and can no longer contribute to the greater good. They are consumers of pain. They choose co-dependency. 
 
Finally there are those who are just confused by it all, caught in the complexity of their pain. They are in a panic and have no idea what do with it. They can’t turn off their minds. They resort to finding other ways to escape. There is no reasoning with them as they scale that impossible mountain just for the thrill of it all - just to lose themselves in the thrill of the moment. They become accustomed to risk and choose to live on the precipice – addicted to it. They choose addictions as a way to escape - anything to escape.
 
All of these can be good coping skills when used with studied thought and forgiveness, but if they remain survival driven they become fiercely dysfunctional - bordering on mental illnesses.
 
I have seen them all played out in the parents of murdered children and other heart breaks.
 
Forgiveness requires the faith and hope that there is a life thereafter. It requires that we avoid the survival mode - abandon the fight, flight, freeze and frenzy of trauma. It requires that we become more afraid of the reactive trauma than the heart break – and wait for the initial survival fear to subside…. until sanity returns.
 
I still find it remarkable. That both Cliff and I, decided on the alternative – and that it lasted all these years.
 
I attribute it to four forgiveness decisions we made that first year… which I hope to explore.

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men and women are afraid of the light. Plato

 
 
 
 
 
 

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Trains keep rolling

1/20/2023

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As I'm sitting on my sofa watching a Joyce Meyer podcast, I glance out the the window and notice something snaking through the buildings on the west side of my ninth floor view - the industrial side of the city. It's moving slowly. I get up for a better view. It's a train -  rolling through the city.. My view is complete -  it now has a train.

My first train ride was when I was eight and my father - always the explorer - decided to ride into Squamish on one of the first trains connecting the town with Vancouver. During my three years in Bethany, a cluster of us BC students rode the train to the school, crossing the Rockies at least four times each year.  During our first year of marriage, Cliff regaled me with his porter stories. When we moved into our first house on Herbert Ave here in Winnipeg, we were warned that the trains passing so close to the house would disturb us, but they didn't. I loved the rumble of the trains. As I prayed for Candace that fateful night so long ago -- i remember the steady stream of trains passing by our front window. They were awake while everyone else in the city was sleeping.

Joyce Meyer is telling her story about suffering incestuous sexual abuse for thirteen years as a helpless teenager and how her journey of forgiveness saved and transformed her life. "A just God means that he turns every wrong doing into something good- if we through faith and forgiveness put it into his hands." She goes on to describe the rewards of her  journey of forgiveness. She truly became a remarkable mentor for all women.

I watch the train, I watch the busses. I watch the red lights of an emergency vehicle race down Pembina Hwy. The view still intrigues me. Even though I thought I had seen everything by now, I am still noticing new things each day.

In the same way my view of forgiveness has grown over the years. It's become even more important. Perhaps I need to explore this "golden glue" again from this view - my winter years of life.

"A well-ordered life is like climbing a tower; the view halfway up is better than the view from the base, and it steadily becomes finer as the horizon expands."  - William Lyon Phelps

(For the next while, I will explore the Golden Glue - weekdays and take my weekends off. Hopefully we can be inspired together to keep on refining forgiveness - this life-giving process.)




 

 


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Forgiveness - the Golden Glue

1/18/2023

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This morning only the gold lights are visible - shining through the shrouded city line. There is something about gold .... 

“Gold is forever. It is beautiful, useful, and never wears out. Small wonder that gold has been prized over all else, in all ages, as a store of value that will survive the travails of life and the ravages of time.” — James Blakeley.

Forgiveness is golden. Put it together with glue and it is magical.  It is Golden Glue!

This term, Golden Glue, is loosely taken from the Japanese art of Kintsugi.
 
According to art historians, kintsugi, a unique art form, was initiated when the 15th-century shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa broke his favorite tea bowl and sent it to China for repairs. He was extremely disappointed when it came back stapled together. The metal pins were unsightly. So he had some local craftsmen came up with a solution — they filled the cracks with a golden lacquer, making the bowl even more valuable. It honored the bowl’s unique history by emphasizing, not hiding, the breaks.
 
I believe that in the same way the act of forgiveness is like this art form.  With a touch of new and unexpected generosity, forgiveness can transform our brokenness into something creative making it more rare, beautiful, and storied than the original.
 
Life happens, bad things happen. Life breaks us, shatters us and then expects us to put ourselves together. Even after healing - our brokenness, our mistakes, our fallibility remain exposed – no matter what we do.
 
So instead of putting ourselves together with unsightly staples of rusted resentments, we can put ourselves together l with gold like the kintsugi crafters did so long ago. By using the golden glue of forgiveness, we too can turn our brokenness into opportunities to be worked with, not shames to be hidden. This way no experience is wasted.

“My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it.” ― John Gardner
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Sprinkled with city lights

1/18/2023

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The snow clouds have moved on. In the distant horizon I can see the sprinkling of city lights and am surprised at the different colours. There are a row of red lights next to a row of light blue. But mainly the lights are different shades of white from yellowish to snow white. Their message to me is that together the lights of the city have the power to change the night sky into a soft umbrella of light grey that glows. 

I'm into teaching my courses on life-writing - courses that are all about words. I was also seeing clients last night as a therapist - and there too its all about words.

We exist in our bodies as we live out our lives here on earth but we have a choice to live in another realm as well - in our words. Even God chooses to live through words. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

This morning since I'm immersed in words -- I see the similarities between the sprinkle of city lights on the horizon and the sprinkling of words I am encouraging others to write out in their assignments.

Those words have the power to live beyond their immediate sphere of influence. Those living words can be seen from afar and even have the power to light up the night sky. "Words have more power than atom bombs." -Pearl Strachan Hurd

"My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see." -Joseph Conrad


"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless." -Mother Teresa





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Forgiveness View

1/17/2023

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It isn't only the view of the city that keeps changing, my view of 'forgiveness' has changed over the years as well. 

Today my calendar reminded me that this is the anniversary of the day the police found Candace's body so many years ago..... I remember it as  the night we chose to forgive...

You might recall the story - I've told it over and over again. Once the media broke the news that Candace's body had been found, our house was filled with friends coming to comfort us. Later that evening, after most of our friends had left, a stranger, whose daughter had been murdered as well, came to tell us what to expect next. Still in shock ourselves, we invited him in for a piece of pie.  Then for two hours, sitting at our kitchen table nibbling at his piece of pie, he described in detail the horrors of  the aftermath of murder.

He certainly accomplished what he had set out to do!  After he left, Cliff and I climbed the stairs to our bedroom. As we were going to climb into our bed - we couldn't - the trauma our stranger had talked about was on our bed. Weary and exhausted, we needed to reclaim our bed so we  resorted to the only weapon we knew to stave off the horrors of murder. Together we agreed that we would "forgive." We actually confronted our fears and told the trauma that we would forgive.  It worked - the trauma presence left. It actually hopped off the bed - and we were able to climb  into our soft bed  for a much needed sleep.

Our simple conclusion was that the the word "forgiveness" had an amazing power - and thereafter, we drew it out as our weapon whenever we encountered even the hint of trauma.

Now in hindsight, I still marvel. First of all that we had the presence of mind to use the word and, secondly, that it had the power to remove the presence of trauma off of our bed.  

But now as a therapist, I have a better understanding. Books on the subject such as the "The Body keeps the Score" by  Bessell Van Der Kolk and other books on trauma shed light on what we were encountering.

However none of this was identified or researched at the time.

It was the age old Biblical principal of "forgiveness" that came to our rescue.  

On this, the anniversary of our choice to forgive all those years ago, I want to again pay homage to that old worn out concept - so often misunderstood -  that saved our mental health and our lives.

May forgiveness continue to thrive and make this a better world. 

Trauma is a fact of life. It does not, however, have to be a life sentence. - Peter A. Levine

 

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    "W", the first letter of my name, stands for writing, walking, wondering, wandering, winning, wincing,  and for Wilma,  This is an invitation to come walk, write, wander with me!

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