Word pictures from a woman's soul: Since the age of twelve, Mary Borhek has been involved with words, either writing her own or editing the words of others. A shattering mid-life divorce opened her to new depths of seeing, and in time, as she writes, a spring opened up within her. Words formed into poems. Before that, prose had been her medium. In these poems we meet a woman who has lived a long and fruitful life. She shares with the reader glimpses of her struggles, her wisdom, her appreciation of beauty, so that she can write, from experience,"Out of the dark loam of suffering, a white narcissus blooms."
About the Author: About the Author: Mary Borhek has been involved with words and writing all her life. When she was 12 she saw her sister reading a teen magazine and decided to submit a story to the magazine. (It wasn't published.) In high school she wrote for and co-edited the school's literary magazine. In college she edited a yearbook and won first prize in a poetry contest. After college and a short stint at the physical testing laboratory at the Bethlehem Steel company she became office manager and assistant editor of two publications of The Moravian Church in America: "The Moravian" and "The Moravian Missionary" (the latter no longer published). At the request of the Mission Board, she researched and wrote a popular history of the second fifty years of the Moravian mission in Nicaragua entitled "Watchmen on the Walls." During this time she also freelanced articles for other religious publications. Then came marriage and three children, and after twenty years a shattering divorce. During these years she did very little writing, keeping a journal only sporadically. Then, in 1975, she discovered her son was gay. To help herself cope with this new reality, she began writing a book that she at first thought would be a record of how she was able to pray her son straight. Instead, the book, "My Son Eric," became a record of how she changed 180 degrees and came to accept her son as he is. A second book, "Coming Out to Parents," followed in 1983. Since their publication, the two books have become classics in their genre. In conjunction with authoring the two books, from 1980 to 1990 Borhek traveled to various parts of the country speaking to groups of gay and lesbian people, parents' groups and religious gatherings, as well as appearing on TV and radio programs. In 1992 she relocated from Minnesota to Pennsylvania-first returning to the Lehigh Valley and then moving to Bucks County. In addition to writing her books, beginning in 1975 and continuing through 1990, Borhek would write a poem now and then. She kept them in a file folder and eventually forgot about them. The discovery of the file folder containing the poems inspired her to write a few more. Now all of these poems have been collected into "I Must Go to the Well: Word Pictures from a Woman's Soul."