Stumbling Toward Happiness: Haibun and Hybrid Prose

Happiness meditations. The process of growth. Field notes from an inward journey home.

With 111 meditations of interconnected poetry and prose compiled into in 9 chapters, Stumbling Toward Happiness is an all-immersive journey of self-discovery, personal transformation, and triumph that celebrates the personal and enduring center of joy within. Like a diary of inner travel, this third book in its series is rooted in the lived experience that happiness is a journey not a destination.

These elegant Japanese-form hybrid poems, called haibun and tanka prose, combine a rich, lyrical paragraph of spiritual reflection with a haiku, tanka, or other 1-5 line “small stone” poem that expands its meaning.

Informed by the author’s deep contemplation of nature as a scientist and a poet and reminiscent of the reflections of Mark Nepo and Mary Oliver, the book encourages deep soul-searching.

Themes include connection and compassion, the gifts of imperfection, radical forgiveness, the search for happiness and healing, a return to the simple abundance of the inner self, and the awakening that fully inhabits the wonder of the universe and ourselves.

Written with relatable insights, Stumbling Toward Happiness will resonate with every reader as they reflect on their own source of inner wisdom and joy.