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When Dr. Norman E. Rosenthal left his home in South Africa years ago he turned to poetry without fully realizing he was coping.
“Toward the end of medical school, I was going to leave home, to leave my family behind," Rosenthal recalled. “I had my life, my young son – I had everything in front of me. I denied and minimized the pain of the people I was leaving behind.
“It was this poem ('[Traveler, your footprints]' by Antonio Machado) that was like a lightning rod that conducted those feelings to a deep part of my psyche.”