Women, Resilient Women (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781986042055)

Pat Durmon was born in 1944 in Little Rock, Arkansas, and raised in North Little Rock and Monticello, Arkansas. Between the ages of 18 and 30, she worked as a waitress, beautician, and teacher. She married and had two sons. When she was 38, she took classes in counseling at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Arkansas. After earning a counseling degree, she and a friend opened a private mental health counseling practice together, the first counseling practice in Jonesboro. She counseled there for 15 years, then moved to Norfork, Arkansas. Durmon opened a counseling practice in Mountain Home, Arkansas, and worked for five more years. During three of those years, she would read and write poems when a client failed to show up. She retired from counseling when she was 57 and began writing in earnest. Pat Durmon became one of the cofounders of Free Verse Poetry Group in Mountain Home, Arkansas. She has received the Sybil Nash Abrams Award and the P.R.A. Merit Award given by the Poets of the Roundtable of Arkansas. She has four collections of poetry: Women, Resilient Women; Push Mountain Road; Lights and Shadows in a Nursing Home; and Blind Curves. In addition to writing, Durmon facilitates a support group for those who have loved ones with failing mental health issues. She also serves as hostess of a retreat cabin near her home for those looking for solitude and God-time. Durmon has been a speaker and workshop leader on the forgiveness process, parenting, stress management, and free verse poetry.