Who am I ?

I'm Toon Callewaert, just a man like many others.

I live in Belgium, a nice friendly country in the center of Europe.
I'm a widower, 57 years young, and for persons interested in measurements: 6.1 ft tall, 180 lb..Not so long ago a started a new promising relationship.
Since 1966 I'm working as a psychologist in child and youth guidance.
In my personal life, two events strongly influenced my life : my wife living with a painful cancer for about 12 years and dying after a long and hard struggle-for-life, and my oldest son becoming severely handicapped after four years of normal start of life.
My son Steven's handicap is a form of epilepsy, called syndrome of Lennox-Gastaut, and intelligence degeneration is typical for it. I found a very interesting maillist of parents of Lennox-Gastaut children, giving each other o lot of practical help and information and above all, support. These list can be found on http://www.egroups.com/community/lennox-g .

I described my way of surviving these situations, and staying positive and optimistic in the poems below.
Writing this poetry on itself was a way of surviving too.
My message to persons in analogue situations is very simple: when you are in the water, you have to swim or drown.
When you can accept the situation, trying to live just a day after another, just tackling each problem as it comes at the moment it comes, you will still have much nice moments in your life. It's my philosophy of life, my simple surviving strategy.