My Good Karma with Animals, by Bridgette Leigh

Poetry, chapbook, 32 pages, from Bottlecap Features. Bridgette Leigh’s debut chapbook, My Good Karma with Animals, explores, from both the foundation of spiritual knowledge, based in yoga and chanting mantras, and the foundation of therapy and recovery, the relationship between herself and animals that she’s come across in her life. How animals have befriended her, helped her, been her guides. She then dives into the nature of human love, and relationships, marriage, divorce, widowhood, and then, childhood, mother and daughter, mother and offspring, both animal and human alike. The ferocious mother, the divine mother, the protective mother, are recurring themes in this work. Themes also appear of death, destruction, trauma, renewal, reincarnation, beauty and miracles, resiliency and survival. The light that comes down from the Higher Order of things. The light within things. Within animals and our connections with them. The mercy that uplifts us, between humans, between species. Touching on what it means to be alive, working and loving, within the wheel of Karma, the sphere, the globe of Mother Earth. Bridgette Leigh was born in Hollywood, Los Angeles, in 1978. When she was six years old, she moved to Sacramento, Northern California with her parents after they disengaged from a religious organization where they had worked in Hollywood. In Sacramento, she grew up on swim team and loved the pool. She later got married in Brazil in 2006 and lived there until her husband passed away in 2010. Then, she relocated to New York City in 2012, where she graduated from CUNY Hunter College in 2019 with a BA in English and a minor in psychology. She is a painter, drawer, an actress in the occasional off broadway theater production, and is currently focusing much energy into song writing and performing as a folk/indie pop singer working on her first album. She is a practitioner of yoga and chanting mantras in a devotional Vedic spiritual line, for over twenty years. She is vegetarian as part of her spiritual path, and she loves animals of all kinds. Bridgette is a resilient survivor of domestic violence, and generational trauma issues. She currently lives with her cat, and works in university administration. This chapbook is Bridgette Leigh’s debut publication. You can connect with her via instagram at bridgette_into_the_mystic