Kimberly Gregoire Berry

Kim Berry was born in Texas to a military family and proceeded to travel and see the world as brief steppingstones of discovery as so many military kids do! A pilgrimage that was exciting and new and sad and full of goodbyes to good friends and a passing letter of remembrance. Forcing your parents to travel to Arles to see where van Gogh painted was an essential victory that yielded a life-long love of the world of art and experience and the seeds of action and process. Cursed with an operation that broke her legs at the tender aga of twelve, she experienced the pain and suffering of scars that would last a lifetime but made her heart larger and more empathetic to all those around her. A climber of trees and naturally athletic, she was skilled at babysitting a beloved sister and acquiring nut brown tans and the Maryland skill of picking crabs.

She found love in a college in Ashland and stayed to find her worth in art and shared it with hundreds of students in a nearby county, where she was a teacher…of the year! She taught her precious arts to many who found her their best and sometimes only friend. Able to organize chaos with ease and appreciate the nuance of a fine wine and a formidable yoga pose in the same afternoon, she loved to laugh at her husband’s jokes and shared a love of books with her daughter!

A walker of a blue-eyed dog and a maker of books, a photographer of a small town and its neighborhoods of trees and windows, she tracked her seasons and loves. At rest, she joins the landscape of her alma mater and helps bring poetry and reflection to those who stop and smell the clean air and the sounds of time passing. A wanderer is found and is forever with old friends and memories.

"When the cloud is no longer in the sky. It doesn't mean the cloud has died. The cloud is continued in other forms like rain or snow or ice. So, you can recognize your cloud in her new forms. If you are very fond of a beautiful cloud and if your cloud is no longer there, you should not be sad. Your beloved cloud might have become the rain, calling on you, ‘darling, darling, don’t you see me in my new form?’ And then you will not be stuck with grief and despair. Your beloved one continues always."

~ Thich Nhat Hanh