While many of Margaret Steggles` poems are vivid celebrations of life, of new dawnings and opportunities and the strange beauty of seascapes and the night sky, there is a darker underlying theme - that of escape from the tyranny of the past. As a nurse, wife and mother, the poet clearly found she was living in another`s shadow, and was never able to know herself. As she says, she was `lost beneath the labels` and seemed to belong to someone else. `When Our Children Leave the Nest` is a revealing piece that will strike chords with many parents, and was perhaps a catalyst for the writer`s assertion of her own identity. Maybe these poems of hope, renewal and rediscovered purpose in life can help us too as we enjoy them.