I am a writer and community organizer in the process of moving back to Lansing, Michigan, after a year-and-a-half in Belgium. Journals and poetry became fixtures in my life by the age of 12. I continue to develop my craft by instinct and interaction with writers.
During my university studies – an undergraduate degree in linguistics, and a graduate degree in community literacies – I worked as an educator. I continue to see my artistic and community-oriented work through an educational lens, especially at events that facilitate the exchange of life stories.
In the past and present, hope has inspired me to break oppressive silences. Alliance across difference also inspires me: standing with others to enact equity and justice. This spiritual-practical commitment is embodied in public speech, artistic performance, and community organizing.
I am grateful for life’s lessons taught in varied ways: peace advocacy, networks of women writers, the prevention of violence against women, testimonies to heal the trauma of violence. I am grateful to my teachers – allies of hope – linked by hand, by vision, by spirit.
My ancestors – Cherokee, Irish, Prussian – are rooted in the northern hemisphere, and I was raised on the homeland of the Anishinabeg in an European-named town DeWitt, Michigan, USA.
Of my grandparents, I best knew my mom’s mom Margaret. A Depression child who graduated college and married a dairy farmer, she became a full-time teacher after having four children. During retirement and widowhood, she volunteered in many organizations. Grandma always absorbed knowledge.
My mother Peggy was a high-school honor student and basketball player who first attended college while working full-time. She persevered the challenges of single-parenting willful kids and caring for her aging mother. I still learn from her strength, quiet firm manner, and great sense of humor.
My father Mill was a second-generation tool-and-dye man who loved playing trumpet and swimming. He inherited both his father’s charm and alcoholism. In his final years, he stopped drinking and mended some family fences. My love of words partly comes from him; he was a poet.
