I am the author of a poetry chapbook, I Will Meet You at the River, (as Suzannah Gilman), frequent traveler, and a licensed attorney who represented victims of domestic violence under a grant from the U.S. Dept. of Justice Office on Violence Against Women. My poetry, essays, fiction, and nonfiction have in such in such publications as The Florida Review, Pearl Magazine, Calyx Journal, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Pearl Magazine, Prick of the Spindle, Slow Trains, The Cafe Review, and The Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry. I competed in flash fiction slams, winning every time. I won Literary Death Match on my 50th birthday. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry, I now concentrate on blogging for The Gloria Sirens and writing fiction. I have four children, four daughters-in-law, and four grandchildren. I live with my husband, the poet Billy Collins, in Florida.
All over the world, sisters, mothers, daughters, grandmothers, nieces, neighbors, and friends– and some of their men– stood together to say “Not today, patriarchy!” We were lucky enough to be in D.C. at the heart of it all, part of a human hive humming through the jam-packed streets, shoulder-to-shoulder and hip-to-hip. Democracy looks like THIS!
The Facebook post of a friend, asking others to share their New Year’s Resolutions, reminded me of what I’d decided last January. I’d add one thing to my advice: congratulate yourself on […]
My last Christmas letter was written a few years ago. My daughter, a freshman in high school then, read my letter and then wrote a spoof letter. When she read hers to her big brothers they laughed and laughed. I realized that my own children, who once thought the letters were special, had matured enough to know the letters were ridiculous while I, who should have long since outgrown the need to write them as a way of making myself feel better about my life, was still taking them seriously.
I have four children, all adults in their twenties now, one about to turn thirty, one married, one getting married in January, and the other two in serious relationships with […]
There is the art of writing letters, and then there is the art of writing Christmas letters, which hardly anyone masters. To write Christmas letters, a person will ideally have a highly-refined sense of how much […]
Don’t tell her what to do; talk to her and listen. Offer your help, but understand that to leave or not to leave is her decision. Respect it. And tell her you respect her.
Acknowledge the pain and turmoil she is in, most especially the emotional turmoil. If she doesn’t leave him, don’t give up on her leaving him. Give her love, respect, support, and time. It’s going to take all of that.
As I listen to the commentary and interviews in broadcast media and read op-ed pieces about the recent stabbings and shootings, I struggle to accept the truth: there but for some sort of grace goes my family. We could have been chasing after my mother on a paranoid spree of violence. We could any day be the victims of someone else’s unstable loved one. So could you. How do we face such a threat? How do we diffuse the ill, who are so often victims themselves.
Bananas that have even one brown spot? Off limits. Nothing that has started to ferment goes into my mouth. Wine is fermented, I say. “Yeah. You’re not drinking any wine. Or beer. Or any alcohol of any type except for potato vodka,” which was something I had never heard of, and neither have most bartenders in the world, I have since found out. “Also no chocolate, and I might as well tell you right now, no bacon, either.” You have to have a lot of guts to tell a woman she can’t have wine, chocolate, or bacon, all in one breath. Turns out this woman is ex-Navy. That explains it. Good thing she didn’t mention the prohibition of tequila right then, because I am an ex Navy wife and we might have had a throw-down.
Ignoring the voices of women perpetuates rape culture. But the latest news about Donald Trump isn’t being reported, except in The Huffington Post by Lisa Bloom, an attorney and a legal analyst for NBC News and AVVO. Bloom reports that a federal lawsuit has been filed against Donald Trump by a Jane Doe, alleging he raped her in 1994 when she was just 13 years old. (This, by the way, isn’t the first time Donald Trump has been accused of rape, Ms. Bloom reports in detail.)
Get your head out of that phone. Be the realest thing around. Stop and look up. This is your “one wild and precious life.” Take it all in.
The Gloria Sirens 