Update on Postpartum & Reading in Everett

In my last blog (News page) I reported that I was in a fog of book birth postpartum depression. I’m still in that fog, but my sleep has been improving, so now with full nights of sleep I’m beginning to see some light. It’s been a rough spring with my book coming out and my mother’s death in February. In August I’m traveling east to meet with my sister and bury my mother’s ashes. The visit to the area I grew up will be an emotional journey. Mom will be buried in Fosterdale, the town where her grandmother, my great grandmother, lived her life on a farm that we went to each summer for years. It’s just down the road from Kenoza Lake where I grew up and lived until my father died in 1964. Also, I will see my uncle’s grave for the first time. He rasied me after my father died. When he was buried in 1989 I had just received my HIV diagnosis and chose to not take the trip to his funeral, so this will be the culmination of that loss as well. As I wrote in one of my poems in my book truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, each loss stirs all other losses.

One would think that with the traveling I’m doing to the east coast I might set up readings. But with my book birth postpartum I don’t have the energy to coordinate or navigate what it would take to read on another coast. I would love to read in the assortment of cities I’ll be visiting, but it is likely not going to happen.

Coming up is one more big reading in Everett, WA at Cafe Zippy on Thursday, June 22nd. The artist, Duane Kirby Jensen, who did the artwork on the cover of truth be bold emcee’s this reading series. I am so grateful for his artwork which is on two of my books. This reading gives guest readers a full 30 plus minutes to read, so it is a reading series well worth the drive north and I plan to read the opening poem in my book, which is a meditation. I hope to see some familiar faces in the audience.

Here are the details: Address: Cafe Zippy, 1502 Rucker Ave, Everett, WA 98201, Time: 7 PM, Open Mike time available so please bring something to read. Please come out and hear me read.