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Sidonamarie
My poetry has been my therapy over the years. In 1993, I experienced an unusual traumatic event. Over the years, poetry has helped me sort things out. I have always had a strong spiritual nature th...view moreMy poetry has been my therapy over the years. In 1993, I experienced an unusual traumatic event. Over the years, poetry has helped me sort things out. I have always had a strong spiritual nature that is balanced by strong doubt. During periods of tremendous confusion, my poetry (sometimes more like stories, my son thinks) has helped me remember who I am, how I feel, and what I think and always have since childhood. The theme I hope comes through is that we should not have our heads too far in the clouds or too deep in the dirt. Life exists as a balance somewhere in the middle, with little visits to both edges.
For all fifty-six years of my life, I have lived in Michigan. I was born in Kalamazoo on September 16, 1958. My parents separated when I was young due to my mother’s mental illness. My dad died in 1965, at twenty-nine, from a cerebral hemorrhage. I was six when he passed. Grandma Peggy (my dad’s mother) went to court seven times over the course of one and a half years to fight for my younger sister, Kim, who was mentally impaired, and me because my dad had asked her to. She won custody of us. Consequently, I lived with her in Bangor, Michigan, through high school and college.
I didn’t begin to write poetry until I went to live with my aunt (my mother’s sister) in Wartervliet, Michigan. There, I attended Lake Michigan College in Benton Harbor. My aunt lived near my mother and her mother (Grandma Elsie). After two years there, I attended Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. I graduated with a bachelor of arts in English and a minor in elementary education.
Right out of college, in the fall of 1984, I was hired at St. Mary’s in Paw Paw, Michigan, as a kindergarten teacher. I taught half-day kindergarten for one year before I was moved into a full-time first grade position for three years. I met my husband, Gary, during that time. On October 17, 1987, we married. At that time, I moved to Fennville, Michigan, where I live today. Gary and I have a son, twenty-four, and a daughter, nineteen.view less