I walked through a door on Thursday. It was numbered sixty-three and also, I was born in the year of 1963. The symmetry felt significant—not merely coincidence, but an invitation to pay attention.

Before laying my head on my pillow that night, I went outside with Amber to spy the full moon. The sky was crowded with clouds, and the moon was hidden from view. In our backyard with my daughter by my side, I made one final birthday request. “Dear Moon, let us see your full beauty on this auspicious night.” Right before our eyes, the clouds shifted. The moon showed herself in full bright splendor.

Full moon, August 27, 2026

I turned to Amber. “Did you see that?” “Yes, I did,” she said. My final birthday wish of the day had been granted. It felt as if we were standing before a portal—a doorway opening into a new chapter, one filled with dreams coming true.

Later, as I lay in bed, I thought again about turning sixty-three in the year I reached the number of my birth year: 1963. Then another connection came to me. My twins, Amber and Celeste, are thirty-six until September 5. Thirty-six: the reversal of sixty-three. Then I remembered that my mother was born in 1936. There they were again: 63 and 36, turning and returning, reflecting one another across generations.

I do not know what all these mathematical repetitions mean. I do not need to force an interpretation. It is enough, for now, to notice. To remain aware and open. To recognize a milestone when it presents itself and to move through life in a meaningful manner.

My mother, my daughters, and I are connected. There is a cord of strength and resilience passed from one generation to another: mother to daughter, daughter to daughters. That cord has morphed, but it has not broken. It has carried us through illness, grief, disappointment, change, and joy. These relationships are not happenstance. They feel purposeful, indelible, and precious.

My birthday brunch at Between the Trees with Mama and Amber

Anyone who knows me knows how deeply I value my familial ties. I understand myself not only as an individual, but as part of a lineage. I am my mother’s daughter. I am Amber and Celeste’s mother first and foremost that comes before anyone. I appreciate friends who recognize that bond and made space for my daughters and who have treated them with kindness and care. A way to get endear yourself to me is to take an interest in my children and my grandchildren. The opposite is also true.

This birthday feels significant in ways that even the decade birthdays did not. Sixty-three holds the specialness of the in-between. It is not a number the world tells us to anticipate, yet it arrived carrying its own mystery.

Perhaps that is the nature of a portal. It does not always announce itself with trumpets. Sometimes it appears in a number. Sometimes in the opening of clouds. Sometimes in the full face of the moon. Sometimes in the sudden recognition that the women who came before us and those who came through us are traveling within us still.

There is beauty in symmetry. It is written in the numbers. I believe our birthdates carry light, just as the stars carry ancient stories in their formations. I believe there are moments when the visible and invisible draw close—when life asks us to pause at the threshold and recognize that we are entering something new.

On this birthday, I honor all that I know and all that I do not know. I honor my mother, my daughters, and the sacred cord between us. I honor the moon that revealed herself. I am a child of the Universe.

I honor the doorway opening before me. And with gratitude, wonder, and expectation, I step through.

On Saturday, my alma mater, Erskine College, honored me with a birthday brunch last Saturday. My birthday is not until tomorrow, August 27, but we invited friends and family to gather and witness the Of Beauty & Backbone exhibition at the Bowie Arts Center before it closes on September 30.

It was a beautiful celebration, and I am grateful for everyone who could attend. Kayli Hibbard, the exhibition’s curator and one of its artists, welcomed us all. Then my daughter Amber recited this tribute poem.

Her words humbled me and made me proud all at once. I thought I would share them with you.

Daughter of Poetry (I Was Always Listening)

by Amber Sherer

Mom, wow.

Matter of miracles, weaver of words—
Every poem I dedicate to you
starts the same way:

To my mother who taught me
it was okay to play with my words,
but sit back and listen
to how our soliloquies roll off the tongue
like honey into a jar.

Alone in front of a mic,
my metaphors and similes ease in sync.
My feet are shoulder-width apart.
The baritone of my voice come
from my diaphragm.

My mother, my Commander-in-Chief,
taught me how to command a space,
how to transform the atmosphere
with the sound of my voice because
“Nerds Rule!”

The spiral from the ear canal: my birth center.
My Amazing Grace meets medulla oblongata.

It is why I know poetry has three lives:

When you read it like a rainbow.
When you write it like iambic pentameter.
And when you speak it like sonnets from an amphitheater.

So, prose sometimes lies dead to the Poet’s Society.
Those others flatline, and it will be my mother’s breath
that gives life to words that become worlds
to the youth and anyone else listening—

creating safe spaces, allowing STEAM to RISE
like the little engine that could.

I think I can, I think I can.
I know I can, I know I can.

Allow my soul to speak,
to grow in her garden like gardenias, gladiolas—
Blooming Anyhow, frequently, fragrantly, and furiously.

My mother, the Queen Bee, constantly curating hives
centered around the letter G:

Glenis. Gale. Genius.

The word length growing with grace,
just like her mama, who is magic.

Always was, always will be:

The bee’s knees,
the Queen Bees,
the Divine Creators,
Word Weavers,
Tapestry Makers,

quilting and piecing people together like grandmothers,
using the Almighty’s thread,
making masterpieces in their sleep—

bringing us together like that first poem you heard:

Every day, something has tried to kill you and has failed.

But even cancer had to abort mission
because your name breaks the sound barrier—
breaking glass ceilings
and finally arriving there.

Home. Safe.

So, if you can hear me now, Mommy—

My mom, these are your word bouquets
from your second-born, spiraling like sunflowers.

You are valued.
You are phenomenal.
You are woman.
You are seen.
You are witnessed.
You are Beautiful, and your Best
was always
Good Enough.

What an amazing birthday gift this poem is. I turn 63 years old tomorrow. This gift is precious because it cannot be bought. It had to be grown and cultivated. It is part of our bloodline.

We are a family of artists. We are not always completely understood because we are neither conventional nor conservative, but we live fully from our hearts.

I thank my daughter for her deep listening to me and seeing me. This poem is such a mirror. Maya Amber Sherer you are my beautiful and fierce daughter of words, named after Maya Angelou—you are a word wonder. You are poet in your own right. Thank you for these poetic blooms. Thank you for being fully present.

I love you. Thank you for my flowers. You help me to Bloom Anyhow!

I am grateful for these flowers from Shauna and C on the left. The flowers from the French Nursery from my mother. I received more bouquets from Erin Knight and Yvette Murray. My arms are overflowing. Y’all know how I love my flowers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Write With Me

If this poem inspires you, write a poem for someone you feel called to uplift. Offer them their flowers in words. Tell them how you have witnessed their life, their gifts, and their becoming.

I write poems from a necessary and urgent place. Some of these poems make it into publication; most of them remain in journals. Yes, I have eight books of poetry. Those books are vehicles through which the poems travel into the world.

Someone may purchase a book and read it at their leisure. Or someone might attend a poetry reading and hear my words. Either way, I am not always sure how the words land. In many ways, that part is not up to me. The poem has a life of its own.

In my days as a counselor, I remember the tenets I would share with my clients:

1. Show up.

2. Speak your truth.

3. Do your best.

4. Do not become attached to the outcome.

In many ways, I have lived my life in this manner. It has helped me remain engaged with life without becoming too devastated by loss.

However, this week, I was surprised to be contacted by Sage Aspyn Short. She sent me her master’s thesis, “Caroline”: Deviance in Southern Women’s Poetry, in which she examines my books What My Hand Say and The Listening Skin.

Her abstract reads:

Deviance in Southern women’s poetry can be characterized by uncertainty, religious images, and through the telling of stories often unheard of, forgotten, or erased, like racial and gendered violence. Glenis Redmond’s poetry in The Listening Skin and What My Hand Say both explore Southern womanhood alongside race, history, violence, illness, and legacy, among other themes and topics. In Caroline: Poems some deviances include religious metaphors alongside obsessive compulsive disorder, excessive cursing from a woman speaker, and historical graveyard musings. Critical texts about lyric theory and voice provide some background and historical significance to be used in this contemporary study and practice of what the voice of deviance looks like in Southern women’s poetry.

The thesis opens with an epigraph from my poem “How I Summer (Read Simmer),” published in The Listening Skin:

My heart, a bruised peach especially at Myrtle Beach.

Steeped in South Carolina’s weighted history I keep reliving.

—Glenis Redmond, “How I Summer (Read Simmer),” from The Listening Skin

Seeing my own words at the threshold of her work moved me. She did not merely read the poems. She entered through them.

Short writes: However, the main texts that lent me new insight into South Carolina were the poetry manuscripts What My Hand Say and The Listening Skin by Glenis Redmond.

Using Glenis Redmond’s What My Hand Say and The Listening Skin as the first two poetry collections I read in preparation for writing about Southern womanhood. Self-described as a bi-Carolinian, Redmond’s poetry takes the past and present racial violence and abuses of the South and creates new stories from the archive of stories or, as someone like M. NourbeSe Philip might describe as she did for her collection Zong!, unstories or stories that cannot be told (Philip 190).

For my thesis, I encountered Southern women’s voices diversely, but Redmond’s aligned most closely with me in the way that I want to dig into South Carolina. Redmond’s genius has influenced my attempt at navigating historical and modern Southern women’s deviance through a spirited remembrance of the past while delicately balancing the intimacy of the present in poetry.

This deviance can look like many embodiments, such as giving voice to the dead, retelling stories with inventive metaphors, or creating new narratives about the self and the impacts from the past on the self, like generational trauma, ancestry, and legacy.

To be called a genius is humbling. What moves me even more is that Short understands what I have long tried to do: look unflinchingly into the history of the South while holding close the intimate lives shaped by it.

I am thankful for Short thinking deeply about her own life and using poetry to push back, to accompany her through her challenges, to speak up, and to grow. I am glad she has found poetry that helps her do that.

I write from South Carolina’s weighted history. I also write from my own body, my family, my memory, and the stories that came before me. I write to remember what has been dismembered.

When I send a book of poetry into the world, I cannot follow it everywhere it goes. I cannot sit beside each reader or explain what I meant. I cannot control how deeply someone listens—or whether they listen at all.

I can only show up. Speak my truth. Do my best. Then release the outcome. But every now and then, the poem sends word back.

This week, through Sage Aspyn Short’s thoughtful scholarship, I was allowed to see where some of my words landed. She listened. She looked deeply. She followed the poems into the history, the hurt, the intimacy, and the legacy.

The poems had been living a life beyond me.

What a gift to learn that someone was listening. I wish this poet-scholar well as she forges her own path. I am thankful that she reached out to let me know about her scholarship and creative work.

Have a great day. I am off to speak to Girls Who Hike on top of a mountain. May you find the bright spots in your life that allow you to bloom anyhow!

Lil Glenis, Grade 3 Carter Lake Elementary, Tacoma, Washington

I went for my six months oncology check-up yesterday. It was a good appointment. No, bad news. I will take it. I always take a little trip into the Gibbs Cancer Center gift shop after. The woman running the shop asked me if I was in radio. She said, “Your voice.”

I told her, “No. I am a poet.”…

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Forgive the briefness of this post. It’s all I got and I am exhausted.

I am exhausted by the recent deaths of Tasia Fortune, a 29-year-old Black mother of four found hanging from a tree behind a vacant home in Jackson, Mississippi, and Demartravion “Trey” Reed, a 21-year-old Black student found hanging from a tree on the campus of Delta State University. I am exhausted by the death of Professor Jason Arday, Cambridge’s youngest-ever Black professor, after the intense public scrutiny surrounding him. They stay lynching us—literally and figuratively. This is not an exaggeration, now or then.

And still, we live.

In the midst of it, we do what we do: tend to our aging mothers, hold down the homestead, care for our families, go to work, make art. Still find ways to make way for birthdays.

No more than most, but different from the mainstream, who never have to consider race and hate on a daily basis.

A white person, well-meaning, asked me how we do this with grace. Asked me why we revere our ancestors in a way white people do not. I simply responded: It is not a question for me to answer. That is on him and them.

Turning to Black people and continually asking us to do the emotional labor is really an interesting move. Asking us to explain racism, explain our survival, explain our ancestors, explain what white people should do about what white people created.

It is not up to us. It is up to those who perpetrate it.

And still, we live. We love. We laugh. We raise our children. We make art. We tend gardens. We celebrate birthdays. We dance. We gather. We build community. We find beauty. We make joy.

Front yard hummingbird. They flittered as I fancied.

The fact that Black people continue to live full lives and find joy in the face of this kind of hate is nothing short of miraculous. Our joy does not mean we do not see what is happening. Our joy does not mean we are not afraid. Our joy does not mean the violence is not real.

This is my birthday month. I will celebrate. In one hand I will hold beauty and hope. In the other, the atrocities. So, I will go out and witness the hummingbirds in my yard. They settle my nervous system. They are a sign of hope. They tell me not to give in.

I am no longer entertaining friends or people who do not witness both. Those who excuse those who literally co-signed for Black people’s demise.

You cannot have it both ways. I will make way for 63.I will find beauty where beauty insists on growing. I will make joy. Because our joy is not ignorance.

Our joy is not denial. Our joy is not permission for anyone to look away.

Our joy means we refuse to surrender our humanity.

I took to the hummingbirds this week and they helped to center me. I am grateful to God. The Universe. Nature for embracing and speaking me back into being.

Taken by me in my front yard. Another way I Bloom Anyhow.

When people talk to me about process, I tell them it is not singular. I research. I read. I write. I live life. I muse and I dream.

In other words, my poetry is swirling all around me organically. Being present to this whirlwind is part of my writing process. I will make you privy to my dream this morning.

Dream #2

I dreamed I was at an outdoor poetry fes…

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Julian is my first grandchild. He has lived with me since he was 18 months old. Along with his mother, my daughter, we have a multigenerational household. This arrangement works beautifully for us.

Julian and I have a bond. I am an active grandparent. I am his Gaga. I am not raising him, but I have a hand in providing for him in any way I can. I am of the belief that every child should have someone outside of their parents who cares for them beyond shelter and discipline.

For me, I feel I exist to make sure Julian gets what he needs, some of what he wants, but also to help him expand that territory—to experience more of the world.

Our South Carolina State Park excursion was the most wonderful journey we have been on together

September 6, 2020. Mt. Pleasant, SC

September 6, 2020 Mt. Pleasant, SC.

Our State Park Journey culminated in New Hampshire, where we had our portrait painted by Danielle Festa with the Aplomb Project unveiled..

Aplomb Gallery,June 2026

The trip to New Hampshire was meaningful, the portrait too because they happened on the cusp of Julian entering middle school. In a country that does not honor those milestones ritualistically except with a certificate and a graduation ceremony, my soul longs for more.

He is no longer that baby who toddled around the house, trying to walk and learning words.

Gaga and Julian, 2017

He is no longer the elementary school student going out into the greater world, learning how to socialize and understand his place in it.

Julian and Gaga March 15, 2024

Julian in full superhero costume, October 26, 2019

May 5, 2023 Julian meeting Jason Reynolds, my friend and the author of many books but this is the Miles Morales Spiderman.

He is on his path to becoming a teenager. Middle school is fraught because there is this mixture of still growing and figuring out one’s placement in the world. I am somewhat saddened because, although I will always be his Gaga guide, he will need me differently on his path.

So, it is I who needs to do the adjusting. I try to be present and let him come to me.

And he still does. Last week, he came downstairs and asked me, “Gaga, can we go see Spider-Man?” I said, “Sure.”

I had no idea how hard it would be to make good on that request because everybody was going to see Spider-Man. On my own, I would not go see Spider-Man. I’m not sure I would even watch it on television when it comes out.

But because it is important to Julian, it is therefore important to me. Anything to have a positive shared memory with him. Julian is the one who taught me how to watch a movie multiple times. During the early part of the pandemic, while I was recovering from high-dose chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant, we watched his favorites upwards of fifty times. At first, I got impatient. Then I leaned into it.

I began to understand: the way I can read a poem fifty times, Julian can watch a movie fifty times. It brings him comfort, yes, but he is also memorizing. He is studying. He is learning the material and discovering its layers.

All the same things I believe about close reading a poem. Each time through, something else reveals itself. A line you missed. A gesture. A joke. A connection. Something that was there all along, waiting for you to notice. Julian taught me that repetition is not always about doing the same thing over and over. Sometimes repetition is a way of going deeper.

We finally got our seats in a packed house for Spiderman. I enjoyed the storyline. What struck me most was watching a young person in transition while sitting beside my own grandchild, who is morphing, too.

He has the beginning of a moustache. His voice is deepening. He can be moody. He prefers spending much of his time alone upstairs, gaming with his friends.

But then, he emerges. And he will include me. My goal is to be present enough to say yes.

Yesterday, while I was sitting on the couch, he went outside, then ran back in and said, “Gaga, it is raining and there is a rainbow.” I went outside, and we captured the moment.

We have captured three rainbows this summer.

I see that as a beautiful sign marking this summer of transition. However, I am a poet. I am prone to thinking everything is an omen or a sign.

Still, three rainbows

New Hampshire, June 2026

.Yesterday, August 2026

I have three grandchildren. Paisley and Quinn live in North Carolina. I don’t get to see them as often, but we build our relationships, too. They are artists and princesses and nature lovers, so we vibe on those levels. One of their favorite people is their big cousin Julian—and vice versa.

Julian looking pensively on the rocks, New Hampshire Coast, 2026

I say all this to say: I am both happy and sad about Julian starting middle school tomorrow. I know it is the right order of things. I am nostalgic and anticipatory at once—for all the ways he once was and for who he will become.

I am so glad we had our summer memories: from New Hampshire to San Diego, from the movies to standing outside in the rain looking at rainbows.

And we have many birthdays to celebrate in the next month: mine–– August 27, his mother’s, his aunt’s––September 5, Julian’s September––13, Quinn’s September 15, and the big one—his great-grandmother, my mother, turns 90 on September 12.

We have much to celebrate. Also, there is much to get in gear for this coming school year.

And there will be more transitions. More growing. More moments when he goes upstairs and closes the door, and more moments when he comes running downstairs to tell me there is a rainbow.

I am learning that being his Gaga at this age may mean knowing when to give him space and knowing when to take to the rainbows outside.

I am looking forward to being present and ready for all the beauty and growth that will spiral before us.

And when he emerges and asks, “Gaga, can we...?” I hope I will be present enough to say yes.

This too––is Blooming Anyhow

Aunt Dot on left. Me on the right. I favor her in so many ways.

I am so far behind on posting. Under the weather I have been. I will spare you the details, but here is my Write with Me Wednesday on Sunday. Late, but nevertheless, here.

This past week I read Joy Harjo’s lovely book, Washing My Mother’s Body: A Ceremony for Grief, with art by Dana Tiger. I…

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Photo Credit: Will Crooks (Town Magazine)

Once, while talking with a stranger—as I often do—we found ourselves discussing our passions. I told him about something my mother once said that revealed more about me than she probably intended. She asked if I had bought any books at the bookstore. “No,” I answered. “I’m broke.” Without missing a beat, she replied, “That’s never stopped you before.”

I laughed out loud because she was exactly right. She had held up a mirror, and there I was—caught. There has almost never been a time in my life when I couldn’t somehow make room for books. I pay my bills, but books have never been optional.

The stranger smiled and said, “That’s quite a romantic notion.” I had never thought of myself as a romantic. But the more I considered it, the more I realized he was right.

Looking back across sixty-two years, I have lived a romantic life—not in the sense of fairy tales or grand love stories, but in believing that beauty deserves a place in everyday living.

As a child, I was both athletic and bookish, happiest wandering the landscape of my imagination. Part of that came from needing places of refuge during difficult seasons of childhood. Books offered alternate worlds. They gave me somewhere safe to land.

I also believe I came into this world predisposed to love beauty.

At six years old, dance became my first language. It gave my feelings somewhere to go before I had words for them. I would carry my portable record player outside, put on a Jackson 5 album, and dance in the driveway until the music stopped. There were no harsh judgments there. No permission required. Only joy.

When home became too heavy, I climbed trees. I sat for hours in the branches listening to birds. Sometimes I settled onto the curb just to watch clouds drift overhead and cars pass by.

Yes, it was escape. But it was also contemplation. Nature became another classroom where I learned how to pay attention. That way of being has never left me.

It followed me into adulthood and is undoubtedly why I became an artist. I built my life as a teaching artist and performance poet—not because it promised security, but because it promised meaning. Over the years, people have questioned that choice.

Once, a friend told me another friend thought my lifestyle wasn’t sustainable. I have always found those moments curious. I hadn’t asked for an opinion on my life, yet someone felt compelled to offer one secondhand, as though practicality were the only measure of a well-lived life. The truth is that my finances have often been unpredictable. That life isn’t for everyone.

But I have always loved the trade-off: the freedom to shape my days around making, teaching, traveling, listening, and writing. I chose a life that allowed imagination to remain at the center.

Beauty has never been separate from that calling.

My home is filled floor to ceiling with art, hung salon-style. Every wall reminds me of artists I admire, places I’ve been, and moments I wanted to remember.

Clothing is another canvas. I love color, texture, bold earrings, unexpected combinations. My style is what I call Afro Carolina—part history, part joy, part self-portrait.Some of this I inherited from my mother. She taught me that beauty belongs in ordinary life.

When our family gathers for the holidays, we eat from her Royal Albert china. More than once, well-meaning relatives have arrived carrying paper plates. Somehow, before my mother even notices, the paper plates quietly disappear. This is my mother’s practice one I observe and carry-on in my own way.

Like the vintage Tiara glassware displayed in my home It was a gift from my mother.. Friends sometimes call them “grandma dishes.” I don’t. They are simply beautiful. They are meant to be seen. To be honored. To remind me that everyday objects can hold memory, craftsmanship, and love. Perhaps that is what I’ve been doing all along. Making the ordinary sacred.

Getting dressed isn’t about impressing anyone. It is another small act of honoring the day, whether I’m headed to a poetry reading, the grocery store, or a doctor’s appointment. Even my casual clothes feel like an extension of who I am.

San Diego California, July 2026

Beauty has never been performance. It has been practice. So yes, perhaps I have always been an odd bird. I love birds. Books. Poems. Paintings. Gardens. Beautiful dishes. Beautiful clothes. Fluevogs.

Beautiful conversations with strangers. Not because these things make life easier. Because they make life deeper. People often associate Find Beauty and Blooming Anyhow with my cancer journey. They certainly became language that helped me name what I was living after my diagnosis with multiple myeloma. But the truth is, they describe a practice I have been cultivating my entire life.

Finding beauty. Blooming anyhow. Those are not responses to illness. They are the way I have always chosen to meet the world.

Long before cancer, I was climbing trees to listen to birds, dancing in the driveway with the Jackson 5, buying books when I probably shouldn’t, setting the table with beautiful dishes, surrounding myself with art, dressing with intention, and believing that beauty belongs in ordinary days.

Beauty has never been a luxury to me. It has been a discipline. A spiritual practice. A way of paying attention. A way of making the ordinary sacred. A way of remaining open to wonder, even when life has given me every reason to close.

For me, it my life is not a romantic notion. There is indeed romance and whimsy, but my walk is intentional. It is about choosing beauty, again and again. It is how I stay connected—to myself, to other people, and to the world. It is how I have always found beauty. It is how I have always bloomed anyhow.

Ocean Beach, San Diego, 2026

Photo Credit: Jack Robert Photography

I have many writing projects in the queue. The top three have my complete and utter attention. I will muse on two. Though separate, they are deeply connected because I am a place-based poet. The land, the people, and the stories refuse to stay in their assigned compartments. They cross-pollinate.

Some days I write by appointment.

I sit down with a clear purpose and an end goal. This morning belongs to my first middle-grade novel in verse, My Life Sounds Like a Poem: Clayton “Peg Leg” Bates, the One-Legged Tapping Sensation. The work asks for discipline. It asks me to return to the page whether inspiration is waiting for me or not.

Other days I write by visitation. I love both types of writing, but adore the mystic of visitations.

A poem arrives unexpectedly. It doesn’t ask permission. It doesn’t care what manuscript is open on my desk. Yesterday, poems for It’s Written in the Name: Fountain Inn Colored High School came one after another. I wasn’t planning to write them. They insisted.

I wonder if all the open tabs on my laptop just simply means I live inside a creative ecosystem.

My Life Sounds Like a Poem and It’s Written in the Name appear to be entirely different books. One tells the story of Clayton “Peg Leg” Bates, the legendary one-legged tap dancer. The other gathers poems from the oral history project surrounding Fountain Inn Colored High School, the Rosenwald school my parents attended.

Fountain Inn Colored High School, Senoir Class Photo, 1954. My mother is on the from row. 2nd from the left. My dad is standing beside her.

Rosenwald Schools were built in the early twentieth century through a partnership between philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and educator Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Institute. More than 5,000 schools, shops, and teachers’ homes were constructed across the South to expand educational opportunities for Black children during segregation. They were not simply schools; they were community-built institutions, often funded through a combination of Rosenwald grants and the labor, fundraising, land, and determination of Black families who believed education was the pathway to freedom and possibility.

My projects are different but highly connected.

Peg Leg Bates attended the very same school my parents would later graduate from. Born in 1907, he left after sixth grade when he lost his leg. Yet he became the school’s most celebrated alumnus, returning again and again to encourage students, performing not only as a world-renowned entertainer but also as a living testament to possibility. His generosity helped provide the Peg Leg Bates Gymnasium—the very space where my father later played piano for the chorus, the glee club, assemblies, and school programs.

One manuscript led me to another. Or perhaps they had always been the same story.

This is what happens when your work is rooted in place. The people know one another. A poem written today may unlock a prose piece tomorrow. An oral history becomes the key to family story which opens into community history. I unearth lineage meant to be erased and forgotten by systemic oppression and eradication.

In my process, nothing stays in its lane. My ducks do not march in a row. They flit, and flutter, but there is magic in how thy morph, a murmuration of sorts.

From the moment I picked up a poet’s pen at thirteen, I have been re-mem-ber-ing my lineage.

Perhaps that is what all my writing has been doing all along. Remembering what’s been dismembered.

Photo taken in Muscat, Oman. 2016

Twenty years ago, I encountered Betye Saar at the North Carolina Museum of Art. The traveling exhibition was Betye Saar: Extending the Frozen Moment.

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I don’t do well with biopsies.

This past Wednesday, I had two biopsies in the dermatologist’s office.

Over the last seven years, I’ve become independent when it comes to medical care. I get blood drawn alone. I get shots and infusions alone. It is nearly impossible to take someone with me every time, nor do I deem it necessary.

I accompany my mother to her appointments, but she is 89 years old and hard of hearing, even with her hearing aids on. I go to listen, record, remember, and advocate for her.

For myself, I do most of this alone. But I learned my limits when it comes to biopsies or have I? During the years I was having regular bone marrow biopsies. I’ve had five to date.

The first was at the cancer institute on International Drive. That day, I did have my mom and my daughter Amber with me. They gave me a numbing agent and then proceeded to jab me with—I kid you not—an X-ACTO-knife-looking apparatus, cutting through skin, tissue, and bone to get down to my marrow and extract a sample.

I don’t know who suffered more: me or my family. I have a high tolerance for pain. Needles. Stem cell transplant. High-dose chemotherapy. I have endured a great deal without flinching.

The bone marrow biopsy took me out. It wasn’t just the procedure itself. I also have fibromyalgia, so cutting into my body can trigger a flare. My mom and Amber nearly passed out watching the procedure.

Later, when I was getting my port, a nurse practitioner said, “Oh, we can sedate you for your bone marrow biopsies.” What? Why had no one told me? The next biopsy went much better. When my port was eventually removed, they tried to give me another biopsy with no pain medication. I insisted on sedation. Well, you don’t have a port anymore. We’ll have to put in an order.” “Put in an order,” I said. “I will not be going back there without it. I want every comfort afforded to me.” They made a fuss. And they put in the order.

When I later switched my cancer care and it was time for that dreadful procedure again, I talked to my oncologist about my previous experiences. He looked at me and said, “Oh, we don’t perform those in the office at all. We admit you to the hospital and you’ll be put out for the whole procedure. I sighed and thought “as it should be.”. That biopsy was much easier to endure.

So why did I go to the dermatologist alone this Wednesday? Amnesia? Did I dissociate? I don’t know. I am ill and trying to manage my illness. I am not always on top of my thinking game.

Or was it simply because it was a dermatology appointment, and I did not imagine the biopsy would be that intense? My mistake. The nurse practitioner needed to biopsy two of the erythema nodosum nodules—one a day old and another about two weeks old—to help rule out sarcoidosis. If I eat onion or garlic, my leg breaks out in these obnoxiously painful nodules. When they appear, I head to the ER. The pain is like an ongoing knife stab. They are on both legs and my arms.

He injected the areas with lidocaine. Then he punctured my arm and my leg with what looked like a pencil-sized hole punch to retrieve the samples. There was blood. My own tissue. I did not take pictures of the biopsies. I was too busy deep breathing and trying not to pass out. I told the NP, “I usually look. I am not going to look.” He said, “You get no extra points for looking.” I had to disassociate to survive that barbaric procedure.

Then the stitching of my own flesh. It was too much for me to handle alone. This is hard for me to admit. Afterward, I sat in my car before I could drive. I needed time to come back to myself. I was shaken to my core. Medical advocacy is tricky, especially when you are self-advocating. You don’t always know what you need when you are entering unknown territory.

Everyone asked me afterward, “Why didn’t you ask someone to go with you?”Because I did not distinguish this appointment from the fifty other medical appointments I have in a year.

That is the lesson. I need a rating system. Blood draw? I can probably go alone.

Routine appointment? Fine. Infusion? I know the terrain. Biopsy? Bring backup. Anything involving cutting, puncturing, stitches, sedation, or the possibility that I may not be steady afterward? Bring somebody.

I say all of this while also saying: I love my new dermatology provider. He listened to me. He took my symptoms seriously. He did what needed to be done to investigate this new condition. He even called me the next morning to see how I was doing and told me he was working on getting approval for a new medication for my lifelong urticaria.

The problem wasn’t the quality of care. I just needed backup.

This is one of the complexities of living with chronic illness. Self-care sometimes means independence. Sometimes it means knowing your medications, asking questions, keeping records, speaking up, and insisting, as I once did, I want every comfort afforded to me.

But sometimes self-care means admitting I should not do this one alone.

I had to stop at the grocery store on the way home from the biopsy. I didn’t want to, but I needed a few things. Again, poor planning on my part. While I was there, I saw a mother with her son. He had one of those toddler-sized grocery carts and was pushing it around collecting groceries. He waved at me. “Hello.” Hello, baby.

Later, in the parking lot, I was putting my groceries into the car when the little boy spotted me again. He ran over. “Can I have a hug?” “Sure, baby,” I said. “How did you know I needed that?” He hugged me. Then, he asked, “Can I have a kiss?” I melted on the spot and kissed him on the cheek. “What’s your name?” I asked. “Denver Rogers.” He mama said, “He is only two.”

Then Denver lifted his arms as if I should pick him up and take him with me. His mother laughed. “He’ll go home with you. “I have a grandson at home,” I told her. “He can come on. “You’d bring him back,” she joked. “He eats a lot.” That’s what grandmas do. We feed children. “I told her Denver was going to be mayor one day.

I don’t know if Denver Rogers will remember me. But I will remember him.

It had been a grueling day, and somehow the Universe sent me exactly what I needed: a two-year-old boy pushing a tiny grocery cart who saw me, twice, and decided I was somebody who needed a hug.

I finally made my way home and took my medication. Several days have passed. My fibromyalgia is still flaring. The stitches haven’t dissolved yet, and the places where I was punctured still hurt. I am hoping the testing will help us understand what is going on. All the testing should come back this week. Chest X-ray. Lab results. I see my pulmonologist tomorrow. I stay going to doctors. My PCP is very concerned about what she thinks is an autoimmune issue.

The Friday before the biopsy, I had gone to my primary care office for blood tests. It took the phlebotomist thirty minutes to get the blood she needed. For seven years, I have taken pride in being an easy blood draw. No longer. I don’t know whether, after seven years of routine blood draws, my veins have simply said, Enough. Or whether it is connected to what my doctor is investigating: vasculitis. Sarcoidosis. We don’t know yet. I’ll keep you updated. It has been a rough week.

Still, there was Denver. A hug in a grocery store parking lot. A bright spot.

A small kindness arriving right when I needed it. A sort of blooming, anyhow.

To all my chronically ill folk, take care of yourself the best you can. It gets really hard, but remember, it is still a life worth living.

Today is difficult. My health is troubling. I will spare you the details. I will say, there’s a battery of tests ahead of me.

Chest X-ray. Biopsy. Pulmonologist. Dermatologist. Primary Care.

Sounds like a ditty or maybe a little prayer. Nothing to take lightly. Nothing to laugh at, but oh, how I love how language flares. How it fans out in my mind––in my…

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I wrote “Nerds Rule” for twenty ADHD second graders in Columbia, South Carolina, about twenty-five years ago. I had finished the first half of the day with them, and during the lunch break, sitting in my car, I knew my writing plans had to pivot. I needed something they could interact with. So, I leaned on my Poetry Alive! training. I wrote this little ditty—a short poem they could learn and interact with kinesthetically. Here it is:

Nerds Rule
By Glenis Redmond

I’m a word nerd.
I’m a book geek.
I’m a reading freak.

One day the universe will be mine,
understanding E=MC² like Einstein.

Do you want to be large and in charge?
Then, get yourself a library card.

It was a hit. This poem, created out of a fit of frustration, became a calling card. I taught it to the whole class, line by line. It was eventually turned into a public service announcement by the South Carolina library system. It was on PBS. This little poem had wings. That’s the backstory.

But the poem is also autobiographical. It tells my origin story. I was a reader, and I have loved books from the moment I touched one.

I am not sure who taught me to read—most likely my mother. I remember those 1960s reading primers: Here comes Spot. Run, Sally, run. Mama bought books for me to read, or I brought them home from the school library. I had Dr. Seuss. A Fly Went By. One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.

I loved reading. I loved stories. Ramona the Pest and Pippi Longstocking were some of my favorite characters from ages six to nine. I loved girls who had minds and lives of their own. Looking back, maybe they were giving me an early glimpse of agency—showing me that a girl could take up space in a story and move through the world on her own terms.

Books were my bedrock.

By the time I became a teenager, I was a non-discriminatory reader. I read anything I could get my hands on. I relished the books assigned in English class—books like Animal Farm, The Scarlet Letter, and A Farewell to Arms.

I only read Black authors when I was allowed to self-select a book for class. My older siblings had read books like Black Boy by Richard Wright, Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown, and Native Son by Richard Wright. So, I wrote my book reports on these books. They were the closest I had come, up to that point, to mirror texts.

Still, most of the authors I encountered were male—both Black and white. I remember being introduced to one woman writer, Shirley Jackson. Her short story “The Lottery” haunted me.

In my downtime, I read Judy Blume. I read My Darling, My Hamburger by Paul Zindel and Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!by M. E. Kerr. I read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I read countless books. I did not judge books by their covers. I read anything that had relationship plots. These books were growing me up. They were giving me a sense of agency.

Then, there was this other side of my reading life. I had a Harlequin Romance phase.

My neighbor, whom I babysat for, gave me a box of them when she was finished. I think I read a book a day until I finally grew bored with the formula. But for a while, I was addicted. Then, I moved on to V. C. Andrews and Flowers in the Attic. Those books haunted me, too, but I was hooked.

In short, none of the books I read growing up were supervised by my parents. They were not readers. I really was an outlier in many ways. My older siblings, Velinda and Willie, were readers, too, and Willie and I shared a special bond: we both devoured comic books.The difference was, I could not live without books. They were my life force.

Eventually, I moved on to what felt to me like an elevated kind of romance. My favorite author in that genre was Barbara Taylor Bradford. I appreciated her plots and storylines. I have always loved an overcoming arc. I read all her books.

So, imagine how happy I was to discover A Woman of Substance again, now serialized, with one of my favorite actresses, Brenda Blethyn. Watching it flashed me back to how much I loved Barbara Taylor Bradford’s storyline—and to how deeply I saw myself in its theme of overcoming. It was a work of fiction, with some threads of the authors life. Those threads reached out to me and I caught hold.

Today, I stand behind every book I read. I believe these books made me a poet, too. I am grateful for younger Glenis and her voracious appetite. Yes, when I found Black women authors, I read as many of them as I could. I needed those mirrors. I needed to see myself on the page: Alice Walker. Maya Angelou. Nikki Giovanni.

But I also recognize that all those other books are part of my literary lineage, too.

The classics assigned in English class. Richard Wright and Claude Brown. Shirley Jackson. Judy Blume. Sylvia Plath. Harlequin Romances. V. C. Andrews. Comic books. Barbara Taylor Bradford.

I claim them all. They fed something in me. They rescued me. They gave a place for me to live, my imagination. They gave me worlds to enter. They taught me about longing, danger, ambition, survival, love, and overcoming. They helped make me into the writer I would become.

I am thankful that I have always been a “Word Nerd,” a “Book Geek,” and a “Reading Freak.” And now, all these years later, I am a woman who has made a living from words. I try to pass my passion along to others especially my children and grandchildren.

Gaga and Julian reading The Day the Universe Exploded My Head, by my friend Allan Wolf. My how fast time flies. 2019.

Lately, I have been hanging on to every episode of A Woman of Substance. Delightfully flashing back. Remembering the girl I was—the girl with a book always in her hands, reading her way toward the woman she would become.

Authors, to me, are essential workers. They saved my life in so many ways. They helped me become a woman of substance—and helped me find ways to read, write, and give back. Also, to Bloom Anyhow!

New M.Judson location in Fountain Inn, South Carolina. An excerpt from my poem “In Mid-Conversation” graces the window.

As Poet Laureate of Greenville, I had the privilege of writing many commissioned poems that celebrated the people, places, and organizations that make our community unique. One of my favorites was written for M. Judson Booksellers’ 10t…

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Gotcha with the title. Poetry for sure, but The New York Times Spelling Bee. It is my favorite game.

Truthfully, it’s about the only game I play with any regularity. Every morning, I open the little yellow hive. Seven letters. One in the center. I begin putting them in order and, searching for every word hidden within the possibilities. There is no opponent. No race against anyone else. Just the quiet satisfaction of discovery.

I am good at it. I score genius regularly that’s not to brag, but to speak about how much I love words and how they are connected to my craft. When I first started, I piddled around. Just recently I get up in the morning. I play for 15-20 minutes––long enough to reach genius status. Then, I start my day.

What surprises me is not that I enjoy it, but how deeply satisfying it is. I never tire of seeing another word emerge from the same seven letters. The challenge isn’t simply to make words. It’s to keep asking: What else is possible? My brain loves spying the words as the emerge

.

Last week I had the privilege of presenting at the Crayola Creativity Week Retreat in San Diego. It was a remarkable gathering of educators, artists, and creative thinkers who believe imagination belongs in every classroom.

As part of the retreat, we each completed the Crayola Creative Profile, a creative assessment designed to help identify the ways we naturally approach creativity.

When my results appeared, I smiled: Free Thinker. Visionary. Explorer.

The more I have reflected on those three words, the more I recognize them—not simply as descriptors—but as companions that have quietly walked beside me throughout my life.

A Free Thinker questions assumptions. She isn’t satisfied with the expected answer. She wonders what happens if we look again. A Visionary imagines what does not yet exist. She sees possibility long before others recognize its shape. An Explorer is willing to wander. She trusts curiosity enough to leave the familiar and discover something unexpected.

I realized that those three creative strengths explain much of my life as a poet. Poetry has never been about arranging pretty words on a page. It has been about discovery

.

Whether I am writing about my ancestors, recovering the stories of Fountain Inn Colored High School through oral history, mentoring young poets, wandering South Carolina’s state parks with my grandson, or standing on a stage sharing a poem, I am always asking the same question:

What else is here? The Spelling Bee asks that same question every morning. What else can these seven letters become? Poetry asks: What else can this memory become?The seven letters change every day. I relish the challenge. I have seven days in a week. From those days, my life can yield hundreds of poems. Stories. Meaning.

Looking back, I can see these creative strengths woven through everything I have done. Beginning poetry slams in North Carolina and South Carolina. Poetry readings at the Hughes Main Library, EMRYS. Page and Stage. I moved outward from Piedmont to Greenville to Asheville to all of America to the world.

Building communities around poetry. Creating books that braid together history, place, nature, and family. Mentoring young writers into their own voices. Following ideas that didn’t yet have a map. None of those journeys began with certainty. They began with curiosity. Perhaps creativity isn’t making something from nothing. Perhaps creativity is noticing what has been waiting for us all along. The little yellow hive reminds me of that every single day. Some people solve puzzles.

I suppose I spend my life discovering language. Or perhaps language keeps discovering me.

If you’re curious about your own creative style, the Crayola Creative Profile is available to everyone. It’s a thoughtful tool that explores how you naturally create rather than measuring whether you’re creative. You can take the assessment here:

https://crayola-creative-profile.squarespace.com

If you do, I’d love to hear your results. As for me, I’ll keep returning to my little yellow hive each morning. Seven letters. Infinite possibilities.

And one more reminder that being a Free Thinker, Visionary, and Explorer isn’t simply how I create. It’s how I live. Letting letters emerge into words into possibility–into my dreams.

This is how I Bloom Anyhow! I travel literally and figuratively. I build worlds with my words in both spaces.

Bloom Anyhow

Doctors gave me a prognosis: 
5–7 Years,

A deadline.
That phrase is now dead to me.

I grab ahold 
to every line 

and live.
Every day 

I find ways
 to unfurl.

This week, I am celebrating.

Seven years ago, over the Fourth of July weekend, I was diagnosed with Stage III Multiple Myeloma. The prognosis came with a life expectancy of five to seven years.

There was a strong possibility that I would not be here. Yet here I am.

Proof of Life. These two photographs were taken seven years apart. The first was made shortly after my cancer diagnosis. The second was made this week.

Not only am I here—I am flowering.

Writing Prompt

How have you unfurled despite difficult circumstances? Write a small poem with depth. Claim your existence with verse. Join me in Blooming Anyhow.

If you’re reading this, please like, comment, or share this post. Let me know you stopped by. Send up a flare. And if you’re so inclined, wish me a happy seventh anniversary.

I’m grateful to still be here, grabbing ahold of every line—and living. I hope you are too.

Gaga and Julian in Dover, New Hampshire

The Fourth of July has become a marker in my life. Over Fourth of July weekend in 2019, I was diagnosed with Stage III multiple myeloma. This year marks seven years.

When I was diagnosed, I learned the average life expectancy was five to seven years. Statistics can be useful, but they have never been my destination. My hope has always been to keep beating the odds—not to die from cancer, but to live with it. And not simply survive but thrive.

Looking back over these seven years, I realize my life has become marked not by disease, but by milestones. One year after my diagnosis, my grandson Julian and I set out to visit every South Carolina State Park. We weren’t chasing a record. We were chasing healing.

Five and a half years later, in October 2025, we stood together having visited all 47 South Carolina State Parks and became Ultimate Outsiders. To my knowledge, we are the first Black grandmother (Gaga) and grandchild to accomplish that journey. What began as recovery became something much larger. We found purpose. We found joy. We found each other

.

Last week became another marker. Julian and I traveled to New Hampshire for the Aplomb Gala.

Danielle Festa, founder and executive director of Aplomb, paints portraits of cancer survivors. Earlier this year she flew to North Carolina, where we met halfway at Kings Mountain State Park for the portrait session that now documents our park journey. Our trip began with a rainbow.

Julian, Glenis and Danielle Festa.

When we arrived in New Hampshire, we attended the private unveiling before sharing dinner together. That evening, something unexpected happened. Julian, who has significant food aversions, tried ketchup for the first time in his life. He also ate French fries, something that has never been one of his safe foods. To most people, it would seem like an ordinary dinner. To me, it felt like witnessing courage. I cried.

Julian was seated next to Pat, a retired Special Education teacher of 40+ years. She was the kindest soul and bonded with Julian.

The next evening, I was invited to tell my story and read a poem. I chose “Every Wonder Belongs to You,” the poem I wrote for Julian. As I stood before the audience, Julian quietly walked onto the stage beside me. I could barely make it through the poem.

Later, I watched him slowly move through the gallery, stopping before every portrait, reading each survivor’s story with remarkable care.

That night he said something I will carry for the rest of my life. “Gaga, your story was the most cheerful story of all of them.” He understood there was tremendous trauma in that room. Cancer. Loss. Fear. Survival. He also recognized something else. Joy had survived, too. Julian is often quiet, but when he chooses to speak, he says exactly what needs saying.

The weekend continued with moments that now feel stitched together into one long act of gratitude. We spent Saturday at the beach building an axolotl in the sand. Julian stood on large rocks and got in the water. The water was much too cold for me. We had fun though.

Wallis Sand State Park

On Sunday morning we boarded a Gundalow on the Piscataqua River. Danielle invited us into a reflection exercise. I wrote a short piece titled “I Carry. Julian painted the river a deep, deep blue. Later, during our closing circle, everyone shared what they loved most about the ride.

Julian on the Gundalow

I spoke about Ed, one of the volunteer boatmen. After learning I was from Greenville, South Carolina, he smiled and told me he had met his wife there while attending graduate school in 1981. He had been an engineering student. They eventually married and are still together today. Then I confessed something else. I am a cloud watcher. What I saw from the boat, clouds shaped like angels drifting across the New Hampshire sky.

Angles in the sky.

Before our evening flight, Aliceson and Eli graciously showed us around Portsmouth. I immediately vowed to return. We wandered through Pickwick’s Mercantile before heading back to Dover for lunch and a visit to the Woodman Museum, where Julian delighted in an exhibition about the creators of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

By the time we boarded our plane, our hearts were full. Throughout the weekend, I cried often while listening to the stories of fellow survivors. During my remarks that evening, I said:

“Julian and I are deeply honored to be here with all of you tonight. Danielle, thank you for creating Aplomb. Through your own aplomb, you have given that same confidence to others navigating difficult circumstances. Aplomb means “complete self-confidence, composure, and assurance, especially in demanding, difficult, or unexpected moments. It is the ability to remain calm, steady, and fully yourself under pressure.” Thank you for reminding us that dignity is never diminished by hardship and that resilience deserves to be seen.”

What a beautiful marker as a portrait, Julian & Gaga @ Kings Mountain State Park by Danielle Festa.

Julian and I did not know whether we could make this trip. My health was uncertain. His challenges around food made travel complicated. Yet we not only made the journey—we reveled in it.

We traveled somewhere new. We made meaningful friends. We experienced extraordinary kindness.

Danielle’s portrait now stands as a witness to our South Carolina State Park journey and to this chapter of my life. Another marker. Seven years living with cancer.Another milestone for Julian as he prepares to enter middle school. More proof that fear does not have to make our decisions.

When we arrived home, I had to go straight to the emergency room. Large purple and red welts had erupted across my legs, feet, and arms. The pain was sharp and stabbing. I was diagnosed with another inflammatory condition: erythema nodosum, triggered by ingesting allium—garlic and onion. I now know that even the smallest amount can send my body into a severe flare requiring emergency treatment with IV Benadryl, Toradol, and an EpiPen.

The last few days have left me weak. But I do not regret our trip. What better way to celebrate still being alive?

My deepest hope is that Julian carries this lesson into the rest of his life: that he can move through fear and come out on the other side. I hope he always knows how deeply he is loved. I hope he knows how handsome and brilliant he is. And years from now, when he thinks back on this trip, I hope he remembers what I have tried to teach him all along.

Every Wonder Belongs to Him.

And as for me—I hope he sees his Gaga, and a poet moving through the world, seven years after a cancer diagnosis that could have narrowed my life— but I remain in awe of wonder.

This is how I survive and Blooming Anyhow!

We went to the grocery store when we got home. We were graced with another rainbow. Our trip bookended by rainbows. What Beauty. What Grace.

I Stay Sick
By Glenis Redmond 

I was born to this. Half-baked & premature.

Hernia a cavern at the center of my core.

Sickness ran through & through me,

a red thread connecting one ailment

to another. Mama says, if it ain’t one thing its two.

For me, too many to count. Cursed?

Put upon. Crooked spine. Scoliosis.

Fractured coccyx. Knees. Osgood Sc…

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Glenis in front of Poke Weed, June 23, 2026. Photo Credit: Amber Sherer

I Identify as a Weed
Glenis Redmond

My poetry defined as unwieldy
like my holy halo  of hair.  
You think I care.
My firm stance they intentionally 
tried to rip it up by the root, 
so I could not take hold.
But left to my devices
I grow wild in my belief
that I am free to take up e…

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