Yvonne Watterson Writing

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Yvonne Watterson is a Northern Irish-born writer and educator, now based near Guadalajara, Mexico. Her career in public education spans 30 years, during which she led school reform initiatives featured in national outlets including The New York Times and Education Week. Her work as a high school principal in Arizona focused on equity, inclusion, and student advocacy, earning both local and national attention. Yvonne's writing life began in November 2011, after an invasive breast cancer diagnosis sent her searching for answers online. What began as survival grew into a practice of storytelling, with her work appearing beyond this blog in The Irish Times, Irish Central, Reading Ireland, and other outlets. Yvonne's essays and reflections explore themes ranging from The Troubles in Northern Ireland and the poetry of Seamus Heaney to personal experiences of illness, loss, and resilience after being widowed in 2013. She compiled and edited Documented Dreams, a bilingual collection of letters documenting her advocacy with young immigrant students, and she contributed to Bravados: An Anthology, featuring 21 personal narratives by expats living in the Lake Chapala region. Most recently, she collaborated with Stephen Travers on The Bass Player – Surviving the Miami Showband Massacre. Yvonne’s social justice advocacy has earned her numerous honors, including the City of Phoenix Martin Luther King “Living the Dream” Award and the YWCA Tribute to Women Social Justice Leader Award. She is also a musician, performing with her partner, Scott Henrich, in The Old Souls Band, a six-piece Americana ensemble based in Ajijic, Mexico and she plays violin in the Lake Chapala Community Orchestra. Her daughter, Sophie, also a writer, lives in Arizona. “If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.” ― Seamus Heaney

About Yvonne

From there to here . . . Yvonne Watterson is a Northern Irish-born writer and educator, now based near Guadalajara, Mexico. Her career in public education spans nearly 30 years, during which she led school reform initiatives featured in national outlets including The New York Times and Education Week. Her work as a high school principal in Arizona focused on equity, inclusion, and student advocacy, earning both local and national attention. Her writing life began in 2011, after an invasive breast cancer diagnosis sent her searching for answers online. What began as survival grew into a practice of storytelling, with her work appearing in The Irish Times, Irish Central, Reading Ireland, and other outlets. Her essays and reflections explore themes ranging from The Troubles in Northern Ireland and the poetry of Seamus Heaney to personal experiences of illness, loss, and resilience after being widowed in 2013. She compiled and edited Documented Dreams, a bilingual collection of letters documenting her advocacy with young immigrant students, and she contributed to Bravados: An Anthology, featuring 21 personal narratives by expats living in the Lake Chapala region. Most recently, she collaborated with Stephen Travers on The Bass Player – Surviving the Miami Showband Massacre. Yvonne’s social justice advocacy has earned her numerous honors, including the City of Phoenix Martin Luther King “Living the Dream” Award and the YWCA Tribute to Women Social Justice Leader Award. She is also a musician, performing with her partner, Scott Henrich, in The Old Souls Band, an Americana ensemble based in Ajijic, Mexico and she plays violin in the Lake Chapala Community Orchestra. Her daughter, Sophie, is also a writer, living in Arizona.

Awesome Women, Breast Cancer Advocacy, Breast Cancer Awareness, Cancer Language, Culture of breast cancer, Diagnosis, Early Detection, Facebook, Family, Health, Language of Cancer, Mammograms, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, Pink Ribbon Culture, Pink Ribbons, Social Media, Twitter, Wilfred Owen, World Cancer Day, Writing

world cancer day & the real warrior in my house

February 4, 2016 / 7 Comments

My breast cancer is not just about me as I discovered when my then fourteen year old daughter decided to break her silence about it. In her own way, on her Facebook wall, and on World Cancer Day 2012. Thus, on this day designated for speaking up and out, from 2016 -2018 focusing on how everyone – as a collective or individually…

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Breast Cancer Awareness, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Enniskillen, Remembrance Sunday 2015, Wilfred Owen

For Granda on Remembrance Day

November 8, 2015 / 3 Comments

My grandfather died on June 22, 1977, a decade before the Enniskillen bombing. Had he been alive, he would have been wearing his suit, with medals and poppy attached to the lapels, not unlike those pensioners gathered respectfully at the Cenotaph where at 10:43am, with chilling choreography, an IRA bomb exploded, killing eleven and wounding 68. Granda never forgot the…

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Blogging, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Breast Cancer Treatment, Breast Reconstruction, Cancer Language, Culture of breast cancer, Diagnosis, Early Detection, Language of Cancer, Mammograms, Mastectomy, Pink Ribbon Culture, Pink Ribbons, Sexism, Shopping, Susan G Komen Foundation

a pink ribbon made a blogger out of me

October 14, 2015 / 7 Comments

It is October 2015 and we are in the throes of breast cancer awareness. Again. #NoBraDay confirms for me that it is still acceptable to sanitize and sexualize a deadly disease, to glamorize and trivialize it in ways that confound me. Once upon a time – if I’m honest – I probably would have participated in the latest breast cancer awareness…

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Breast Cancer Awareness, Damian Gorman, Dispatches from the Diaspora, Jonathan Klein, Let Them Come, Photos That Changed the World, Refugees, Sarah Lewis, Syria

The Only Home We’ve Ever Known . . .

September 2, 2015 / 4 Comments

In his 2010 TED talk, Photos That Changed the World, co-founder of Getty, Jonathan Klein, maintains that a picture can make the world a better place. With clear-eyed compassion, he proves his point, presenting a series of images many of us know well, images from which we can neither look away nor back. In her book, The Rise, Sarah Lewis refers to this…

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