Yvonne Watterson Writing

More about Yvonne

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.

BC Action, Belfast, bombing, Breast Cancer Advocacy, Breast Cancer Awareness, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Breast Cancer Treatment, Cancer Language, Culture of breast cancer, Language matters, Language of Cancer, Memoir, Memoir, Pink Ribbons, Pinkwashing, Sexism, Shopping, The Troubles, Themes of Childhood

booby-trapped this October?

September 24, 2013 / 28 Comments

boo·by trap Meaning: A practical joke. Also a concealed and possibly lethal trap. Noun: A thing designed to catch the unwary, in particular Verb: Place a booby trap in or on (an object or area): “the area was booby-trapped.” Synonyms: snare, trick into doing something “Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November . . .” the rhyme reminds me, as…

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and What I Wore, Art, Awesome Women, Carly Simon, Cat Stevens, Culture of breast cancer, Facebook, Memoir, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, Nora Ephron, Soundtracks of our Lives, Theater, Writers

what I wore, a mountain of life & missing Nora Ephron . . .

June 5, 2013 / 18 Comments

Last night, my best friend and I went to see the enchanting and poignant Love, Loss, and What I Wore, Nora and Delia Ephron‘s stage-adaptation of Ilene Beckerman’s book by the same name. Like each of the five women on stage, I can peer into my wardrobe and hang on the clothes and shoes and handbags bulging from it, some…

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Art, Belfast, Breast Cancer Treatment, Cancer Language, Culture of breast cancer, Damian Gorman, Damian Gorman, Memoir, Poetry, Seamus Heaney, Seamus Heaney, Survivorship, The Troubles, The Troubles, Themes of childhood, Writing

Please don’t call me a cancer survivor . . .

June 2, 2013 / 12 Comments

“He not being busy born, is busy dying.” ~ Bob Dylan it is the first Sunday in June, a day set aside to celebrate cancer survivorship. Did you know this “treasured worldwide celebration of life” has been on the calendar for twenty-six years? I wonder would I have been any the wiser had I not been diagnosed myself. So who…

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Blogging, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Culture of breast cancer, Diagnosis, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Facebook, Family, Hair, Jackson Browne, Language of Cancer, Little Feat, Lowell George, Memoir, Memoir, Memory, Mother Daughter Relationship, Music, Pink Ribbons, Sherman Alexie, Social Media, Soundtracks of our Lives, television, Van Morrison, Writers, Writing

breaking bad news & long distance love

May 3, 2013 / 23 Comments

Yesterday, I discovered Rendezvous, “a digital meeting place for the globally engaged, hosted by the International Herald Tribune.” As such, Rendezvous is a global tribe seeking “to inspire international discussion and intelligent debate that enlivens the global conversation.” Sounds like the perfect place for members of the Irish diaspora, scattered far and wide across the globe. People like me. While my circumstances…

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