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.

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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Act Two, After death of a spouse, Aging, Being a Widow, Birthdays, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Father Daughter Relationships, Fatherless daughters, Fourth of July, Loss, Memoir, Milestones, Rites of passage, Second Birthday Without Him, Soundtracks of our Lives, Ted Kooser

Marking your Birthday – “Slow Learning but You Learn to Sway”

September 21, 2015 / 13 Comments

It is your birthday, and for the second time since we met, you are not with me on your day. How should we mark the occasion? Without any fuss, I can hear you say, and maybe you can hear me ignore you as I plan a fuss of some kind, the way I did for each of the 23 birthdays you celebrated with…

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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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After death of a spouse, Aging, Being a Widow, Bellaghy, Castledawson, Death and dying, Dennis O'Driscoll, Derry, Dispatch from the Diaspora, FInal wishes, Funeral, Grieving, Keeping Going, Loss, Love, Memoir, Milestones, Mourning, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Postscript, Rituals, Seamus Heaney

P.S. Seamus Heaney and a Grave Situation

August 30, 2015 / 10 Comments

When I returned to Bellaghy this summer, I visited Seamus Heaney's grave again. This time, a simple wooden cross stood in the dirt. This time, I was a widow, changed and contemplative, convinced that cosmic strings keep us connected. This time, I wondered about the spiritual space in which both men might move. Where are they?

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