Yvonne Watterson
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Yvonne Watterson

considering the lilies ©

More About Yvonne

More About Yvonne

More about Yvonne

Yvonne Watterson is a Northern Irish-born writer now living in Mexico. Her work has appeared in The Irish Times, Irish Central, Reading Ireland, and elsewhere. Yvonne's essays begin in all sorts of places - a song, a story, a ballpark, a polling place, a graveyard - but they return to the same complicated business of belonging to more than one place - what makes a place, a person, or a moment feel like home.

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. In 2025, 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.

  • Art,  Belfast,  Christmas,  Memoir,  Photography,  Saying Thank You,  Thanksgiving,  Van Morrison,  Writers

    In Every Thing Give Thanks . . .

    November 30, 2016 / No Comments

    Several years ago, my friend and I enrolled in a college photography class. This was not something to check off a bucket list, just a little thing I had been meaning to do for about thirty years. I had never made the time for it until a cancer diagnosis shifted my priorities.  Until then, I had been oh so busy being busy, bemoaning…

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  • Anahorish,  Dispatches from the Diaspora,  Joseph O'Connor,  Memoir

    saving for a rainy day . . . in Phoenix

    August 24, 2016 / 10 Comments

    When I turned fifty (admittedly a while ago), I realized that: a) I would never make enough money to go to a job I hate every day and b) money really isn’t everything although I have often acted as though it is. Much to the chagrin of Suze Orman, I don’t organize money neatly in my wallet, and I honestly couldn’t tell…

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  • Aging,  Art,  Bob Dylan,  Daniel Kramer,  Dispatch from the Diaspora,  It's Not Dark Yet,  Michael Gray,  Photography,  Positively 4th Street,  Street Legal,  Tangled up in Blue,  Where Are You Tonight? Subterranean Homesick Blues

    Bob Dylan – Someone You Want To Photograph.

    May 24, 2016 / No Comments

    May 24 2016: Happy 75th Birthday Bob Dylan Bob Dylan has always been almost as old as my parents. He has also always been forever young, staring up at me from the cover of the book that has graced my coffee table for decades. I don’t remember when what he sang first mattered to me, yet I can’t remember a time when it didn’t, a time…

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  • Art,  Belfast,  Christmas,  Memoir,  Photography,  Saying Thank You,  Thanksgiving,  Van Morrison,  Writers

    thank goodness, thanksgiving & astral weeks

    November 26, 2015 / 5 Comments

    In the Fall of 2012,  my friend and I enrolled in a college photography class. Not a bucket list kind of thing by most standards, but it was something I had been meaning to do for thirty years. I had just never been able to find the time for it. I had been so busy being busy and bemoaning the pace of…

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