Tag: Lynne Schmidt

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: On Becoming a Role Model by Lynne Schmidt

On Becoming a Role Model

There was a day in the history of the world
when my niece stole my glasses,
stole my winter hat,
and put them on.
With a smile that could swallow oceans
she said,
“Look Auntie, I’m you!”
And I remembered my mother’s words when I told her I wanted to grow up
and be
just
like
her.
“Don’t ever turn out like me,” she’d hissed,
a slap in the face to a small child.
I didn’t understand then.
I understand now.
I am not my mother,
and my niece is not me.
Instead, I pulled her into my arms.
I cannot point to that day on the calendar,
because at the time I didn’t realize it was important.
Scholars will not write about the great battle that took place within her words
because they won’t care about it.
But on that day
in the history of the world
I decided
that I would become someone
that my niece could look up to

In honor of PTSD Awareness day of June 27, this selection comes from the book, On Becoming a Role Model, available from Thirty West Publishing.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Ada Rivera.

Lynne Schmidt is a mental health professional and an award winning poet and memoir author. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks, Gravity (Nightingale and Sparrow Press), and On Becoming a Role Model (Thirty West). Her work has received the Maine Nonfiction Award, Editor’s Choice Award, and was a 2018 and 2019 PNWA finalist for memoir and poetry respectively. Lynne was a five time 2019 Best of the Net Nominee, and has received honorable mention for the Charles Bukowski Poetry Award, the Doug Draime Prize for Poetry, and Joy of the Pen. In 2012 she started the project, AbortionChat, which aims to lessen the stigma around abortion. When given the choice, Lynne prefers the company of her three dogs and one cat to humans.

Nilsa Ada Rivera writes about gender and diversity issues. She’s the Managing Editor of The Wardrobe for Sundress Publications. She’s an MFA candidate at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work appeared in the Huffington Post, 50 GS Magazine, Six Hens Literary Journal, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and Selkie Literary Magazine. She lives in Riverview, Florida with her multi-species family.

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: On Becoming a Role Model by Lynne Schmidt

Swallowing Feelings

Please do not make me swallow my feelings,
because, while they may taste like chocolate and strawberries for some people,
my feelings go down like battery acid,
and my mother spent enough money
on braces that I rather like my teeth.
When he had custody,
my father demanded that we stop crying,
Right now,
or he’ll
Give you a reason to cry.
And so I swallowed
and swallowed
until a cavernous hole formed itself in my throat;
until my chest froze over like trees in winter.
I have felt snow.
I have had no leaves to marvel at.
Because when you choke down your feelings,
the leaves don’t grow back in the spring.
Branches snap off if the wind blows too hard.
And so my teeth that once resembled a vampire’s
show now, some days because words and stories are hilarious.
And the cavern has filled with beach sand and salt water
and it’s enough for me to drown you.

In honor of PTSD Awareness day of June 27, this selection comes from the book, On Becoming a Role Model, available from Thirty West Publishing.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Ada Rivera.

Lynne Schmidt is a mental health professional and an award winning poet and memoir author. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks, Gravity (Nightingale and Sparrow Press), and On Becoming a Role Model (Thirty West). Her work has received the Maine Nonfiction Award, Editor’s Choice Award, and was a 2018 and 2019 PNWA finalist for memoir and poetry respectively. Lynne was a five time 2019 Best of the Net Nominee, and has received honorable mention for the Charles Bukowski Poetry Award, the Doug Draime Prize for Poetry, and Joy of the Pen. In 2012 she started the project, AbortionChat, which aims to lessen the stigma around abortion. When given the choice, Lynne prefers the company of her three dogs and one cat to humans.

Nilsa Ada Rivera writes about gender and diversity issues. She’s the Managing Editor of The Wardrobe for Sundress Publications. She’s an MFA candidate at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work appeared in the Huffington Post, 50 GS Magazine, Six Hens Literary Journal, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and Selkie Literary Magazine. She lives in Riverview, Florida with her multi-species family.

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: On Becoming a Role Model by Lynne Schmidt

Safety in Laughter

My therapist encouraged me
to be more vulnerable.
To take my heart from my chest
from time to time,
like shoes from their box,
and see if someone would fill in the empty space.
She challenged me to stop laughing
in places like my uncle’s funeral
because I couldn’t stand to see his hands resting across his body.
It’s not funny,
She said.
But my sister laughed, too.
My therapist challenged me enough
that I sat beside you on a park bench,
minimized my jokes, and explained
that, if you wanted, I could wait for you.
In return,
you filled the space in my chest
with broken glass
that I’m still trying to peel out

In honor of PTSD Awareness day of June 27, this selection comes from the book, On Becoming a Role Model, available from Thirty West Publishing.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Ada Rivera.

Lynne Schmidt is a mental health professional and an award winning poet and memoir author. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks, Gravity (Nightingale and Sparrow Press), and On Becoming a Role Model (Thirty West). Her work has received the Maine Nonfiction Award, Editor’s Choice Award, and was a 2018 and 2019 PNWA finalist for memoir and poetry respectively. Lynne was a five time 2019 Best of the Net Nominee, and has received honorable mention for the Charles Bukowski Poetry Award, the Doug Draime Prize for Poetry, and Joy of the Pen. In 2012 she started the project, AbortionChat, which aims to lessen the stigma around abortion. When given the choice, Lynne prefers the company of her three dogs and one cat to humans.

Nilsa Ada Rivera writes about gender and diversity issues. She’s the Managing Editor of The Wardrobe for Sundress Publications. She’s an MFA candidate at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work appeared in the Huffington Post, 50 GS Magazine, Six Hens Literary Journal, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and Selkie Literary Magazine. She lives in Riverview, Florida with her multi-species family.

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: On Becoming a Role Model by Lynne Schmidt

On My Disability

After several minutes
of stalemate silence,
the man who reeks of alcohol,
who causes his wife to flinch when he storms
in before scurrying away,
evaluates my body and asks in disbelief,
“You are disabled? How?”

I want to have him pull up a chair,
light up a cigarette,
open up a beer,
and brace himself for the long haul,
because most of my therapists can’t even stomach it.

In the span of thirteen seconds
I want to crack apart my skull
and allow these memories to float like the Milky Way
from my brain to his.

I want him to see my father,
my mother,
my brother,
my sister running away,
my dog’s blood in the driveway,
the bed of a purple truck,
the first boy to show me around school trapped in a car in flames,
my sister’s best friend in a casket,
my best friend in a casket,
several more friends,
a near-stranger’s bed,
the standoff with the mirror,
the razor blades,
the nights I wake up screaming,
the inability to tell my partner
I love him
because the words form a sock in my throat
that is so thick I can barely breathe through.

Instead,
the hurricane stays inside me
because I want to win a fight
I know his wife will lose.
I bite my teeth together and

narrow my eyes and
straighten up my spine in a way she will never be able to and say,

“Yes. Would you like to see my paperwork?”

In honor of PTSD Awareness day of June 27, this selection comes from the book, On Becoming a Role Model, available from Thirty West Publishing.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Ada Rivera.

Lynne Schmidt is a mental health professional and an award winning poet and memoir author. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks, Gravity (Nightingale and Sparrow Press), and On Becoming a Role Model (Thirty West). Her work has received the Maine Nonfiction Award, Editor’s Choice Award, and was a 2018 and 2019 PNWA finalist for memoir and poetry respectively. Lynne was a five time 2019 Best of the Net Nominee, and has received honorable mention for the Charles Bukowski Poetry Award, the Doug Draime Prize for Poetry, and Joy of the Pen. In 2012 she started the project, AbortionChat, which aims to lessen the stigma around abortion. When given the choice, Lynne prefers the company of her three dogs and one cat to humans.

Nilsa Ada Rivera writes about gender and diversity issues. She’s the Managing Editor of The Wardrobe for Sundress Publications. She’s an MFA candidate at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work appeared in the Huffington Post, 50 GS Magazine, Six Hens Literary Journal, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and Selkie Literary Magazine. She lives in Riverview, Florida with her multi-species family.

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: On Becoming a Role Model by Lynne Schmidt

Escape Routes

I dreamed of escape routes,
of emergency exits
and fiery deaths,
so that maybe someday
I wouldn’t have to come back to this place.
I wished on the first stars that came out at night:
star light, star bright,
anything I see tonight,
I wish I may, wish I might,
disappear before he shows up for visitation tonight.

But he would come
and we would pile into a truck,
arguing about who got to sit in back
because it was the furthest seat away.

Our kisses would be stolen,
souls leaving our chests a little more each time,
teaching three young girls that their bodies
are not theirs,
and that when a man demands to be hugged,
to be kissed,
you comply or you get hurt.

Forced words of affirmation fell from our lips:
I love you,
I miss you,
Please stop wrapping your arms around me
because it feels like granite, sandpaper, and I can’t breathe.

We would tick by hours,
the safest ones when you were at the bar,
but then the truck would pull in
and we couldn’t run far.

And so I learned,
far younger than I should have,
that wishes on stars fall flat,
because even after we finally escaped,
the nightmares return and take their place.

In honor of PTSD Awareness day of June 27, this selection comes from the book, On Becoming a Role Model, available from Thirty West Publishing.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Ada Rivera.

Lynne Schmidt is a mental health professional and an award winning poet and memoir author. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks, Gravity (Nightingale and Sparrow Press), and On Becoming a Role Model (Thirty West). Her work has received the Maine Nonfiction Award, Editor’s Choice Award, and was a 2018 and 2019 PNWA finalist for memoir and poetry respectively. Lynne was a five time 2019 Best of the Net Nominee, and has received honorable mention for the Charles Bukowski Poetry Award, the Doug Draime Prize for Poetry, and Joy of the Pen. In 2012 she started the project, AbortionChat, which aims to lessen the stigma around abortion. When given the choice, Lynne prefers the company of her three dogs and one cat to humans.

Nilsa Ada Rivera writes about gender and diversity issues. She’s the Managing Editor of The Wardrobe for Sundress Publications. She’s an MFA candidate at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work appeared in the Huffington Post, 50 GS Magazine, Six Hens Literary Journal, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and Selkie Literary Magazine. She lives in Riverview, Florida with her multi-species family.