Allow Me to Introduce Myself

Something like a list poem* of major life experiences that have shaped me, up until now.

On my 6th birthday w/Tia O, my brother, Abuela, Mami, & cousin

I was born Lisa María Gil in the Bronx’s, Lincoln Hospital, on a predawn Saturday morning in June.

I was raised in Washington Heights but lived in Boston, Massachusetts when my parents were still together.

Once they divorced, when I was five; my mother, brother, and I moved in with Abuela and her two youngest daughters, my Tías.

We all lived in a one-bedroom apartment that once belonged to my great-grandmother and was later “inherited” by my mother.

Shortly after we moved in, my Tías fell in love with dudes from the block. They were each married a month apart from one another and moved out.

Abuela also fell in love, remarried, and moved to Brooklyn with her Puerto Rican boo, who was also her co-worker at a factory where they all worked, except for my mom.

Mami was a stay-at-home mom for me and my little brother who was born a year and ten months after me.

She didn’t make it past the eighth grade, so her education and knowledge of the basic English language were limited.

As a single mother, Mami did what was necessary to ensure her children had a stable home and food. So, we survived off cash assistance, food stamps, and a section eight voucher.

My dad was hardly around and showed up at random times. I wasn’t fond of him then, no one in my maternal family was. But I still yearned for his love and attention. Both my brother and I did.

Mami never kept us from him, but she despised it when he would have us get dressed and didn’t show up.

Tía O taught me to love my skin and to gyrate my hips to El General’s, Muevelo, Muevelo.

Tía T, Mami’s baby sister, was only eleven years older than me and the only one to attend school in the US. Therefore, she knew English and became more like a big sister I could easily talk to.

My baby sister, who does not share a father with me, is eleven years younger than me. The age gap made it feel like she was more of a daughter than a sister.

Around this time, I felt the urge to write so Mami bought me my first lock-and-key diary.

I proudly graduated from P.S. 189, I.S. 143, Landmark High School, and Binghamton University [where I became a sister of Omega Phi Beta, Sorority, Inc.].

Freshman year in college, I lost my brother [TW: to suicide].

Through grief, I earned a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and served as a Case Manager (aka Social Worker) for fourteen years post-college graduation.

A long-term and unhealthy relationship taught me to turn pain into power and thus Rubi G. was born.

At 24, and long after healing from toxicity, I fell in love with a campo boy from/in DR.

I learned that said boy shared a birthday with my very own brother (heaven-sent, much?)

At 25, I married the boy.

At 26, I brought him to the States.

At 27, we had our first son.

At 30, we had our second son, and shortly after we purchased a home and moved to the suburbs.

By then, I was already burnt out by the commute and brutal realities of society that I faced at my 9 to 5. But I hung by a thread and stuck it out for a little longer.

After eleven years of conducting monthly home visits to each of my clients in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, my mental health took a nosedive.

However, about ninety days before the world shut down, my Calling called me, and I had no choice but to pick up. It happened at a writing workshop inside a community bookshop (go, figure!)

During all that, I was drowning. Then came the panic attack, EMS, the anxiety and depression diagnosis, the therapy/psych appointments, the meds, and finally our adorable pandemic pup and greatest healer, Hershey.

And yet, here we are--Author, Poet, Essayist, Diarist, Performer, Teaching Artist, and the list goes on--

The virtual writing community that surfaced as if by divine intervention, served as an oxygen tank while we navigated life stuck inside. My purpose officially took off then.

My passions include coffee, reading, writing, yoga, painting, crafting, baking, and dancing.

I also love nature—placing my bare feet on grass, witnessing sunsets, and admiring the majestic beauty of the moon in all its phases.

Most importantly though, I love being a wife, mother, and role model to my athletic pre-teen sons who swear they know more than me (about everything). [Insert eye roll]

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But there's nothing I love more than showering my family with sunshine, love, and laughter.

If home, is in fact, where the heart is; welcome to my mine.

(Baby Sis, Abuela, Tia T, Tia O, Mami, Tia J, Tio J.)

(Papi, Abuela, Hershey, and most of my cousins)

(Lil ol' Me and some of my answered prayers)

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*List poem is a deliberately organized poem containing a list of images or adjectives that build up to describe the poem’s subject matter through an inventory of things (poets.org).