Yes/No/I don't know

I met Los Angeles poet Eloise Klein Healy when she was the chair of the MFA program I was in, back in 2000. Eloise would become a mentor of mine, and a person who I would come crying to when I was leaving my ex in Olympia to move back to L.A. in 2001, and again when I was realizing in 2007 that I didn’t want to be married—in fact, I was in love with a coworker friend.

Eloise was crucial to my development, not only as a writer but also as a person in her late-20s, coming out to family and friends after getting married, ready to make more mistakes because that’s all part of “development,” right? One thing Eloise advised us as writers was to say YES to everything. Eloise had several books of poetry, had worked with Wanda Coleman, was running an MFA program, and had time to counsel wayward women like me, so I listened. I took saying YES to everything to heart.

When my first book, Excavation, was published in 2014, I was a few months out from my father’s unexpected death. My grief was drowned out in the excitement of having my first book published. There were many opportunities for me to say yes, and when the opportunities didn't present themselves, I dug in, pushed doors ajar, knocked on others, and tried to make myself seen so someone would ask a question I could say yes to. This yes period lasted through 2016, because I was fortunate to have two more books published—Hollywood Notebook in 2015, Bruja in 2016—and the yes-to-everything period also submerged my grief ever deeper, where I wouldn’t have to feel it as much.