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Writing on a Budget: Gratitude at the End of the Decade

By Lisbeth Coiman

As the end of the decade approaches, and in the spirit of the past Thanksgiving, I express gratitude for the gifts I enjoy and the people who have helped me in the process of setting roots in Los Angeles. When I count my gifts, I claim sanity, employment, community, and dancing.

manual typewriter and iPad with stickers and pins

Since I have battled with suicide ideation throughout my adult life mostly through medication and therapy, I am grateful every day I find the strength and motivation to pursue my goals. Staying alive requires the help of a therapist who speaks my native language and has patiently held my hand when separating from the man I have loved with wild passion and madness felt like peeling the skin off of my body.

Los Angeles, this crazy city of traffic jams, evictions, and homelessness, gave me a job I cherish serving a population I respect and admire. As an adult ESL teacher I have the privilege to introduce new immigrants to the English language and to the US culture – with all its wonders and dark chapters. Aware that this job does not pay my bills entirely, I have also found the support of NAMI LAC to employ me as an In Our Own Voice presenter, a program that fights the stigma against those of us who suffer from mental disorders. When that was not enough to provide for myself and my family in my homeland, I have also been fortunate to rely on my native language to further supplement my income with private tutoring. My work week extends to 50-60 hours, and yes, it feels like too much. Yet I am grateful for Mondays. when I know there is another full week ahead to continue my growth as a self-sustained woman in her mid 50s.

In La La La land I have been audience and participant of extraordinary literary events. Most of the people I come across in those events, with their “hmms” after a line of poetry, or a suggestion to submit, or encouragement, have paved the way for my growth as a writer. The World Stage, La Palabra, Rapp Saloon, Roar Shack, Why There Are Words, LA Expressions, The Exhibition Park Regional Library, Other Books LA, Libro Mobile, and Drunken Masters, and all the amazing writers and hosts of this great community have nourished my artistic spirit.

The South Bay Writing Group, a small and eclectic ensemble of women writers who meet once a week in a coffee shop in Redondo Beach, have become my sisters in writing. I look forward to meeting them once a week, when we briefly catch up on our lives, and fiercely critique each other’s work. They have seen me through divorce and depression, as I have seen them through death of parents, parental worries, and lately through cancer. I love them dearly and cannot be grateful enough for their support.

No other community has had a more significant impact in my development as an writer in the last five years than Women Who Submit. I met them on my first week in LA in the summer of 2014 and have been involved with them ever since. Despite my limited participation in this organization, Women Who Submit has become a great resource to find potential publication for my writing. I am not only grateful, but also proud to know the extraordinary founders and the leadership team.

But what brings me joy is dancing. When I dance, I smile and in doing so my brain produces the endorphins I need to feel good. I have danced since I was a child, but never paid attention to style or form. LA Salsa dancing scene is glamorous and flamboyant, and it’s been hard to learn so much sophistication. But I have talented and patient instructors, who celebrate my life’s events even when I still cannot gather enough friends for a party. They offer me so much fun on the hours I steal from my many responsibilities.

With only a few weeks left to the end of the year, I just wish that one day not far into the future, I can shed some of my financial constraints and dedicate myself entirely to pursue a career as a writer. And when I do so, I will do it as a part of the South Bay Writing Group, Women Who Submit, and the LA writing community as a whole. Then I will dance of joy.

Lisbeth Coiman is an emerging, bilingual writer wandering the immigration path from Venezuela to Canada to the US. She has performed any available job from maid to college administrator, and adult teacher. Her work has been published in Hip Mama, the Literary Kitchen, YAY LA, Nailed Magazine, Entropy, and RabidOak. She was also featured in the Listen to Your Mother Show in 2015. In her self-published memoir, I Asked the Blue Heron (Nov 2017), Coiman celebrates female friendship while exploring issues of child abuse, mental disorder, and her own journey as an immigrant.

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