Family: Formed, Found, and Chosen; Moroccan Nomads
My poem, Curiosity and Wonder was selected for publication in early 2026 in an anthology of short stories and poems by several local authors. The submission was based on the theme Family: Formed, Found, and Chosen, in response to the memoir Solito by Javier Zamora, which tells the story of a nine-year-old child making his…
Inspiring Children: Dima’s True Story in Botswana
After a blip in my health this year, I got back on track with the help of my critique group to finish the manuscript for my children’s picture book. It is under review by my developmental editor, and Chelsa, will start her illustrations in January 2026. I have chosen IngramSpark, a publisher that distributes and…
Take Charge of Your Healthcare: Part IV
Disclaimer: This blog will pertain to my U.S. readers; my suggestions may not apply to my international followers. Part IV: Trust & Provider Feedback Matter Let me say here that TRUST is a huge and important aspect of working with your healthcare provider. Just as you trust your family, spouse, partner, or friend, so should…
Take Charge of Your Healthcare: Part III
Disclaimer: This blog will pertain to my U.S. readers; my suggestions may not apply to my international followers. Part III: Take Charge of Your Office Visit Now that you have read Part I and Part II of my blog post about taking charge of your healthcare, Part III may cause a bit of consternation on…
Take Charge of Your Healthcare: Part II
Disclaimer: This blog will pertain to my U.S. readers; my suggestions may not apply to my international followers. Part II: Prepare for Your Office Visit (continued from last blog). Once you have found the provider that is right for you (I described this in my last blog, Part I), now is the time for you…
Take Charge of Your Healthcare: Part I
Disclaimer: This blog will pertain to my U.S. readers; my suggestions may not apply to my international followers. Part I: Tips for Choosing a Provider This multipart blog is inspired by the recent illnesses and deaths of some dear friends and neighbors. Witnessing them struggle with our healthcare maze was difficult. Guiding patients on navigating…
Illness to Inspiration Update
I had no idea my last blog would carry so much concern among my readers. Personal notes and messages were sent; one asked, “Why hadn’t you called me?” I was remiss in telling my readers that during my infirmary weeks ago, the outpouring of care from nearby neighbors, friends, and surrogate family was amazing. I…
From Illness to Inspiration: Crafting My Second Memoir
Several weeks ago, I developed community-acquired pneumonia, AKA walking pneumonia. I lay weeks on the couch, listless, weak, with no appetite. My family doctor tried diligently to avert it. When it developed into a bacterium, the antibiotics finally worked. But until I fully recovered, I couldn’t shut my mind off. Over the days and weeks,…
Indelible Morocco: My Hammam Experience
Even though it’s been months since I returned from Morocco in December 2024, the fond memories of that country and its people have left an indelible mark I won’t easily forget. I wrote about the sheep migration in an earlier blog. But there was so much more. In several instances, it seemed that life stood…
The Power of Truth in Memoir Writing
Some parts of my memoir, Pink Flamingos, were painful to write when it came to telling the whole story, the whole sensitive truth. I was concerned who would read it and what they would think; my family, my classmates, my work colleagues. All my coaches encouraged me to write what happened, not focus on the…
Challenge Yourself: Write a Children’s Book
So what is so challenging about writing a children’s picture story book? I could write under 600 words in about 30 minutes and get it done. Not the illustrations, of course; I found a wonderful illustrator to do that. Hey, I am already a published author of adult nonfiction stories and poems. “Piece of cake,”…
A Poem for the Ages
This blog title uses the word ages in its literal translation. Therefore, this poem depicts my journey toward accepting my own aging process. I’ve been a relatively healthy 74 year old engaging in a variety of physical and mental activities that keep me vital and active. My Sacred Temple by Susan E. Greisen 12/24 My…
New Publication: How Time and Place Inspire Poetry
I was challenged to write a piece for our writers’ organization, Red Wheelbarrow Writers, to be published in a collective anthology. Here was the assignment: Submit fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that captures the importance of a particular place and its power to surprise, transform and inspire. Keen observation of everyday scenes reveals how simple, seemingly…
Moroccan Sheep Migration: A Nomadic Tradition
(Click on the two video links below) Our OAT Tour (Overseas Adventure Tour) was winding through the mid-Atlas Mountains of Morocco in 2024 when our guide, Mohamed told our driver to stop the bus and said with excitement, “Come and look!” Mohamed is Amazigh or Berber as Westerners call the indigenous people. (Amazigh is their…
Embracing Aging: My Yoga Journey
(All images in this blog are computer generated.) “I can’t walk that far, I’m too old.” These are my mother’s words as I tried to encourage her out of the car to walk one block to see one of the geysers at Yellowstone. She never got out. “I can see the top of it from…
Sunrise, Sunset 2024
As this rosy sunrise brought us 2024, much has happened in our lives and around the world. But as the sun sets this December, I want to end with photos taken throughout the year. I have written about some of the images with others in upcoming blogs. Enjoy, and I wish you a healthy and splendid…
No Gifts Opened at Christmas
In recent months Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon bombed each other only a few miles from my Lebanese family. At this moment there is a ceasefire agreement. This is a Christmas Story that happened in December 2022 during a peaceful time in Lebanon with its struggling economy. I found a safe window of travel to…
2024 Holiday Book Special
In Search of Pink Flamingos was published over four years ago and its reception is still going strong. Over 30 book clubs have hosted my book and I attended most of these as the guest author, in person or virtually, with no fee. I offer a slideshow with videos from Liberia followed by a robust…
Honoring & Reuniting Veterans
This U.S. Memorial Day Holiday (a day we honor and remember all of our veterans), I want to include a story written in 2008 about my former husband’s 86-year-old uncle Truman. Truman enjoyed reminiscing about the past. When he spoke of being in the war, I assumed he was speaking of World War II. (Truman…
Whirling Dervishes of Turkey: “Ritual of Sema”
Some of us have heard of these mesmerizing men who twirl for hours in long white skirts. I wanted to learn more. My OAT (Overseas Adventure Travel) to Turkey in 2023 included a demonstration of this dance; a Sufi tradition (Muslim religious figures akin to monks) that involves spinning faster and faster to summon the…
Camel Caravans in Turkey
I traveled to Turkey for the first time in June 2023. So many fascinating experiences caught my fancy. But this one stood out as the cousin to our interstate truck stops or roadside inns in America. Camel caravan rest stops -caravanserais- were created before gasoline, diesel, big-rig trucks, and motor homes. The journeys of merchants and their animal…
Maternal Mortality Among Black American Women
I recently read some alarming statistics and want to share them with you. After my Peace Corps assignment as a health education volunteer during the early 70s in Liberia, West Africa the topic of Maternal and Child Health became near and dear to my heart. The maternal mortality in the country at that time was…
Paralympic Athletes | Triumph Over Adversity
I love the summer Olympics and watch them religiously every four years as I did this summer (2024). I tear up as their life stories are told or when they win and achieve their goal. I have never watched the Paralympics, but this year I did. The competitions were jaw-dropping. How did the woman with…
Healing Generational Trauma: Insight, Coping, and Recovery
Here in the USA, we are fortunate. In many of the 50 countries I have lived or traveled to, the recent history of war is part of their human fabric. Either people can recall the wartimes, have a family or friend killed or maimed, or the remnants of past bombings dot the landscape today. Yes,…
In Search of Pink Flamingos: My Father Remembered
Today, I want to honor my deceased father. He passed away nearly 30 years ago. As a young child and his only daughter, my dad was everything to me. He was a skilled farmer by trade, but he was also a WWII veteran, a hero, a mechanic, an electrician, a builder, an inventor, a veterinarian,…
Don’t Let Your Library Burn
A Senegalese proverb has an expression for a wise deceased person who led a full life: his or her library has burned to the ground. I heard this phrase recently at a memorial service for a 97-year-old friend. As a writer, author, poet, and storyteller, this proverb rang loud. Its meaning is profound. There are…
The Wonders of Jordan & Egypt
(Hot air balloon sunrise tour over the Nile) I am tardy in posting this blog about one of the most amazing trips that I took in 2022. I wrote a detailed narrative with photos and YouTube videos for friends and family about a year ago. Instead of rewriting it for my web followers, I will…
‘Pink Flamingos’ Now an eBook
My blog has readers and followers in over 75 countries, and now they can access my award winning memoir, In Search of Pink Flamingos, more easily. For my international readers, download the link below for the list of 43 different eBook distributors around the world who have it available. You can locate it by searching…
Africa 50 Years Later: Part II, Zimbabwe, Zambia, & Botswana
(I am reposting this blog from 2 days ago because the earlier slideshow link did not connect. So Sorry.) The last time I was on an African safari was over 50 years ago in 1973. As a 20-year-old farmer’s daughter, I was gobsmacked, of course. So many animals in the plains of Tanzania and Kenya…
Africa 50 Years Later: Part I, South Africa
In February and March 2023, I returned to the heart of Africa for the first time since I departed Liberia in 1973. Much older, the second time around from my 20-year-old naive farm girl self, I wondered how I would feel or what I would think. I traveled to new countries I had never been…
Costa Rica, Can’t Stop Going Back
What’s the connection between electrical converters, tap water, and toilet paper in this blog? Seeking to escape the cold December weather of the Northwest, I visited Costa Rica for the fourth time. Each visit resulted in making new Tico/Tica friends. This time, I stayed in one location for a month, only venturing out a couple…
Where is the Peace?
What a poignant question during these turbulent times. And so what’s the Peace Corps got to do with it, you may ask? I was recently interviewed and asked this question for the WorldView magazine that was published in the Winter 2024 edition. This magazine sponsored by the National Peace Corps Association is supported by those…
Pay It Forward
We have opportunities to be kind, be helpful, or pay it forward. Often it is not calculated…just a spontaneous gesture. In my travels this past year I have met many interesting people. This is a story of one lovely woman I met on one my transatlantic flights. I sat next to a 50 + year-old…
Malarial Game Changer
I contracted malaria 4 times during the 4 years I lived and worked in Africa (Liberia & Cameroon) in the 70s and 80s. Not because I was noncompliant with my antimalarial medication, but instead, the malarial parasite mutated causing the medication to become ineffective and drug resisitant. During that period, 60% of the Liberian children…
Borrowed Water, Buying Time
I grew up on the farm in Nebraska learning that the water we used was given by the clouds that rose above us. It filled our wells and nurtured our stomachs with the food it provided. My dad monitored our rain gauge regularly to manage our livelihood. We all need water and, surely, we have…
Professional Tourist OR Global Citizen?
One thing I’ve learned as a writer, our readers are interested in our qualifications. I never paid much attention or tallied how many countries I’ve traveled over my lifetime. However, when I wrote my first book, it was a question I was asked in my book proposal about what qualified me to write about living…
African Women Taking Charge
It had been over 5 decades since I lived, worked, and traveled in Africa. Now, 50+ years older, I returned as a tourist with my goal to experience the people and culture and not focus on a bucket list of seeing the big “FIVE”. (I did, however, have the Rwandan Gorillas on my list that…
Sunrise Sunset 2023
As the sun’s rosey glow brought us 2023, much has happened in our lives and around the world and I have many things to share with my readers. But as the sun sets on this December, I want to end with some photos I’ve taken through the year. Some I have written about and others…
Random Acts of Brownies
The holidays are not always special and joyous for everyone. I recall a period in 2016 when my divorce was final at Christmastime. The next several months were trying. I housesat, rented, and moved several times, deciding where I wanted to land. I am resurrecting a story I wrote at the end of that period.…
Curiosity, Commonsense, and Courage
I’ve been classified as crazy, stupid, or just a wonderment to many who know me. Some of my choices may have seemed foolish and maybe even daring, but in my seventh decade of life, there was always a method to my decisions – a trilogy of sorts: Curiosity, Commonsense, and Courage. Curiosity I continually wonder…
Outstanding Community Service Award
The National Peace Corps Association (NPCA) is pleased to announce the Friends of Liberia (FOL) as the winner of the 2023 Loret Miller Ruppe Award for Outstanding Community Service. (Click on any highlighted area for links to more information.) NPCA members selected FOL for this year’s prestigious award, recognizing the group’s publication of Never the…
Gorilla Doctors of Rwanda
Click on any highlighted area for more information. All photos for this blog are from the internet. I have always been skeptical of habituating wild animals to humans. I’ve seen the damage this has done to the bears in the National Parks in the 60s when I vividly remember traveling in Yosemite as a 12-year-old…
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Susan E. Greisen 