family history | Sheila Collins

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

by Sheila Collins | Mar 17, 2015 | Personal Stories, Story-telling

Like most Americans, my ancestry is a bit of the mutt variety. Dad’s people came to this country from Protestant England and Northern Ireland and were established on farms in southern Illinois well before this country’s Civil War. Mother’s family were redheaded...

Trouble in Paradise

by Sheila Collins | Nov 28, 2014 | Personal Stories, Play, Story-telling

It’s raining in paradise. I guess this shouldn’t be a surprise since the paradise I’ve been living in for the past week is a tropical rainforest in Jamaica. Palm tree leaves blow sideways in the wind, and water splashes upward from the pool into the air as the grey...

Eggs

by Sheila Collins | Apr 24, 2014 | Environment, Story-telling

My focus on eggs started with the picture my daughter-in-law sent of my twenty month-old granddaughter, Kyra Joy. She’s outfitted in a pink princess-like dress and tiny white shoes. She’s standing in a park in the high desert of California to participate in her first...

Excerpt from “Warrior Mother”

by Sheila Collins | May 28, 2013 | Book Excerpts, Grieving, Health and Wellness, Past Events, Personal Stories, Publications, Rituals, Writing

People would often say to me, “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be, children dying before their parents.” They said it when my thirty-one-year-old son, Kenneth, died of AIDS and again, seven years later, when my forty-two-year-old daughter, Corinne, died of breast...

Dancing With Death

by Sheila Collins | May 15, 2013 | Dances, Grieving

Death, grief and the end of life, have been major themes in my life recently. Last week a 23 year-old man collapsed at the Pittsburgh Marathon and became its first casualty. Friends and family were shocked, there had been no personal or family history to indicate his...

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day

Trouble in Paradise

Eggs

Excerpt from “Warrior Mother”

Dancing With Death

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