Meet Lynne McEniry

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lynne McEniry. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lynne below.

Lynne, so great to have you sharing your thoughts and wisdom with our readers and so let’s jump right into one of our favorite topics – empathy. We think a lack of empathy is at the heart of so many issues the world is struggling with and so our hope is to contribute to an environment that fosters the development of empathy. Along those lines, we’d love to hear your thoughts around where your empathy comes from?

A voracious reading life and a home full of love… my parents were very young when I was born. Neither of them graduated from high school, but they were dedicated to a life of learning and were avid readers…As far back as I remember and for all my years livng at home until I moved out six months after my high school graduation, the financial situation was dire, and my dad and then one of my brothers struggled with addiction…there was a lot lacking, yet there was always loving kindness, respect, and encouragement for us kids to rise above it. I always had a book in my hand. It was my way to learn about people and places beyond my neighborhood, a way to imagine who I could meet and where I could go and what might be possible for me. There was often no money for a car or a phone or oil in the furnace, but my parents could always scrape together some change for the Scholastic Book Fair, and the took us to the Book Mobile and the library regularly…we read together and on our own. There was more often than not a newspaper subscription, magazines from friends, bits and parts of encyclopedia collections that you could earn with purchases at the supermarket. My parents taught us that when we opened ourselves to every opportunity to learn and to treat every single person we meet with respect and kindness, we could find our way in the world. This helped me to grow a true openness and real caring for people I met. Because I felt different, like I didn’t belong in the neighborhood we grew up in because of the financial challenges our family faced, my self-confidence and self-esteem were almost nonexistent. I didn’t want anyone else to feel like they didn’t belong. I often felt my voice wasn’t heard, even when I did try to share an opinion or idea. I was most drawn to the underdog at school or in cartoons. I was deeply emotional and this made me notice when other people were, too. Before I could even understand the concept of empathy, I was both emotionally and cognitively empathic to others because of the books I was reading and the lessons my parents taught us. All of this fed my creative spirit and curiosity as a child and continues to inspire and inform my poetry today.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

Creativity, curiosity, and community are three things I’ve consistently been passionate about for as long as I can remember. They have lead me to experience deep joys and losses… so many opportunities to learn and grow…to experience all the emotions. Today I’m exploring these passions in my personal relationships, through my commitment to the writing life (my own and in support of others), in the variety of communities I am part of, in my work at Saint Elizabeth University, and in the various ways and places through which I spend in service, including EDGE NJ, a vital non-profit that serves the HIV/AIDS and LGBTQ+ communities.
I’ve been writing stories and poems since I was a little girl. My dad worked at home construction, and he understood my need to write every moment and everywhere I could. His scraps of drywall became chalk I used on the blacktop outside our home. He’d let me use his blue chalk line reel to create text boxes and speech bubbles. He even let me write all over my bedroom walls with markers and crayons and pencils and makeup…whatever I could use to shape letters of different sizes and colors to help me put into words what I couldn’t say aloud…to ask the questions I wanted to explore…to use language to create something beautiful when poverty and addiction made life tough.
Whether it’s expository essays in comp classes or poems, short stories, or flash fiction in creative writing, or even emails and marketing plans in business writing, I love sharing the classroom with students as they discover and develop their own unique, important voice in their writing. Currently at EDGE.NJ, I am volunteering on a team to edit pieces for their first issue of a Zine that they hope will grow to an annual publication. I’m on their library board and collaborate on readings and other events with them. My kids and my niece are grown, but we have never stopped talking about what we’re reading and how we are using our creative spirits in our daily responsibilities to keep life sane, to try to make change in a landscape of hate, and, as corny as it may sound, to find as much newness and beauty as possible to keep hope alive. And, now I have the added joy of reading with my great-nephew and great-niece, who, at 4 years old and 18 months old, love the library, too!
My first book, some other wet landscape, was published by Get Fresh Books, and I do editing work for them from time to time. I’m also working to get a final small batch of poems written that will pull together my second book of poems. I submit as often as possible and have recently been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for the second time and twice recognized for the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize: honorable mention and second prize. I share poems with a very small group of poets who are very close to me…we motivate, inspire, challenge and critique each other – one of the greatest gifts in my life. Every day brings an opportunity to push boundaries in all these areas and to share love and new ideas for service, for activism, for creating.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I’d say that respect, openness, and expression are among the top three. And, each one of them is at once a quality, a skill, and an area of knowledge. Because of them, I developed a strong reading and writing life that helped me to express myself and communicate little by little as I grew in both experience and courage. When we respect ourselves and one another, when that respect opens us up to truly understand one another, whether we agree or not, whether we are similar or not, and when we can express to each other what matters — this is when we can allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to explore ourselves in relation to other humans, to the natural world… Respect, openness, and expression can help us break down barriers, eliminate hate, create beautiful art and music and images and dance … we can laugh and love better. I really don’t want to sound simplistic or idealized… I just know that now having lived through various pains and losses, that when these three remain part of my authentic self, then my encounters and relationships with humans and the natural world, the work I do, the poems I write, the service I share, the love I give feel their best.

Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?

Having said all that, I often feel overwhelmed by the hate and ugliness in the world, the unnecessary suffering and violence and also by the demands of my work, my commitment to my loved ones, all the ways I could spend time in service, and can’t seem to balance all this with my own writing life and proper self care… I have had periods of panic and anxiety throughout my life, and the isolation I experienced during Covid really intensified this for me and made me have to find new ways to fight being overwhelmed and anxious.

I am grateful for therapy and support groups through which I’ve learned strategies to cope. I was part of a beautiful sangha on Zoom that an amazing person made space for toward the end of Covid isolation, and I remained part of that until recently. Learning to breathe, to express gratitude daily, and be vulnerable with new people helped so much! I also have my crappy television viewing…shows that have zero drama and are a complete escape from everything in my daily life. I look for laughter every chance I get. I’ve learned slowly to humble myself and ask for help when I need it. I didn’t know what a comfort and safety it would bring when it was so frightening to do at first. I live in a safe and peaceful home with a person who lifts me up and who models faith and grace and mercy. I swim. I sing very loud without giving a care in the world to how off pitch I am. I spend time at the ocean whenever I can. I call my kids or a couple of very trusted friends….or I just remember that I can call them if I really need to, and sometimes that knowing is more than enough.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @lynnepoet
• Facebook: Lynne McEniry
• Linkedin: Lynne McEniry, MFA
• Twitter: @LynneMcEniry