A Soul Sickness Killed Off My Entire Family...But I Survived!
Hard Truths Served with Compassion and Empathy
If you have struggled with the legacy of trauma; racial injustice, addiction, depression, sexism, abuse, neglect, suicide…This website delivers strategies on how to survive in the pain, how to thrive in the aftermath and how to help end the transmission of hurtful behavior down family lines. Mixed Girl Survival School is the name of my book, this website and a new brand of learning and teaching in this diverse world.
Welcome!
This site hosts:
- my blog on the educational, racial and gender norms in America’s schools, families and society at large: An empathic call to action;
- excerpts from my memoir: Mixed Girl Survival School;
- events for people to come together such lectures, readings, workshops and other nourishing activities; and
- my poems: A dive into the images and impressions of trauma and healing.
About Me
I write poetry, have completed a memoir, written and performed a one-woman show about my life in several venues. I love to cook fresh from my garden and local farms as a way to entertain and nurture family and friends, as well playing on my bike, kayak, hiking trails and golf courses. I’m a movie buff and am thrilled my grown children still like to hang out with me. I’ve worked hard to obtain this peace, to incorporate the regret that my siblings didn’t survive to share in it with me. That’s why I am a compelled to extend the methods that broke the cycle of dysfunction in my own family line to others.
Real Talk
From this sharecropping field in Arkansas to Berkeley during the 60s, my memoir, describes how I grew up with a White mother and brother, a Black father, a Black and White Brother, a Japanese and Black brother and a Korean and Black sister. It illustrates how an admirable racial experiment went terribly wrong.
But Not All of it Was a Bummer
A lot of funny, OMG moments occurred that are ultimately amazing and inspiring. From how the cast of Bonanza interacted with my hair, to Boogie Nights at the golf course I literally lived at and the racial sorting on the playground that rivals anything in the Lord of the Flies. I have wisdom to share with today’s mixed families that may prevent teasing, awkward interactions and boundary violations.
Advance Praise for the Memoir
WOW WOW!!! Incredible!!!
Caitlin Flanagan
Contributing Editor to The Atlantic, Author of To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife and Girl Land
Laurie Panther’s loving story about being the last healthy survivor of her “rainbow family” of origin sheds light on the mechanics of neglect, reckoning, and resilience so prevalent in the American experience. Her light narrative touch lets the reader empathize without being traumatized, joining her hopeful personal journey through the center of a sad epic.
Don’t Miss My Blog!
Guerilla Street Poetry
That last event, Unsilenced Grief, wet my poetry-whistle and subsequently I blew out a series of poems that moved from the darkness of traumatic grief into the light of the present…the light of healing. The poem from that installation, Now That I Don’t Need...
The Call – Part One
Lee and me: The beginning of the end. And then there was one. The fact that five of the seven that comprised my family were already dead was indisputable. The sixth, my only full-blood brother (the one with the same blood mixture as me) was what I had come to think of...
The Call – Part Two
Lee and me: The end. Then again when he drank Dad’s morphine, I was at his ICU beside the next day, trying to coax him back. Like a reverse Horton Hears a Who episode…I was trying to reach him way down in Whoville… my voice getting smaller and smaller, diving down...
My Poetry
Events
Unsilenced Grief
Grief is hard enough to deal with in our "are you over it yet" culture. American norms about being productive and getting-back-on-track, silence us, shame us and prevent the healing needed to truly move into a lively and authentic life without...
Creative Relations Poetry Brunch
Creative Relations Poetry Brunch Sunday, June 11, 2023 at 11:00 am - 1:00 pm In line with this theme of Creative Relations, I will be sharing a collection of poetry that intimately explores my personal and cultural trauma. Through my poetry, I aspire to strengthen our...
REGENERATIONS: Reckoning with Radioactivity
A collaborative interdisciplinary performance project of poetry, dance, projection and live music that explores the impact of nuclear energy around the world. I will be performing my poem, Blink, which is a prayer for nature to lift us up in the face of tragic...
May My Mixed-Up, Mixed-Race Family Rest In Peace.
They were… “Just a Dream Some of Us Had” Joni Mitchell
Samuel Lacy Jr. (Father) Died 2/2/1999
Lee Allen Lacy (Youngest Brother) Died 12/10/2024
Joji Lacy (Middle Brother) Died 2/16/2000
Larry Samuel Lacy (Eldest Brother) Died 7/26/2001
Betty Jean Lacy (Mother) Died 5/5/2011
Kim Aileen Esquer (Sister) Died 3/1/2012
Contact
Inspired by what I've shared? Or have your own survival story to share? I'd love to hear from you.