What do you do when the rug is pulled out from under you and what you knew as normal is out the window? All of us experienced this in mid-March of this year. With so much uncertainty and upheaval, my sisters and I, stretched across five states and four time zones, started weekly Zoom meetings in late March. As April arrived, I decided to give myself a poem-a-day challenge for National Poetry Month. I threw the idea out to my sisters to join me if interested.

Added to that, another sister was diagnosed with cancer in late March, becoming the fifth of eight sisters to hear such a jarring diagnosis. Our sister Mary Jo died of metastatic breast cancer on June 16, 2019. We were grieving and reeling, but the poems grounded us. A few of us write regularly, others not as much. This challenge became a fun and meaningful connection in those first chaotic weeks of the pandemic. All seven of us wrote and shared. Some poems were on the lighter side, others carried weighty emotions.

As the poems came in from Alaska, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, and Oregon, Aileen also began her journey into cancer treatment and started chemotherapy in late April. By month’s end, we had composed and compiled well over 125 poems. And we had made it through the first full month of the pandemic.

An idea was born. There was a book in all of this. None of us had ever published a book before, but the sisterhood kept us moving forward. Over the next months, we chose poems to include, came up with organized themes, hired an editor, asked our niece/daughter to help design a cover. All of this accomplished across the miles and via technology. Travel restrictions and concerns, and the continuing pandemic, have kept us physically apart. Our Sunday Zoom calls have become a welcome part of our weeks.

By the time we were ready to publish, our book included 54 poems organized around the themes of shattered, battered, and sustained. Normal shattered by a pandemic, our sisterhood battered by cancer, and all of us sustained by our upbringing, resilience, and Nature.

We are Danita, Aileen, Ann, Leonice, Zita, Ruth, and Lisa. We grew up on a farm in northeast Iowa with five brothers and our parents. Our first book is a collaboration from our hearts. It is titled April . . . In Pieces: Seven Sisters Writing on COVID and Cancer and is available for purchase on Amazon.