Ep 27 - Maria Muller

When she dreams Maria travels to alternate realities. She's had some crazy adventures and gets a lot of her story ideas from there. She raised 5 kids, mostly as a single mom, and her identifier has been "so & so's mom" most of her life. She grew up partly in Colorado but mostly on her grandparents' farm where she got to do fun stuff like take care of the animals and drive tractors around. She started collecting comic books at age 8 (so became a nerd) and still buys them when she can afford it. She loves all things Marvel, especially the X-Men, but her 1st comic love will always be Elfquest. She's also addicted to watching anime and kdramas and recently started doing cosplay. She isn't sure if that made her a bigger nerd or if she's one of the cool kids now.

She's always loved writing and started pursuing a bachelor's degree in journalism when she was 18, and finally got it 25 years later in 2017. After college she worked as a writer for Denver Parent and Ms Mayhem Magazine.

As one of her poems says, she's been through some shit. Stints of being unhoused with her mom, six years of very abusive relationship with her older kids' dad, alcoholism that led to losing her kids for a week, going to jail because she couldn't afford car insurance but still needed to get to work, and a dirt biking accident in 2007 that left her completely paralyzed. But it's hard to keep her down and eventually she learned to walk and move her arms and hands again.

In 2020, she lost her youngest daughter. She was only 22 when she died, and her death wasn't quick or painless. Eight months later, she started writing poetry as a way to deal with that loss. Her life has inspired her poetry, but she writes about her daughter and domestic violence the most.

She's published feature articles, op-eds, and personal essays, and hopes to publish her poetry one day. She's also working on a few short scripts that she intends to film.

But none of that stuff pays the bills, so for now she has a few Airbnb rooms in her house and that's been its own experience, mostly good.

Her therapy these days is poetry, riding on the bike trails in Aurora with her cat Pumpkin in a basket on the handlebars, and time with her grandbabies.

She currently attends open mics at the Mercury Cafe, The Corner Beet, the Gypsy House cafe and is the opener poet at the Barfly for their Den Drama night.

In this episode: 1. A Toast 2. Monster 3. Fucking Bob 4. The Weight of You