About Me — Tina L. Smith

Creative pragmatist or pragmatic creative?

The author. Photo by Andy Greenwell, her main squeeze.

Towheaded little sister…Singer…Flutist…Serious student…Wannabe writer…Well-behaved rebel…Hard worker…Friend…Wife…Mom…Divorcee…Single mom…Leader…Helper…Partner……….Writer.

If I had to boil down my life, that would be the list. These are some of the phases and roles I’ve passed through in life, the culmination of which is “writer.”

I was born into a loving family that happened to have very little money. My parents and older brother and sister and I lived in a post-WWII government housing project in a Detroit suburb, in a poorly constructed house that was heated with a large space heater. We could see outside through cracks in the wall from the bathtub.

The author (blond in blue) and her birth family. Photo provided by author.

When I was 4, the house was condemned, and we were forced to move out. We lived in a 17-foot trailer parked in my grandparents’ driveway while my parents had a house built on property next to my grandparents’ house and moved in a week before Christmas, before the carpet was installed. Our Christmas tree sat directly on the subfloor, and we had to wear shoes to keep from getting splinters.