Sherry Sidoti says, “Every time I am engaged in something that I feel really passionate about, the real moment of knowing I’m doing the right thing is when I start to support others to learn and engage in it, too.” For many years, Sidoti’s stewardship on the Vineyard involved yoga. However, after publishing her awardwinning book, “A Smoke and a Song,” her focus has shifted to memoir writing and mentoring. The journey has been cumulative, and rooted in her passion for embodied, transformative experiences.
Born and raised in New York City, Sidoti first fell in love with the Island in 1989 at age 19 when visiting her sister, who was on the Vineyard with her then boyfriend. She kept returning, initially for short visits and later in her 20s, to work summers.
Sidoti later married, and moved to L.A. in 1998, but after giving birth to her son in 2002, she and her husband felt it was time to leave: “You know how this Island is. If you’re meant to be here, Martha will pull you back. I thought we’d come for a little while, get our bearings, and end up back in New York City. Within a couple of months, it was the best lifestyle, particularly as a new mother of a 4-month-old. I immediately met several new moms, and they are still my closest friends.”
Sidoti developed a new passion for yoga, inspired by the prenatal yoga classes she’d attended in Los Angeles. “Being pregnant was the first time I had the sense that my body was more of a temple than a battleground.” With no prenatal yoga instructors on the Island, she decided to get certified, and started teaching in 2003. Her practice expanded as women’s lifestyles evolved: “When the moms started having their babies, the women asked for a baby-and-Mommy class. When the kids began going to daycare or preschool, the moms would say, ‘Will you do a class without the babies?’ Then new pregnant women would come. I followed the flow of demand.”
Sidoti’s practice grew, and in 2011, she opened Fly Yoga School. Recognizing that no one was training teachers on the Island, she became certified to do so. Sidoti always honored the Island during the immersive trainings: “My intention was that we don’t keep taking from Martha, but that we give back as much as we are receiving. We spent time in the woods or at the sea doing yoga devotional rituals. We also did community service, and I would include as many Islanders as I could, as part of the training, who had incredible gifts to share.” For example, she brought in experts in spinal anatomy, energy science, and acupressure, among others.
Sidoti observes, however, “By 2015, 2016, and 2017, yoga had become mainstream in the West, and had lost much of its traditional and spiritual essence. I was getting turned off by the way it was appropriated and taught, mostly accessible only to the privileged. Yoga is a sacred lineage that should be honored.” Additionally, there was the Me Too movement, and revelations about many yoga teachers and gurus who had abused their power. “Then add the social media craze to the mix, and the fascination of celebrity yogis in fancy poses. I was feeling that yoga was losing its essence and soul, and questioning how much I might have been contributing to it. Despite my reverence for yoga, I was still a white Western woman mentoring others to share an ancient Eastern practice. It was a period of real questioning. So I was having my own personal spiritual crisis, grappling with how much I wanted to be this person.”
When the pandemic hit, Sidoti had just started two teacher trainings, and had to pivot to an online format for about 700 hours, during which she spent a lot of time helping others regulate their trauma: “I needed a break from teaching when they were completed. But I already knew I was winding down by then.”
As it happened, writing poured in to fill the space. Sidoti took a memoir-writing workshop that Nancy Aronie was offering on Zoom; Sidoti had attended one a few years earlier. With more than a hundred participants, Aronie divided the class into smaller sharing groups. The one Sidoti was in kept going long after the workshop ended.
“Initially, I was writing just to give myself time to be creative and to process some of what all of us were experiencing in 2020. Also, my mom had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and my son had just moved out, so I was writing to make sense of my life, both in real time and the past. I integrated meditation, breathwork, movement, and five-sense awareness while writing. The years of practicing yoga helped me access, digest, and write my memories at a cellular level.”
Over time, Sidoti recognized recurring themes in her disparate pieces, and decided to weave the stories together. After researching as much as possible about the publishing world, Sidoti was chosen by She Writes Press to publish “A Smoke and a Song” in 2023. By its very nature, a memoir is personal, and Sidoti’s is quite intimate. She says that it wasn’t until readers started telling her how vulnerable she had made herself that the fear set in: “Then all the typical things hit me — the imposter syndrome, the ‘Oh no, did I just ruin all my relationships?’ I think these stop a lot of people from writing memoirs, but because I was so fresh and naive during my experience, I didn’t realize those were considerations until I was already deep in. But the more time passes, those feelings don’t stop me in my tracks anymore. Now the book is living the life it’s supposed to have, apart from me, and I’m trusting that.”
Although Sidoti still teaches some yoga classes in the community, her passion for the past two years has been mentoring other memoirists through her online workshops. Each session is infused with the same embodiment practices Sidoti used while writing. Participants are learning how to draw on yoga, meditation, and healing arts to transform their memoir writing from simple storytelling into a sacred, brave, and healing act of self-awakening.
Visit sherrysidoti.com.
