What is Rubi’s Rendezvous anyway?

First, and foremost, Hello Friend! If I may call you that.

Thank you for stopping by. Thank you for your time and grace as you peruse around my sacred and “secret” space.

My name is Lisa Maria Gil de Ventura, & pardon my being extra, but this is exactly how I am inside of my head. And so, the longer you stick around, the more you will see what I mean.

In a nutshell, I have been writing since 1996. My first lock-and-key diary, which I still have, confirms it. However, I did not know I was a “writer” until I took my first writing workshop twenty-three years later, right before the pandemic hit.

In that timeframe, I attended elementary and middle schools in the Washington Heights area of NYC, attended a portfolio-based high school (where there was lots of writing involved but I still didn’t know I had a knack for writing) in Midtown Manhattan, and then was the first one in my family to go away to college and obtain a bachelor’s degree in Sociology.

Between high school and college, I was in an unhealthy long-term relationship, and was doing way too much as a free-spirited and independent teenage girl. I also lost my sixteen-year-old little brother to suicide in my first semester. That loss took me down a spiral that was both reckless and purposeful at the same time.

I successfully graduated a semester after my peers, ended the all-consuming, manipulative relationship, enjoyed the bachelorette life for about two years, and became a poet by the pen name “Rubi G.” before meeting the love of my life during a family trip to the Dominican Republic in 2009.

That encounter, that man, that love story purified me and fortified my faith. It all felt healing, like a fresh start; it was without a doubt the unconditional type of love and affection I’d been searching for all along. It’s been sixteen years since I said yes to that miraculous and adventurous deep dive into the unknown, and the rest is history, as they say. But it all took heart, guts, patience, and blind faith. As with all things of God, I suppose.

In a short amount of time, I became a wife, a mother, a homeowner, a “retired” supportive housing case manager, and a self-published author. Sixteen years after that encounter, I am living a life of dreams I couldn’t clearly envision but could only see “feelingly,” as Adriene of Yoga with Adriene says.

So, if you happen to subscribe to Rubi’s Rendezvous, you’re signing up to read (exclusively) all the stories I have yet deemed worthy of sharing. You’re signing up to read my most intimate thoughts because the page is the only place where I cannot hide. Writing, for me, is oxygen, but it is also how I unravel and demonstrate my love—for the craft, for my creator, for myself, for my life, and for absolutely everything this life has blessed me with--“good” or “bad.”

Back in the day, I had friends who loved reading my journals and diaries. I guess I can let you do the same if your curiosity feels so inclined.

Thank you in advance for supporting and holding me in my most vulnerable state.

With immense love & gratitude,

Lisa aka Rubi G.

(P.S.- the only reason why I even know the word Rendezvous is because of a former mentor and my very first employer, who paid me a weekly salary between the ages of 13 and 19 to tutor and babysit her three boys and daughter with special needs. When I lived in the Heights, and my brother was still alive, this mentor started a boys’ group for her sons and a few of the other young boys on the block, my brother included. Although the group didn’t last, the intention and the word stayed with me since. About two years ago, this mentor lost one of her sons, one of the boys I tutored, and the grief enveloped me all over again. So, for this publication to have purpose and meaning, I am borrowing the word to dedicate this effort to the young men currently in my life and the ones that left us too soon as well.)

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