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Can't Make It Make Sense

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 It takes courage to stand strong in the face of wrong. It takes courage to walk away from harm even though you know people will revile you. It takes courage to call a thing a thing. It takes courage to stand for right. It takes courage to hold the line. Sadly, we saw that there were eight people, placed in positions of service and leadership, representing millions, who chose the side of expedience and empty promises, they chose the side of appeasement of evil instead of fighting for love of all humankind. They chose the cower instead of standing on the courage of the millions behind them who marched and just a week ago, voted for what is just. The furlough has impacted hundreds of thousands of households, my Ace is one of them. Even they said to hold the line, to not give in, that Americans deserved the basic human rights of healthcare and food. The non-stop psychological warfare since January has been a lot, even for those of us trained to deal with trauma and harm. I have had to...
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In The Way That She Should Go

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 My family and I had the great pleasure of watching the last of our bunch achieve one of her collegiate aspirations. Now this one, the final child and second daughter, has always been adventurous, always sought after her own ideals, and always brought us so many smiles. Such was the case when she spent years doing her observations, her research, and concluding on what was most in alignment with her life goals, aspirations, and intentions. Joining many other young people on her collegiate campus, she joined that elite circle of college educated, community driven, and service minded organizations that have collectively impacted the African American community.  My baby girl is now a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.   You would have to really know her to know how impactful this is. She is already an Exponential Scholar and the Vice President, she is already a member of the National Council of Negro Women, Collegiate Section, she is already a leader in the voting eff...
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In All The Ways

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 I woke up this first Monday of Daylight Savings Time with one clock set to the right time (oh those automatic changing phones) and the one above the stove (and likely, the one in my car still at the old time), daylight streaming in at 6:15am when just a couple days ago it was pitch black at this time. It does something to the body and the understanding of awareness. Was my body rested enough at 6:15am on Monday versus 6:15am on Saturday?  When you get older, these kinds of rhythm changes, even that one hour, makes a difference. Of course, I have my usual routine and as a somewhat creature-of-habit, I try to start and end my day at the same time. Rhythm, again. It made me wonder in all the other ways that time holds us still or propels us forward. Time is that one commodity we can't renew. We can try to redeem it. There are some things I try to do in my day and week that can extend it, not waste it, and catch all the wonderful essence of life. Yet, it is also that precious com...
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Just Be Present

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 I stand with those who mourn, with those who have had their world shattered, who are engulfed with the sudden emptiness of one they loved so dearly no longer being in this Earthly realm. It is a numbing that is almost unexplainable. All of it is even worse when the one loved so deeply was so innocent and whose essence was taken by a monster. No one has the right words, so sometimes, they do the wrong thing and stay away. Or they are trying to understand it themselves and barrage the survivor with impossible questions of who, what, when, where, why, and how...yet no one really asks the right how. How are you right now? How can I be present with you through this? How do you want to remember the one you loved? I was never asked. I was never supported. I was never nurtured. We are the wounded healers, those of us who have lived through our lives being ripped apart. I was only 18. The ones who were supposed to be the adults were the very ones who abandoned me to the monster, so I did n...
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The Monsters

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 It is still fairly early morning on a day I hate, a day I never let my sons "celebrate" when they were little. I had to block it out. Quiet it. October 31-November 1 are reminders of the reality of monsters, that they exist in presentable packages, buoyed by folks-who-know-but-refuse-to-act as they prey upon the innocent, the unprotected, the naive, the oppressed, the voiceless, the ones kicked-out. I know. Because that is how a monster found me. Rather, how someone I know sent a monster my way. And the world as I was trying to figure it out as a thrown-away-teenager, turned completely upside down. That one morning, a crisp morning just like this one, I could barely breathe, a bit like now, asthma is an unrelenting thing at times, I was in the barely-able-to-walk stage of one who had literally just been released from a ten-day stint in the hospital. Asthma makes you almost comatose with the way every heartbeat, every muscle, every blink is focused on trying to force air thro...
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Connected

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 I 've been thinking a lot about legacy. No, not planning on leaving this Earth anytime soon - God say the same. But the reality is that I am 61 and in February, my husband will be 65. We are in the final third of our lives.  It is a sobering thought. Neither of us feels like we are finished yet, even though he has uttered a bit about retirement. For me, I feel like I am just getting started. For the past twenty-two years, at least, my life was wrapped up in making sure the human beings that I bore on this earth would make it to adulthood relatively unscathed.  Now, no parent is perfect and no one raising children in even the best of circumstances can say that they reach that ripe age of twenty-one without a few bumps and bruises.  They all do. Mine did. But I can say with complete confidence that I poured everything into them that I could. I completed that assignment of parenting, the last one of the bunch graduates college in May of 2026 and with that, the active s...
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A Liberated Woman

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 It is a rainy Monday, misty and I can hear the sound of the wet pavement as the cars zip by the highway outside my temporary dwelling. The fall colors are emerging and regaling us with the crayon box of God's creation. The temperature is starting to feel like sweater-weather, for real this time. I gaze out my window and during these last few days of October, my thoughts often turn back to that girl I was when October became the darkest month of my life.  Would she sit with me on the balcony, sipping this brown sugar latte with the touches of nutmeg and cinnamon? How would she tell me about her thoughts and dreams when all around her were the moments of disregard? What did she gaze out over a different balcony into tomorrow and hope differently for her future. She comes to my find often, these 42 years since her world shifted, and I look back through the lens of time and have questions for the ones who knew - and didn't rescue her. Growing up Baptist was filled with the do'...
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