The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

In July 2007, my husband and I were exploring communities for relocation. We lived in Lee's Summit, Missouri, and settled in Kirkwood, Missouri. When we were evaluating places to live, a loft on Washington Avenue, for instance, versus a sprawling home in O'Fallon, Missouri that was in a community similar to our Lee's Summit community, the issue of schools was paramount in the conversation. One son was a 2007 high school graduate so the family lived on both sides of the state until he was safely off to Naval basic training in July.  We thought of living in two spaces, three-and-one-half hours apart, but realized the strain on the family was too much. It was at almost the 11th hour that we found a fairly nice 3bedroom, 1.5 bath to rent on a sprawling corner lot on a tree lined street in a quaint suburb. We chose the suburb first, known for the high academic standards we had come to expect with an added bonus of full support of the visual and performing arts, we chose Ki...

I am very rare. We all tend to think that about ourselves. There is a scripture in the Hebrew Bible that says we are "fearfully and wonderfully made." It makes one feel special, great, unique. Truly one-of-a-kind. So, yes, I am very rare. Even more rare than the uniqueness of everyone else is my personality type. They say that just 3% of the population is on the Myers-Briggs INFJ Personality Scale. The company is almost exclusive. President Jimmy Carter shares my personality type. So does one of the younger writers I've met in the past year. We almost need a support group so we can sit together quietly intuining with each other the world we encounter with our keen emotional intelligence and perception. The pain of belonging or not can show up all over our face. Like when one is dismissed or disregarded because we are so busy helping and serving others instead of touting how brilliant we are to a bunch of captive middle schoolers. Should we even try...

In the latest editions of it can't get any crazier, we went to bed last night with the news reports that dumb has endorsed narcissist and the papers are having a field day. My daughters are in middle school. They and their friends have all said they will move if Donald Trump is elected President. I posted that if there was anyone on my Facebook page who supported him, they can kindly leave my existence. Trump is more than dangerous because of his racist rhetoric, he has incited violence against Muslims, blacks, Latinos, and LGBTQ. There was a focus group of his supporters who liked that he "tells it like it is" - meaning they really want to spew off the most vile pile of doggie dung from their mouths and do so without ever being called on it. Trump's base pandering of everything, even being seen with a Bible for those conservative Christian Republicans, is worse than anything I ever imagined in politics. Granted, a lot of white folks are and have been living i...

In a week that could have shaken confidence, we paused to celebrate the already amazingness of black women, It is all connected to remind the collective black girl that she doesn't need a hashtag to remind her of her excellence. She is a survivor, an innovator, an entrepreneur, an educator, and a thriver.  She, the collect black American girl, has had to stand strong in herself despite arrows thrown at her from every end. So it is in that spirit that there are a few black girl moments that I celebrate this week: The classy beauty of Mrs. Michelle Obama, First Lady of the United States who has exhibited the most elegance in the eight years at the White House. She has shown continued support of her husband and her daughters. There hasn't been a First Lady like her in a very long time. None of the Republican candidates' wives can hold a candle to her. Another celebatory moment was the appointment of the twin black women as judges in Birmingham, Alabama. Then there wa...

There are times when something happens and one has to pause, inhale, exhale, and examine what happened.  Someone cherished and deeply loved went through a painful event and held that event in the heart until it became a cancerous tumor. That tumor spread to the soul and exploded out of the mouth with some most vile things said to a room full of women, some young girls in the hearing, mothers and grandmothers in the hearing. When spewing the geyser of misognistic rhetoric enough to rival any rap video session, the instinct is to deflect or defend or deny, to protect. But one reaches beyond instinct to know that that spewing is from a place of deep darkness, a hell that seems impenetrable. But there is light through that, a redemption, even of a worthless whore, one of the comments made Let me get a bit theological for a moment. ln the past year or so, many, many things have been said, written, and uttered in the presence of women, particularly black women. Our existence an...

I was preparing my day when I stopped in the middle of my morning to ponder things that have recently occurred. In the months before the winter break, I tried to make a conscious decision to be less outwardly focused and more inwardly focused. That seems like a strange thing for me, an introvert with a few extrovert tendencies, to not be strictly developing my own goals and aspirations. When I decided to pull back, not completely logged off, I also decided to evaluate my own level of expectations and disappointments over the past two years that I was "on" so much. One of the first personal disappointments and reminders to be patient centered on my thoughts of obtaining my doctorate. I was only a few were chosen to attend, all expenses covered. It was at that conference that the unquenching thirst for knowledge and teaching filled me with optimism. I even aspirationally posted a photo of myself as Dr. and pondered if my then-forty-something age would prevent me from se...

by Tayé Foster Bradshaw One of the things I decided when I opened my eyes this morning was that this year would be full of promise and opportunity and hope and dreams. Of course, so many of us make resolutions and decide that this year will be the year that we... I am so full of euphoria, fresh breath, and optimism for 2016. Perhaps it is because it is a new page, like a new piece of paper or the new journals I received or the fresh doodles I made. The prompt that made me decide to start the new year and new morning off a little differently was that we often believe that how we start a thing is how it will be. So I started it by making coffee - nothing new under that sun for me - and then I did something else.  I didn't check messages or social media or even clean the glasses left from the kids' last night's water runs. The bag filled with markers and colored pencils begged me to step away from my trepidation to reach inside, rediscovering the creative child i...