Celebrating Our Differences
Four months prior to meeting Robert in Ljubljana, Slovenia, I had a dream about divorcing and marrying a new man on the same day. This profound experience truly challenged me, as I was quite lonely and expanding my spiritual endeavors. When we met in a December 2000 seminar,…
One of the key influences in my ability to help coach my children was my willingness to ask successful children and their parents questions about how their success was achieved. (Both of my children completed school at Harvard grad school). Interestingly, I have only had very few…
“To teach is to learn twice” was a mantra of a former spiritual education teacher, Dr. Helen Carry. She would reiterate time and again, the importance of exhaustive preparation before standing before a class to provide instruction. I was always grateful for that bit of wisdom and…
When my uncle, Griff Kendrick, a Korean War veteran and accounting graduate of Lincoln University in Missouri, decided to marry a skinny little co-ed he met at Lincoln instead of one of the ‘sisters’ from my hometown area, we just could not understand it! Over the years we…
It’s been an unusual few days for me…I’ve been a bit emotional as the calendar moved forward and my mind kept wanting to look back, but inside I know I have to keep moving forward, but learn from the past. September has been full of big shifts…
African American families used to have family meetings to figure out the issues, determine the steps needed to shore up the crumbling family infrastructure, and then hold people accountable for the improvements. Now keeping in mind—these weren’t long meetings. The meetings weren’t for blaming or shaming people…
Time goes, you say? Ah, no! alas, time stays, we go. –Henry Austin Dobson I’VE RECENTLY BEGUN TO ASK MYSELF IF I AM RUNNING OUT OF TIME. During the play Hamilton, the hip-hop version of the life of American statesman Alexander Hamilton, I was struck by the lyrical thread…
With most things in life, there’s a receipt or a chance to get a refund. There’s only one thing (as far as I’m concerned) that cannot be redeemed, and that’s time. It’s my most precious commodity, and believe me, I treat it accordingly, and I don’t let…
It was the perfect fall day in the US capital, Washington, DC. With a little over a couple of hours to spare before an appointment, I summoned a ride to a sacred place for a walk through time. Within 20 minutes I was being ushered by the crowd…
On my road trip to the homecoming for Prarie View A&M University, I experienced the welcome and warmth of an overnight visit with Tresie Lewis Kinnell. Housed in Frisco, TX, outside of Dallas, this subdivision, for me, was reminiscent of the brownstones in Chicago. Kinnell’s house had its…