Celebrating Our Differences
May 15, 2017 This story contains information about violence which may be triggering to survivors. My neighbour, an outgoing, friendly lady in her thirties ALWAYS jumps in fright each time I emerge from my apartment or from the other end of the corridor of our apartment block. It is often…
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”-Mahatma Gandhi Are we here to continually learn and grow? There is something about the human condition that causes us to reject change. I think it’s the pain that accompanies growth. But without…
After working at a few professional jobs that were not leading me toward my dream of improving my community, I reassessed my formal educational studies, experiential learning, and forced myself to become a lifelong learner. My first employment opportunities were with State agencies providing counseling, educational, and…
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…