Celebrating Our Differences
In April I danced in the French Quarter, had oysters on Bourbon Street and hot beignets from Café du Monde. We celebrated living, experiences, love and happiness and life with music playing as we walked each street. They celebrate in New Orleans!! They have music, food, laughter, shows,…
Psalms 118:24 – This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. CELEBRATION is a word that I view with ambivalence. I’ve spent a lifetime working through my issues around celebration. Ours was a nuclear family, a term that…
Have you ever gone to a celebration: Wedding. Family Reunion. Celebration of life. Class Reunion… The list is endless, and the person who was responsible for making it happen is sitting all alone in a corner. Face tight. Tear stains marring a beautiful make-up job. Wearing invisible barbed…
Have you ever looked at a rose-like really looked at it and felt as if you have fallen into the natural authenticity of rose energy? Then you probably have awareness that a mother bush was planted in the ground then nurtured with actual rain and natural sunshine plus…
I want to celebrate that which is real and authentic for me. That’s when celebration is not just canned, like canned laughter on some TV comedy show. I want celebration to feel like I did on my fifth birthday. For me, though I don’t always practice it, celebration…
This photo!!! Picture on the left was taken 2017. Picture on the right was taken 2018 (one year apart). In the 2017 photo, I was struggling. I had just been through my biggest medical hurdle yet. My life had been saved but I didn’t recognize the body I…
*cue Kool & the Gang* Celebrations can be mental, physical or emotional, but no matter the form our ability to celebrate big and small victories are frozen moments in our minds. Think of how Cubs fans felt after not just winning the World Series but making it into…
When my Aunt Spoonie (Dr. Phyllis P. Hayes) received her PhD a few years ago, she asked me to speak at her celebratory dinner, in place of her father, my grandfather Mr. Harold L. Hayes Sr. Her request touched a place in my soul that I had…
“Sometimes crying or laughing are the only options left, and laughing feels better right now.” ― Veronica Roth, Divergent If the ability to laugh at oneself is reflective of good mental health, I’m in decent shape. It’s been a hectic year. I retired from my full-time job…
“If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane.” ― Robert Frost Imagine a group of women, ranging in age from mid-thirties to almost eighty years old who travel together two or three times a year to attend regional and international sorority conferences. The travel time ranges…