Category: Memoir

Adult Child Estrangement and Reconciliation
Chronic illness, Health, Memoir

Adult Child Estrangement and Reconciliation

Before hearing about Partners In Partners in Policy Making or anything relatively close to it, all I knew about advocating for children was my mother’s lioness-like attitude regarding us. She barely had to use her roar to speak up for us. I attempted to find my inner lioness once I became a mother, but it did not come easily. First, I was shy and filled with the guilt of bringing a medically fragile child into this world at such a young age. Second, I was hard on myself and self-conscious because of how others viewed me. I wish I had it in me to speak up for myself at the time, but I did not have the necessary tools to do so. Finally, a life experience would present itself to provoke my inner lioness. Continue reading Adult Child Estrangement and Reconciliation

A Juneteenth learning experience in New Orleans
African American, Black History, Culture, Memoir, New Orleans, Non-fiction, Writing

A Juneteenth learning experience in New Orleans

In a country that prides itself on being the “land of the free,” this is just one of our many social differences and falsities, another one of which is, notably, right around the corner: On the 4th of July, Juneteenth is celebrated to honor the day enslaved African Americans in Texas found out they were free two years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. I would learn that some black people thought the 4th of July meant freedom for all people, but this was not the case. July 4th is to celebrate when America declared independence from the British in 1776. Frederick Douglass would pen, “This Fourth is yours, not mine.”

Continue reading A Juneteenth learning experience in New Orleans