I Did Not Know How To Be The Mother of a Black Son
https://medium.com/@racheldangermond_49279/i-did-not-know-how-to-be-the-mother-of-a-black-son-bc76471cb3aa View at Medium.com
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Dear Mom, I Miss You
How fragile we are, between the few good moments. ~Jane Hirshfield On November 30, 2009, my mother became an ancestor. Exactly one week later, on December 7, 2009, I met my son. These major life changes did not happen in a vacuum, they came when there were bills to pay, a friend’s daughter to grieve for, the aftermath of a tragic flood, a marriage ended, a love lost, a brother in prison, ongoing family mental…
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Eulogy for Little Harry
Eulogy for Little Harry A Super Nova Kitty Cat Our love bug, big blue-eyed Little Harry, left us tonight. He was four months old when he came to us. We named him Little Harry after my brother’s Siamese cat “Little” and also since he was Tin’s Hanukkah Harry gift. We hoped he was a Hanukkah miracle. And he was. He used up three of his nine lives but didn’t make it through the 4th. He…
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Non-Attachment
I started this blog in 2004 and then I started writing another blog about raising my son. Then I spent three years writing a book called The Elephant in the Playground. Then fellow published writers suggested I write instead a different book, a book that was more my story, so I began writing essays towards a memoir. And in the meantime, I wrote another book, Meditations on Race and Parenting. This year one of my…
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Do not be afraid to create your own heaven
for those big eyed dreamers trapped in a city of small minded snares, do not be afraid to create your own heaven ~ Kataalyst Alcindor
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Imagine there is no there, there
I inherited wander lust from my father, a wandering Jew. I grew up in New Orleans, Managua, San Salvador, Puerto Rico, Atlanta, Brooklyn, Manhattan, San Rafael, San Francisco, Miami and was two months from being born in my father’s birthplace, Havana except fate had other designs. And yet New Orleans is where I have always called home. As this country spins away from its axis of love with an administration plagued by hatred, whose followers…
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My ancestors taught me
My ancestors taught me how to rub two nickels to make a dollar. My ancestors taught me how to move my hips unselfconsciously to music. My ancestors taught me to listen to birdsong. My ancestors taught me to love profoundly. My ancestors taught me to appreciate babies. My ancestors taught me to eat with gusto. My ancestors taught me to read for joy. My ancestors taught me to adorn myself. My ancestors taught me to…
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The last frontier is the human heart
I went to a conference on Racial Equity sponsored by the Kellogg Foundation and Isabel Wilkerson was the guest speaker. I wrote this down in my notebook: The last frontier is the human heart. And this is what I’ve learned in 57 years around the sun. The road always leads to a place where the heart opens or hardens. We have to be intentional and proceed with love to keep our heart open. While pain…
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Everywhere
The news is horrid. The world is on fire. How can anyone heal when there are new wounds daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, lifetimes? Later that night I held an atlas in my lap Ran my fingers across the whole world and whispered where does it hurt? It answered everywhere. everywhere. Everywhere. -Warsan Shire
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Failure of Imagination
Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I’ll be mad. ~ Rumi This month marks five years since I started my own company, Greenlight Global Research. When I started GGR, I had little idea of what I wanted to do because I had fallen into what I loved doing 18 years earlier. Much like falling…