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In your Face book

Unlike social media, here is a place I can speak the truth. Yesterday had many low points. I woke with a great plan to take advantage of the Crosby Arboretum which has opened to the public. You can go be in nature and not be around anyone and I thought we needed to shake up our routine. However, after Tin’s morning meeting he decided he wanted a huge breakfast – which I made – pancakes,…

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Nurses are my heroes!

Know what else runs in my family – nurture and love. My mother was a nurse because she was a very caring human being. My grandmother (her mother) in her later years used to go to the hospital to rock babies. My cousins – male – have become nurses. I come from a long line of caregivers, which is why I am at my core – loved. To all the nurses on the frontlines during…

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Anxiety and the Coronavirus

I know a lot about coping with anxiety because I’ve had it all my life. I didn’t realize until I started addressing it that it is rampant in my family – on both sides. Since Jewish people overindex to anxiety, I thought I had inherited it from my father’s Sephardic side, but turns it out, it’s everywhere in my family tree. What I’ve learned is that anxiety does not just happen. There is not an…

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Time is Money

I am now a tutor, teacher’s assistant, short order cook, house cleaner and mindfulness mentor to an 11 year old who is marching through the house with an army blanket draped around his shoulders, a blue handkerchief tied around his neck, carrying a plastic sword. My son already has a PhD in costuming, while I’m seeing so many holes in the academic side of his equation. Kicking and crying about having to listen to a…

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The Revision

Instead of getting up at the butt crack of dawn as my friend Flower calls it (read: 4:30am) and making tea and Tin’s lunch and then getting in the car to drive him to school in New Orleans and then hustling to make a living and make the events at the Hall happen, I am getting up at 7:30 now. Tin has his morning meeting with his class online and then begins his 2-3 hours…

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Home Schooling

There are a handful of homeschool collectives in New Orleans, and there have been smaller groups focused on African American children. A friend of mine, who teaches at Newman, has three children who are all A+ students. Her eldest child told me that the ones to fear in the Academic Games are the homeschooled African American kids. I’ve thought very seriously about home school for Tin. He now goes to a school that began with…

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Why we struggle

There is a rumor that Buddha said all life is struggle, but that is not what he meant. We struggle when we don’t accept what is. We struggle to change it, we struggle to wrest meaning out of it, we struggle to overcome it, and we struggle to not let what is change us. I self soothe at night by thinking of all the many splendor things that I’m lucky to have – shelter, food,…

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