Is all of this really happening right now? I struggle to feel as if time is real and outside is happening. Human senses are experiencing a shift. A global grief, a tense and raw, maybe even primal reaction to the threats happening around us. As the human species, I am more convinced that we are beings that feel on a visceral and subconscious level when there is an unsettling of ways of balance. When there is a forceful disruption to harmony that causes pain on a cellular level.  I cannot remove the visions of scenes of raw pain and grief that we have seen because of social media giving us a visual lens into the ethnocide of the Indigenous people of Palestine. One nation who had a immense part of their own ethnic population decimated due to racist and ethnic hatred has repeated the history of their oppressors onto the Palestinian people. What an odd thing nations with power do. Destroy and dehumanize their subjects and plot to exterminate them.  I have also been listening to th...

                   (My proposal to a local school board near my town) I am a woman who is a descendant of the Saginaw, Swan Creek, and Black River tribes of Ojibwe. I am a mother of five children, I have a college education, including a graduate degree. I work professionally in the community in a role that adds diversity to the institutions I occupy. I am a self-professed lover of urban culture, coffee, popular music, dancing, and an information and book-collecting nerd. One thing I am not, however, is a mascot. I am also not a redskin. I belong to a racial and ethnic group who was admittedly, by the US government, an experiment for forced assimilation, which enabled Hitler to gain inspiration from America for the disgusting self-declared supremacy that resulted in the annihilation of innumerable Jewish people. I am a member of a group of racial and ethnic people who were forcibly remov...

I am writing this subjectively, which is good, because it shows just how much a woman can be shaken to her core when her womanhood is questioned, threatened, demoralized, and abused by other woman because of exercising her right to physically breastfeed in public...without a cover. Let me begin by getting out all of the things that have been freely said to me as I voiced my questions to the common social mores of today regarding this highly-uneducated area of sensitivity. "Women have a responsibility to stay modest while they breastfeed." "I'm all for public breastfeeding, but I don't want to see your breasts." "It's fine, but she shouldn't let it all hang out." "That's what blankets are for" (from a gay man). "That's private." "You will cause men to lust" "How would you feel if a woman just walked up to your husband and exposed herself to him?" These are all generalized statements...

I will be completely honest. So many people are attacked for their transparency, or as others may less sensitively call it, "telling all their business." I laugh at this because privacy is considered a virtue nowadays. Privacy about sexual relationships, about breastfeeding, about fights in marriage, about disagreements between family members. What does privacy really help if we are being honest? What creates more discomfort and more awkwardness and more fuel for change but to be confronted in a not-so-private way? At the same time, what causes more vulnerability, more lowering of our shields that yield us powerless where we most need safety and security, in our hearts? So as I said, I will be completely honest because I am at peace with where I am in my life. I don't find shame in the normal shaming society finds to be necessary, but I do find a yearning to confront and call out why we feel it is ok to provoke shameful feelings in others undeservedly because they are d...

This was a requested blog topic:  America's (tainted) view of the Mother's Body.  I have a couple of websites I want you to go check out before you read the rest of this. A complete visual guide of mothers and their body-battles BabyCenter polls 7,000 who "tell it like it is"...the truth about the postpartum body Check out this comment from a body image expert about what women think about themselves postpartum: Joan Chrisler, a body image expert who teaches at Connecticut College, isn't surprised. "Lots of studies have shown that women think men want them to be thinner than men really want them to be," she says. "Researchers will show women sketches of female figures and ask, which do you think men believe is the ideal? Men always pick significantly bigger sizes than women think they want." So if your mate says you look great, believe it. Check out this comment from the BabyCenter article about what OTHER people think about women p...

Know your truth! Anyone who didn't live it, doesn't know it! My friend, your confidence and self-esteem must be strong for this one. So many of us, especially those who are known as Adult Children, seek approval as a means of value to their life. The problem is that most people want you to pay a heavy price for their approval, one that is demeaning to your growth and recovery. It can be denial, it can be suppression of healing, or any number of things that are not right for you. Know your truth! Stand in it so you don't fall or lead others to remain in predicaments they need to get out of. I am inspired by the Bible because of all the adversity and controversy discussed in the stories. Many prophets were afraid...people back in those days would stone them to death for hearing something told they didn't want to hear, for being told something that made them uncomfortable, for being asked to change something they weren't trying to change. Some prophets ran away, l...

Dear Friends, Women are very interesting creatures. I think they are beautiful, mesmerizing, strong, captivating, remarkable creations. And then we open our mouths. Women are emotional and sensitive. Duh. If you are a woman reading this right now you're impatient that I'm even mentioning these obvious characteristics. Here are other observations I've noted about women that aren't so, well, nice: *Women are competitive (with men, for men, to be seen by men, to be seen with men by other women) *Women are territorial (we don't like to share) *Women are catty (we pick small items to nag about and may manage to throw things if you're "not listening) *Women are gossips (we say something to your face and talk about you behind your back, within the same 10 minutes sometimes) *Women are loyal (we will fight for a friend even if we AND they are wrong) *Women are jealous (of child-making abilities, of someone's position in life, of someone's body/h...

I did a post quite some time ago on the preferred etiquette between musicians and their accompanists. There are so many things we don't think we have to say because they are commonly sensical and professional, but require a level of maturity many aren't willing to hand over. Thus comes the current post. Facebook, Twitter, and whatever everyone else uses to stay connected, linked, in-the-know, etc. are privileges. It is a privilege for someone to let you into their life a little more virtually through such sites. They are the last place, however, for public confrontation, harrassment, bullying, and other types of negative association. Would you go to your boss's facebook wall and write something rude that you think of them? Or bring up something that should be private so that all of their friends/co-workers/social circle is suddenly made uncomfortable by knowing that something weird is going on on that person's page? Not only is it showing your character or lack of, ...

After a long hiatus from blogging, I was finally inspired to pick up my virtual "pen" and write after reading, crying, and being inspired by an article in the May issue of Ebony magazine. Catapulted in part by the remarks by Halle Berry in a past issue of Ebony regarding her view on her daughter's race, this issue is chock-full of articles regarding mixed persons' views of themselves, their families, their mixed-raced children, and what they regard themselves as racially. The crying ensued as relief-that I am not alone, that others feel as I do, that I can share my feelings without the fear of judgement. That I can be honest about who I see myself as. Because this is about ME, not about others' feelings or perceptions of me. Not about what is "politically correct" regarding my raceor allowing society to push me into a "neat little box" of either Black or White. As an adoptee, my Black parents always made sure I knew what I was mixed with, b...

As many of you may know, there was a point in time where even writing about this issue as a mixed-race woman married to a white man would be cause for an uproar and possibly dangerous to my family. It saddens me to think that our segregated world controlled our lives to down to the point of who we could or could not be in love with and choose to share our lives with. It not only saddens, but sickens me. I can only imagine the many who risked their lives and reputations in the sake of race love. The sad movie "Imitation of Life" (1959) was shown to me at a mother-daughter function over my aunt's house. Some of my aunt's and their daughters had gotten together for Sunday lunch and a movie. I never forgot that movie. I was saddened that Sarah Jane disowned her mother to live a White lifestyle, regretting her hurtful actions a little too late, chasing after her mother's casket down the street after her mother died of a broken heart. If you remember, in the movie Sar...