Autumn is in full chorus. Leaves shaded in hues of yellow-limes, tangerine-reds, black-purple-plum are bursting in symphony against the backdrop of November gray. And I can’t get enough of their beauty, diversity and surrender—I am jealous for each leaf’s resolve. Looking at the “burning bush” in front of me, full abandon is its message. Outstretched […]
Freedom
Cast Off Your Chains
Cast off your chains, my friends, the ones that have been weighing you down. On the left wrist, the chain reads “try harder” on the right “do better.” Wrapped around both ankles is the chain of “you are not enough,” it is held together with the links reading: “should.” I should be thinking this, feeling […]
Why I Wouldn’t Be Where I Am Without Reality TV
I just had to manually input the word “vlogger” into my spell check. I’m using that word a lot lately. After three years of writing words, on screens, and posting them on blogs, I’ve started monologuing to the camera. For most of my life I would never have dreamed that I would sit in front […]
The Night my Blackness Was Stripped Away in the Dark
I was weary of dumbing down my brain smarts and body parts to fit into the present day image of Black beauty and sexuality. Truth is I didn’t have the breast size or small waist and curved hips to compete in the first place. Instead of placing MTV’s coke-bottle-super-model-video vixens as my prized goal, I […]
Dear Fear, You Are a Mouse
I walked into the bedroom and I knew you were there. I could feel you lurking, waiting to pounce on little hearts. To enter whenever we would give you an opening. So I taught the kids at a very young age to say this: God has not given me a spirit of fear . . […]
Heartbreak and Shipwreck
“What are your worst fears?” Tammy asked me. My first reaction was, well, this is a no-brainer. I’ve lived most of my life with anxiety and dread. I should be able to rattle off my fears like a grocery list. And yet my hands lingered over the keyboard. I hesitated. I realized, I don’t know. […]
Fire and Smoke
I was alone, at my off grid in-process homestead, when I looked up and noticed the haze collecting in the sky. By alone I mean alone with my small posse of dependents—three kids ages 1 and 4 and 6, plus at the time, a puppy. There wasn’t so much smoke that it made me worried, […]
Why I Dreaded My Dream Being Fulfilled
I thought they would be my knightesses in shining armor. A connection had led me to a small female–led company with promises of increasing my non-profit’s capacity. As the founder of a 5-year-old organization, I was relieved to hear that help might be tucked away in the basement of this little home-based business. I unloaded […]
Just Like Riding a Bike
Four years ago a teen-aged boy pointed a gun at me while demanding I give him my money. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon in Oakland, California. I was standing at the flagpole in front of the elementary school where I’d recently been assigned to teach. My husband Chris and I had ridden our bikes […]
Are You Willing to Listen to the Darkness?
I used to have a kind of waking nightmare. It started in college. I’d be alone in the dorm bathroom, my toiletry caddy in hand, going down the aisle of shower stalls, their white plastic curtains like ghosts’ hems, all in a row. All of a sudden, the dread of what lay behind those curtains […]
Hope and Healing for the Sexually Broken
A heads up: this post is about pornography, lust, masturbation, and sexual orientation, but more importantly it’s about a woman calling out to God in her desperate need and God answering her with Himself. Before you read it, please remember something that normally goes without saying: people have the right to share their lived experiences, […]
Hope in My Broken Heart
I was fifteen the day my heart broke. I was sitting in the nook off the kitchen inside my grandparents’ house, turning a tiny glass heart over and over in the palm of my hand, inspecting it as the light above us bounced off the trinket’s harsh edges, revealing a multitude of trapped rainbows. […]
The Night I Almost Stopped Being a Christian
The night I almost stopped being a Christian, I sat alone, at midnight, in the living room of the house I shared with three other women. I was twenty-two, almost six months out of college, depressed, and despairing. I’d discovered I was depressed in my therapist’s office the summer before. The revelation was like […]
No Need to Hide When You Abide
After analysis paralysis, I decided to focus on what makes us hide and why it is safe to come out and be authentic. ****** When he was twelve, a family friend molested him. He never told his parents but for more than decade, he hid his pain through an addiction to pornography and sex. ****** […]
Who Sees You?
I took an art class as a college elective. The first assignment challenged me to communicate the divide between who I was and who I thought I was supposed to be using only a black marker to draw basic lines and shapes on a four-inch square of white paper. As I brainstormed ideas in my […]
When Your Worth is Measured in Square Footage and Bra Sizes
I look at this new-to-me kitchen window, the one overlooking the quiet, manicured space that I now call home. With wide white cupboards and the sheen of granite tiles, I curl into its comfort. There are drawers for everything, there’s a proper pantry, everything fits! Looking out the window, my eyes are quick to wander […]
True Confessions of a “Like” oholic
I’ve never smoked crack, shot heroin or drank alcohol, but I have an addiction. Out of nowhere, it snuck up on me. Like the abrupt discovery of a fast-moving cancer, I realized, “Houston, we got a problem.” I’m a likeoholic and it’s crazy because just 10 years ago I was the woman who didn’t […]
Zen and the Art of Acceptance
My sister and I sat cross-legged, waiting to learn about meditation. Someone filled the little porcelain cups with steaming green tea; they grew warm in our hands. I looked around the makeshift temple in what looked like it used to be a gas station. Bars on the windows reminded us we were in the heart […]