Tag: children
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Keep art by children whether a simple bird or a powerful Thunderbird!
Defining art from a child’s lens can be a mystery. Sometimes good art may seem bad and bad art, seem good. I realize from learning from my children that it all depends on how the art moves you. Take for instance 2 depiction of birds my children shared with me this week. One is a…
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Keep a child’s imagination ‘as gentle as a deer!’
Imagine the wind, crying, with a wise owl staring maybe at a gentle deer or a tough gorilla. A running fawn, playing next to a fluttering butterfly with a silly frog, acting well, silly. Imagine all of this combined together as a story. How our brain combines elements, whether a crying wind full of wise…
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Keep reminding children that they are enough!
Representation as with stories for black children, have been controlled by others for far too long. For our children to thrive, we really must write about ourselves in other to reclaim our stories, our way of life. As long as others direct attention and conversations surrounding the experiences of all children, as long as their…
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Keep persisting with mothering love!
I have got three bright sons, one barely 7 months old, the other 4 years of age, and my first, 6 years old. Like most mothers raising black boys in America, I fear always, like I am raising targets. No amount of my education, my gender or even class, can protect my sons from the…
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Keep love
We started today in love. My 2nd son is also turning 4. So our home was filled with love. We choose to celebrate it today as his birthday is on Wednesday. Something about birthdays and days dedicated to love, fills my heart with joy. Like with my daughter’s gifts to everyone today. Handmade cards for…
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Keep knowing where you are from!
We named our daughter Lotanna to remember our father, our son Chiwetel to marvel at the gift we got from God, our other son Olisadubem for God to be his guide, and our baby Ranyenna to be grateful and as a reminder to give God what belongs to him always. The names we gave our…
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Keep motherhood like crawling and the ground in mind!
Have you ever tried to crawl? To place your hands on the ground, your knees as well, and slowly meander forward. Have you ever gone lower? This time, with placing your stomach, flatly on the ground and slowly meander forward. What if you placed an object afar? Then slowly, even effortless, meander forward, towards the…
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Keep the lens of children!
I read somewhere that children are the lens through which adults can relearn how to live. Though their tomorrow’s are uncertain, the often live their today’s free from the limits of the future. For to a child, forever is never guaranteed. Only today and all it’s limits and possibilities. There is an Igbo proverb which…
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Keep basking in your writing!
Insights into life of working mothers and the pandemic are rare. Not the stories of coping well, but the pitched battle of silence and survival. When I come across these insights (see picture below), I feel seen. The past 11 months of the pandemic has been debilitating slowly. It has taken a lot to make…
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Keep understanding with mistakes!
In one of my daughter’s journal entry for school, she was asked ‘what makes her family special?’ She wrote: My family is special because we are always fun.’ I chuckled. But the next sentence made me alert. She wrote: ‘They also understand whenever I make mistakes.’ As a family, we are keenly aware that mistakes…
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Keep spelling my Belle!
With a perfect spelling of the word ‘sponge,’ my daughter won today’s spelling bee for her 3rd grade class. She was proud of herself. I was too. Here is a girl who continues to make me happy with everything she does. Her love for learning is full of grace, full of possibilities and totally captivating.…
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Keep what matters still!
The past few days have been filled with work. Not the kind of work that academics love to do. But the one that people who truly love what they do. It’s sublime, forces you to be still, so the words flow. Word work is becoming my solace in the middle of this pandemic. It’s not…
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Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor 