Tag: stories
-

Keep writing!
Some days will keep you numb, break your heart, make you to wish this trauma would end, all while still hoping for the best. The last two days, I have felt like a ship drowning. The water is rising and rising and we see it and see ourselves drowning. Trying to be hopeful is hard.…
-

Keep Onyelo!
I tell a story of a name, Onyelo always for four reasons. First the meaning. Second, the memory, third, the meditation, fourth to be naked. When I’m done, I remember why stories matter. Ben Okri would say for several reasons including this two things: Good stories raise consciousness, lifts hearts. They also point a way,…
-

Keep living!
I saw an image of a woman dead and it spoke vividly to me to live. To see her dead and just her eyes to testify to her life is the mirror I needed to see and the reminder to live life for as long as life is worth living. Otherwise I too would be…
-

Keep the many phases of motherhood!
All a mother needs for strength these days are in the eyes of those she birthed. For her, nothing remains the same and opening up is like Spring season, a moment when words start to speak on their own whether silently or loud. For her, the sun never goes down. The moon is like a…
-

Keep the memories of a pandemic!
5 years later, our hair is slowly greying, bones are still wide, and life is running by without a care. From out the dark, at the beginning of the pandemic, words started to emerge from deep within as we trembled through the world. At first, they were concerned about health care workers, all those literally…
-

Keep words like robins on top of branches!
There are days when you don’t know what you are doing. Three notes are written. One remains and begins like this. We need to focus, gain clarity and sweet understanding for all the things masking the guilt that follows. We write hiding from a little boy that calls our name. We stare out a window…
-

Keep dreaming together!
I saw a flock of blackbirds in the sky today. Each one flying as if together. One flew away, in the opposite direction. Another flew back as if to get it to fly in the right direction. They circled a tree over and over again, perching to rest but flying around again, until there were…
-

Keep these wishes!
In the book of wishes, Eve Merriam, wished that we would learn to love darkness as well as light. She wished we would also remember that trees need roots below to grow up to the sky. So too this thing called dreams. I am learning these days to bask in moments dark as well as…
-

Keep love!
Love doesn’t need translation. Not when it translates itself. Picture this, a little boy, almost 5 years old, in a grey shirt and blue pants, with arms outstretched as if reaching to the moon and stars above, and the words love you to the moon and back, written next to the moon and stars, and…
-

Keep the gift of sight!
While I started to write to celebrate a new found love for sight, the winds outside my window started to sing. Some of their tunes were loud, almost like the sound of a plane passing by, then some were slow, almost like a clock ticking by. So I closed my eyes and heard sounds that…
-

Keep the heavenly sounds of Roberta Flack!
Imagine the sound of velvet melting, the thought of a human kindness day, the desire to understand one another, even if it kills us softly, even if we wonder where is the love. Such was the power and charisma of Roberta Flack and though the world may have lost one of the most underrated artist…
-

Keep the art of grant writing!
I am giving myself permission to write grants that do not depend on anyone’s liking them, because what I want to do is write better. A grant writer does not always write in the ways others wish. The grant writer has to solve certain kinds of problems in writing. The way in which I handle…