Tag: writing
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Keep a gentle ease with water at indoor pools!
We went by water yesterday. My kids and I. Not a big water park as before. But a small indoor pool perfect for cooling down the rays of heat of a truly scorching summer. I didn’t want to go. I still remember the meltdown from our prior excursion to a water park. I didn’t even…
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Keep knowing the power of walking together.
There is a power that emerges when you gift yourself and your family, the simple and freeing pleasures of walking. We gave that gift to baby almost 2 days after his arrival at home. We took him for his first walk along the paths of Forest Park. The pandemic was still breathtaking in its design.…
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Keep the joy of first moments with newborns!
The first moment they laid eyes on him was breathtaking. Because of the pandemic, no visitors were allowed around hospital grounds for the pandemics grip was ground breaking, heartbreaking too, for all the lives lost to poor leadership and decision-making. That we were heading home with baby about 36 hours later following his arrival was…
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Keep flying to new heights!
I remember the day we met. I was summoned to a meeting at a faculty office by the Director of Health for Student Services. He was a close friend to my family. I say summoned because I tried to excuse myself from it. My excuses too were valid as I was on maternity leave. I…
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Keep a mother’s love and happy 1st birthday my Ranyenna!
My awakening summer was 2020. Like the entire country, I was literally in labor. Something wonderful was born on this day, by 9am last year. We became parents to our fourth child. We call him Ranyenna. In Igbo, it means giving him back to God. His hair was full, short, brown and crinkled. His eyes…
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Keep knowing that we are never meant to walk alone!
Our room was shaped like a square with a baby cribbed next to a wall covered in grey paint. There was a grey rocking chair for breastfeeding and a silver and white changing table stood next to the window awaiting the arrival of baby. There were no baby rooms. I was never a decorator mom.…
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Keep remembering God with all your plans including your home!
Exactly one year ago today, we closed on our home. The experience seems hazy now looking back as it was at the beginning of a pandemic and I was expecting a new baby. Looking back, we didn’t do all the things people do when they purchase new homes. There were no housewarming or gathering of…
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Keep mentors who plant and harvest in you!
There is an Igbo saying that states: The cock that crows in the morning belongs to one household. It’s voice though is the property of the neighborhood. Every single thing we do in life, has a ripple effect. Our actions maybe ours alone. But they too matter for others. I remember growing up listening to…
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Keep being fire!
Have you heard about Fire? Not the real thing as in flames or burning or combustion. But a quarterly literary magazine set up by Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Aaron Douglas, Richard Bruce Nugent, Gwendolyn Bennett and John P. Davis, to do one thing one only (in my opinion): to express the truth…
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Keep being a burst of light for public health!
I am in the business of light making. It is messy, very complex with turns that keep winding. When rich countries get 40-60 percent of Covid vaccines and others, especially countries in Africa, get only 3%, you will understand why I choose light. When racism, especially structural racism is at the heart of why we…
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Keep Pidgin English and other broken English in mind!
Bell Hooks took me on a journey today. The past few days have been full of work-related rejections with academic papers I wrote, one protocol and another a debate paper that I will dwell on another day. For now, transforming the language used by the rejectors is a profound passion. Bell Hooks reminded me of…
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Keep being as patient as vultures or Udene in Igbo!
I saw a vulture up close today. It is as menacing as literature has depicted it to be. My middle son actually saw it first. It was perched on our grounds and it stopped him in his tracks while running towards me. He kept saying I can’t come and I kept saying, just come. He…
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Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor 