Author Archives: bethpow06
FMM 3 28 2025 I Plead the First
“Why should I be afraid of the pestilence that crawleth by night?” Tony Rebel. Because I am the youngest in my family and the last to leave home, I spent my last four years in high school as an only child. That wasn’t exactly true, since we always had ‘boarders’, friends from high school who […]
FMM 3 21 2025 Imaginary Engineers
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” ~ Alice Walker. I was a bedside nurse in the 1980s, a time when the way the government reimbursed hospitals for patient stays was upended completely. Prior to this time, any patient whose insurance was paid for by the […]
FMM 3 14 2025 Holding Space
“… everything on earth can be eliminated under the right conditions.” ~ Louise Erdrich. Some years ago I had an experience which proved invaluable in the classroom: I witnessed a man experiencing the sudden onset of a stroke. We were at a fundraising dance together, he had gone to buy us a drink each, and […]
FMM 3 7 2025 The Boss of Me
“The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.” ~ Maximilien Robespierre. Evelyn was the first person who befriended me when I was the new girl in school. I was more than new, I was different, a little girl in rural Jamaica, with an English accent […]
FMM 2 28 2025 Happy place, Sad reason
“In every community, there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds to heal. In every heart, there is the power to do it.” ~ Marianne Williamson. I first learned about hurricanes when I was almost eight years old and traveling to Jamaica on the S.S. Ascania with my family and a […]
FMM 2 21 2025 No Dominion!
“The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is keeping them ignorant.” ~ Maximilien Robespierre. I have always been a lover of words. Except once when I heard a new word, spoken in a sentence, by a person I had very little respect for. She happened to be my boss. […]
FMM 2 14 2025 Hope Springs Maternal
“Hope is the thing with feathersThat perches in the soul,And sings the tune without the words,And never stops at all,” ~ Emily Dickinson. I always knew I would have children. Lots of them. I remember being quite young when I held a baby, she was about seven months old, and she promptly tried to bite […]
FMM 2 7 2025 No Fury
“The humblest citizen of all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error.” ~ William Jennings Bryan. When I was no more than twelve or thirteen, I came home one day from school for lunch, which was my usual habit. I was not expecting […]
FMM 1 31 2025 This is just a Test
“In order to succeed, people need a sense of self-efficacy, to struggle together with resilience to meet the inevitable obstacles and inequities of life.” ~ Albert Bandura. I was one of those annoying students who enjoyed exams. I looked forward (although still with a touch of anxiety) to show what I knew. Like an athlete […]
FMM 1 24 2025 The Bully Pulpit
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt. These past weeks have been an interesting walk down memory lane for me. Last week I was dipping into documents written by some of my elders and reading of life in Jamaica in the 1830’s through to the 1960’s, along with […]
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