Category Global health and disparities
FMM 11 5 2021 Soul Imprints
FMM 11 5 2021 Soul Imprints “Live a life full of humility, gratitude, intellectual curiosity, and never stop learning.” ~ Gza. I never met my mother-in-law. She died in childbirth, tragically, leaving behind a husband and young children. My father-in-law I first met through letters and photographs, until I finally met him on my first […]
FMM 10 29 2021 Can we Talk?
“Only humility will lead us to unity, and unity will lead to peace.” ~ Mother Theresa. The first time I visited New Jersey was on my way to New York city on a Greyhound bus. To be honest we were just driving through it, but took an unplanned break in Newark. My father had decided […]
FMM 10 22 2021 Rivers in the Sky
“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” ~ Muriel Rukeyser. The art of science is to be able to make it comprehensible to common man. I remember learning ‘General Science’ in high school, and learning about the water cycle. To illustrate this concept, we had to draw a body of water, the sun […]
FMM 10 15 2021 The Sound of Silence
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” ~ Anton Chekhov. I don’t remember learning about ‘therapeutic communication’ when I was in nursing school forty years ago. Of course, some concepts have earned names which change over time, but being taught how to respond to patients, especially […]
FMM 9 24 2021 Fish Tea
“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul – and sings the tunes without the words – and never stops at all.” ~ Emily Dickinson. I realized some time ago, that the secret to living in a land not of your birth, is to be able to eat the food. One way […]
FMM 9 17 2021 Changes in Attitude
“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.” ~ Viktor E. Frankl. When I was young, I hated being called the ‘baby’ of the family. I was the youngest, big distinction. I did not like to be picked up […]
FMM 9 3 2021 Means and Extremes
“Faith minus vulnerability and mystery equals extremism. If you’ve got all the answers, then don’t call what you do ‘faith.’ “~ Brene Brown. You never know what will trigger a memory. I was sat in traffic the other day, and saw a small poster advertising a Bible bookstore. When I was a teenager, my Saturday […]
FMM 8 13 2021 Our patchwork life
“Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.” ~ Stephen Sondheim. My grandfather (whom I never met since he died some years before I was born) was a truck driver. He left school at the age of twelve, and his first job was to stand outside a grocery store (where there […]
FMM 8 6 2021 Twist and Shout
“Stories teach us empathy. They reveal to us ourselves in the skins of others.” ~ Justin Simien. Last week, in the middle of a Zumba session, the music changed from a Latin focus to good old-fashioned rock and roll. Soon we were rocking around the clock and twisting the night away. I remembered that before […]
FMM 7 16 2021 Lift the Curse!
“Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.” ~ Orson Welles. Mother-daughter relationships are tricky. I am not one of those who can say my mother was my best friend. Perhaps it’s a generational thing, but it never occurred to me to ‘tell my mother everything’. As a matter of fact, I […]