Category Global health and disparities

FMM 5 3 2024 Our Cruise Ship Earth

“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” ~ Desmond Tutu. This week has been a week of sudden memories, sparked by forgotten sensations.  It reminded me that with childbirth and the sight of a newborn child, memories of the prior child are recalled clear and fresh, even […]

FMM 4 19 2024 The Rebel in Me

“I am not going to die, I’m going home like a shooting star.” ~ Sojourner Truth. They say you can’t go home again.  I have always had a problem with that concept, mostly because I have been fortunate to call many places home in my life.  A minister’s family (at least back in the day, […]

FMM 4 12 2024 What’s the Plan?

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.” ~ Joseph Campbell. I have never been good at long-term planning.  I remember being surprised when a nephew of mine, who was maybe 21 at the time, declared that he would have to change his life plan due to an obstacle […]

FMM 3 29 2024 Killing me Softly

“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.” ~ Victor Hugo. Music has been a part of my life, probably since conception.  When you grow up in the church, hymn singing is always going to be present, but in my family, we didn’t just listen to religious […]

FMM 3 22 2024 Simply the Best!

“Love is a friendship set to music” ~ Joseph Campbell. The other day I reread something my father had written.  It was his tribute to and summary of his father’s life, on the 100th anniversary of his birth.  This was a man I did not know, as he had died before I was born.  I […]

FMM 3 15 2024 How Deep is your Love?

“I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.” ~ Harriet Tubman. My first brush with authority came when I was quite young, still living in England.  I had been influenced […]

FMM 3 8 2024 Big Tree, Small Axe

“A reading man and woman is a ready man and woman, but a writing man and woman is exact.” ~ Marcus Garvey. When I started high school in Jamaica, one of the highlights of this new experience was the ‘social’ also known as a ‘boogie’.  I suppose at the time the twin influences of the […]

FMM 2 16 2024 Legacy

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” ~ Aldous Huxley. February, although the shortest month, carries the weight of history.  In the US it is the month assigned to commemorate ‘Black History’, a term (like the country) which unfortunately continues to judge people by the color of their skin.  February […]

FMM 2 9 2024 Larger than Life

“Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.” ~ George Eliot. I don’t know how old I was when I went to my first funeral.  I know that it was not a requirement, even though my father was the minister of the church. But I was probably a teenager and a […]

FMM 2 2 2024 Community Health

‘Lean on me, when you’re not strong, and I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on…For it won’t be long, ‘til I’m gonna need somebody to lean on.’ ~ Bill Withers. My professional introduction to mental health began in nursing school.  I was assigned to an inpatient facility which was housed in a beautiful […]