“’Thank you’ is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.” ~ Alice Walker. One of the first things I learned, once I began teaching nursing students, was how much I had to relearn. The temptation, especially after having been a nurse for […]
“To sin by silence, when we should protest, Makes cowards out of men.” ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox. When it comes to gifts and blessings, the nurse learns early on that health has to be number one. Even if you were not exposed to illness before entering the healthcare field, it is not long before you […]
“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” ~ Robert Frost. I can’t say that I have ever been very good at debating on the fly. Some people are quick, able to respond to taunts and jabs with a rapid response, cutting and accurate. Me, my best responses […]
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” ~ Maya Angelou. There is something so peaceful about a house in the early morning, before dawn, before the neighborhood awakens. It has always been a favorite time of day for me. As a teenager I would […]
“Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.” ~ Alice Walker. It hit me this week that I am not familiar with my children’s (now adults) handwriting. It was when I was reading over something my father had written in 1992 about the town I grew up in, in Jamaica. Those […]
“Not one of us can rest, be happy, be at home, be at peace with ourselves, until we end hatred and division.” ~ John Lewis. One of the most important things we teach our children, in almost every culture that I know of, is to be polite, to have manners. Even before kids learn their […]
“Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to those who seek to suppress the truth.” ~ Wole Soyinka. There is something in the light of a Jamaican pre-dawn. For those who leave a country and live away from it for many years (at this point, many decades), there are things […]
“Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.” ~ Emily Dickinson. After seven days of activities and events here in Jamaica that have produced so many moments of joy, I am not sure how I will report on them in just one post. But perhaps I can tempt your senses with […]
“It doesn’t take a lot of strength to hang on. It takes a lot of strength to let go.” ~ J. C. Watts. One of the messages that was drilled into me as a child, was to never give up. There were any number of rhymes or quotes to instill perseverance. ‘If at first you […]