Tag Archives: advocacy

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 […]

FMM 10 18 2024 Showdown!

“I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me.” ~ Maya Angelou. One night this week I awoke from a dream that had a very clear message, so clear that I immediately texted myself (my method of […]

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 Beam Brightly

“What is a soul? It’s like electricity – we don’t really know what it is, but it’s a force that can light a room.” ~ Ray Charles. The history of words and language in Jamaica is very complicated, having ingredients from many continents, and left to stew over many centuries.  There is a saying in […]

FMM 3 11 2022 Existential Advocacy

“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.” ~ Edgar Allan Poe. I always thought I had a pretty good vocabulary. Until I went back to school in my fifties.  As the youngest of the family, I listened and learned from those older than me.  I had access […]

FMM 2 12 2021 Outspeaking

“All advocacy is, at its core, an exercise in empathy.” ~ Samantha Power. When I was a young working mother of four young children, I did what many other nurses did who had similar responsibilities, I worked nights and weekends.  It didn’t give you much of a social life, but it maximized your earning power […]

FMM 2 16 18 Keep your head up

“Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.”~  Martin Luther King, Jr. My nursing education began in a patriarchal era, a time when doctors made unilateral decisions regarding healthcare.  The patient did as they were told.  Because of course, Doctor knows best.  But my education was not limited to […]

FMM 11 17 17 Push me Pull you

 “The countenance of one man brighten up another; iron sharpen iron.”~ Joseph Hill. One of the problems with parenting is that you are mostly making it up as you go along.  Children don’t come with a handbook.  The way you were raised may influence you, but the world, the times and the social mores can […]

FMM 5 9 14 A Woman’s Touch

“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.” ~Sojourner Truth   This week […]