Tag Archives: immigrants

FMM 7 18 2025 No Trouble

“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 […]

FMM 4 11 2025 It’s a MAD…world!

“Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.” ~ Walt Whitman. Confession time.  There have been a couple of times in my life when my fantasies have helped me to make a decision.  I realized that I needed to end my marriage when I had started to think my life would be better if […]

FMM 9 13 2024 Imagine a World

“Mozart’s music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.” ~ Albert Einstein. Many years ago I attended a day of continuing education classes.  All nurses must complete a certain number of hours every two years, in order to renew their nursing licenses.  There […]

FMM 10 27 23 Reconstructing Family

“Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.” ~ George Eliot. It seems obscene to say this, but fifty years ago I was a senior in high school (in Upper Sixth Form as we say in the old British system).  I had lived most of my life in Jamaica, […]

FMM 10 6 2023 Where I lay my hat

“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” ~ Maya Angelou. Traditions are funny things.  One of the reasons that special seasons have special meaning is because we do the same thing each year.  In England, going to Pantomime around […]

11 18 2022 Citizen of the World

“We must become bigger than we have been: more courageous, greater in spirit, larger in outlook. We must become members of a new race, overcoming petty prejudice, owing our ultimate allegiance not to nations but to our fellow men within the human community.”~ Haile Selassie. My grandmother was born in Patagonia, Argentina. Her parents had […]

FMM 11 26 2021 Holding Space

“Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore. One of the first concepts that puzzled me when I moved to Jamaica as a child, was the term ‘follow’.  At the end of the school day, once it was decided that I could […]

FMM 8 23 19 The Essential Migrant

“But please don’t cry, dry your eyes, never let up Forgive but don’t forget, girl keep your head up” ~ Tupac Shakur. Around the time that Florence Nightingale was charged with leading a team of 34 nurses to work in a Military hospital in the Crimea, another nurse (or as she was also called, a […]

FMM 3 29 19 Mother and Child Reunion

“Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.” ~ Barbara Kingsolver.  I am the youngest in my family.  I found that to be frustrating as a child, as I had no baby brothers or sisters to play with.  My mother was unmoved by my requests.  She often declared herself to ‘have no maternal […]

FMM 4 14 17 It Coulda Worse!

“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.”~Denis Waitley. They say travel broadens the mind.  There is something about experiencing a place, a people and a culture far different to the one you are familiar with that helps to open […]