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Letting It All Go and Breaking Free
I am an Inspiration Specialist. My job is to encourage and motivate women to step beyond the seen, explore their untapped potentials and embrace all the beauty that comes from pushing yourself into that uncomfortable place where the peace that comes with living on purpose resides. But, I’m also human. Recently, I’ve been feeling anxious. There are three things I’m facing right now… I need to write the novel that has been on my heart and in my head for a very long time. The story is ready to be told. I’m holding it captive, and it’s screaming to be released. I need to secure a literary agent for the…
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be not afraid
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The Strange Freedom in Voice
Sharing your voice is liberating. There is an indescribable exhilaration that comes from self expression. But there is also a strange twist to this freedom. A writer’s voice is shaped by her life experience. Everything she writes has some connection to an actual event or emotion. In writing, sometimes the painful world of reality is brilliantly fused with the controllable world of fiction to shield and protect the author from confrontation… confrontation of self, confrontation of fears, confrontation of hurt, confrontation from others. When the fictional world has secret ties to the author’s reality, the author is able to share private truths while avoiding complete vulnerability, thus guarding her heart…
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On Shedding Light & Seeing Self
Have the words or actions of another ever made you feel invisible and insignificant? Has someone close to you ever minimized your talents and achievements, causing you to feel small and unimportant? Have you ever wandered through life feeling as though you will never measure up…never be enough…never be seen…never be heard? I have. How we view ourselves is deeply rooted in the level of love, support and approval we received from the beginning. When encouragement, acceptance and recognition are absent, it wounds us. And it can oftentimes take more time to heal from those wounds than it did to create them. Some never recover…while others only live…
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Filling her cup…last Tuesday morning
Last Tuesday morning, I had a deep conversation with my oldest daughter during the car ride to school. She’s emerging, working on becoming a young lady, dreaming of her future, forming thoughts and opinions of her own. She’s at what I feel is the most critical point of a young girl’s life…the point when you ultimately step into the person you will become. And of course, as her mother, it is my duty to guide her as she decides what that new person will look like. With this emergence comes growing pains. I don’t mean the random, and sometimes bizarre, physical aches and pains that come with transitioning from childhood…
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Trust your purpose
Sometimes, you find your purpose…you know your purpose…you feel your purpose…you step into your purpose…you breathe your purpose. But still somehow, you manage to doubt your purpose. It becomes a cage from which only real confirmation can free you. When that real confirmation comes–and, I mean, when it comes in a powerful way–you know. You really know…
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Dynamic by Design
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And, “Yes” never felt so good…
A week-and-a-half ago, I received an unexpected message from friend and author, Kwame Alexander. He was spearheading the Burke High School Teen Empowerment Conference, “Write Your Story,” and he needed fellow writers and artists to design and lead writing workshops for the kids. He asked me if I would consider being counted among the immensely talented individuals who were already slated to share their gifts. I stared at the message, certain I had read it wrong. Kwame–2013 and 2012 NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Children’s Literature, author of seventeen books, a man who rubs elbows with literary giants–wanted ME to be a part of something so impactful and poignant?…
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…I Guess I Always Knew
I’ve always had dreams of writing. I recall a personal conversation I had with myself as a teen. In that conversation, I promised myself I would some day have at least one piece published. I didn’t care if it was a column, an article, a poem, a novel or a short story. I just wanted to be published somewhere, at least once, before I said goodbye to this life. I wrote a great deal of poetry in my teens and early twenties. I had notebooks and folders filled with it. I was really feeling my poetic vibe. It felt good. Fulfilling. Meaningful. I was a gifted writer. I don’t say…
