Write with TLC

I've been thinking about the idea of filling one's life with like minded people. I understand the temptation. When we surround ourselves with people who think just like us, we never have to question our beliefs or thoughts or ideas. We never have to expand outside our safety zones. We can reinforce whatever we want to believe regardless of facts or the picture beyond our front doors. We never have to find out we're wrong about anything because what a travesty it is to learn one is wrong. I don't know about you, but this would begin to bore me. Besides how do we find solutions to problems or figure out how to improve situations or even find fulfillment in life if no one ever challenges us? I have friends with myriad backgrounds. My circle includes people of a multitude of religions or lack thereof, people from around the world who expose me to various cultures, people with varying degrees of political awareness and involvement, pacifists, activists, those in the mi...

Yesterday, I felt a moment of hate toward another person. It was the first time in a long time I'd allowed hate a moment in my heart. The hatred came from reading about pain and disappointment experienced by someone I love deeply caused by someone she should've been able to trust. I long ago gave up any hope of the person who inflicted the pain following through on any promise, but this wasn't about me. I'm not even sure why it hit me so hard. I know how this person is. Hurting others has never concerned her. I am well aware of this. I try to live my life from a place of love. I try to love even those who hurt me because I believe when we hate we hurt ourselves more than the person we feel hatred toward. So when that moment of hate hit my heart, I felt completely overwhelmed. I fought back tears, but a couple escaped. I choose to release that hate, to just let it go, to not let it consume me or drive my actions, but I struggled to actually follow through on the re...

How often do we judge without realizing we judge? We look at someone's situation and say "Well, if I was in that situation I would or I wouldn't....", but that is a judgment on the person's choice. The truth is we don't know what we would do because we're not in that situation. It's easy to sit back and say how someone else should react without knowing the whole story. The truth is we can never know the whole story unless we live it ourselves. People stay in situations that appear, and sometimes really are, bad for them for a variety of reasons, all of them highly personal. When we heap our judgment on top of them, we make matters worse. We seek to compare our situations with those of others when there is no comparison. Every situation is unique, even those that appear exactly the same. Even if we go through a similar situation as someone else, it's not the same situation because we bring our pasts with us into every situation. Those pasts af...

Audrey Austin shared my poem, Warrior Woman, on her blog, Rhymes and Times Remembered. Please check it out! Thanks, Audrey for sharing my work with your audience!