It was my thirteenth year when my father realized he did not actually have three sons, but two sons and a daughter. I think he woke up and was like  ” oh shit,  I have a daughter!” And that scared the hell of of him. Not so much because he did not know how to contend with a girl child but because his daughter would one day be an adult woman and he knew what my life could easily look like. From that point on my life lessons became more about independence from men.

My father had an eighth grade education. He was in so many ways a product of the 30’s &  40’s’ but in other ways he was a man beyond his times. He new that as an adult woman I was more likely to be abused or controlled by a man than not. And much like preparing…

We have to be careful about the rhetoric we use, especially in a forum that relies completely on written word.  I saw this this morning, and I decided not to address it on Patheos, because I don’t want to derail the conversation on racism that is happening.  At the same time, I am not okay with this:

Identity withheld due to my assumption that the person quoted simply didn’t think this through before saying it since their chances of being raped are statistically less than mine.

By all means, draw lines when you feel they are needed.  Tell me what you don’t consent to even, because that’s really, really important. But silence?  Silence is never consent.  Ever.

I’m not unaware of the necessity for white people speaking out against other white people’s racist BS.  I will even agree that our silence when it comes to issues of white supremacy allows it…

As I said on my more (ever slightly) active blogs at Herlander Walking and Steel Kachinas….I have a grim week ahead. I am even being forced into flying for the first time in over a decade.

A veteran as dear to me as my sons, Lincoln Marston, is dying at Duke University Medical School. Just after New Year’s he suffered the rupture of an aneurysm in his brain and almost a dozen catastrophic strokes. His wife, Amy, also an Air Force veteran who served with him in Afghanistan has no income whatsoever at this time.  They have two young children who are just becoming terrified they will have to say farewell to their father.

It is time to support the troops, any of you who call me friend!  There is a site to help raise money….for everything from medical bills to funeral costs.  I take flight this weekend, with my…

As I have had company these last four days, I have not been able to post this lovely poem from The Daily Good, as sometimes I just need poetry.

(If you click in the link below, you can listen to the poet, John O’Donohue, read this poem aloud, along with some rather lovely imagery.)

Beannacht: A Blessing for the New Year

–by John O’Donohue, Jan 01, 2016

For Josie

On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.

And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets in to you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green,
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
In the currach of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the…