HeARTtalk – Healing Through Art and Story
with Tracey Michae'l
I remember thinking it even if I was too polite to say it aloud. When I graduated from high school in 1993 and a few of the girls who were graduating with me were pregnant with their first child or would be within a couple of years, I remember thinking, Why would they do that? …
Continue reading "Bless Her Heart: Turning 40 as the Mother of a Preschooler"
Check this scene: K: *ties a blue towel around her neck and flips her ponytail over her shoulder* Look Mommy! I’m Elsa. Mommy: Ummm no. You’re K. K: *looks at me like I’m dumb* But I want to be Elsa! Mommy: Why, K? K: Because Elsa has pretty hair and dresses. Mommy: Well you have …
“Saw these at the bank today and was instantly transported to the back seat of my Daddy’s car, where my mother, brother and I would sit, waiting for Daddy to finish cleaning banks. A red or orange sucker was always in his big, beautiful hands when he finished—the perfect thank you to us for …
I was a dreamy kind of kid. If I wasn’t reading the made-up stories in my books, I was making up stories in my head. I could sit for hours and imagine what it might be like to perform on a stage like Janet Jackson or how important I’d feel standing in a courtroom doing …
Continue reading "“Mommy, why can’t I fly?” Acknowledging Limitations While Pursuing Dreams"
I am so excited. All week I’ve been preparing for the launch of my new ebook, “Diaper Bags and Church Shoes: Living at the Intersection of Faith and Motherhood” (with a foreword by MBB’s Head Mommy/Sistah/All-Around-Fabness, Denene Millner) In an effort to promote the stories, many of which have appeared right here on MyBrownBaby, I’ve been …
Continue reading "When the Devil is Busy, Don’t Get Mad…Get Foolish."
We all have heard the stories. They usually begin with “back in my day…” and what follows is a litany of exaggerated narratives about how life back then was so much harder than the present. How she—usually some gray-haired elder wearing a pillbox hat and compression stockings, hiding the tobacco chilling between her gums and …
Continue reading "Hope. Or When History Stops Repeating Itself."
I’m the worst passenger in a car. Anyone who knows me well, knows to pop a couple of valiums before driving me anywhere long distance because stress is most certainly a’coming. Because of several car accidents over the course of a couple of decades, I’ve developed a serious case of PTSD when someone else is …
Continue reading "Raising Fearless Kids (Or What I Refuse to Carry Into 2015)"
Here’s my truth: I don’t do tragedy very well. Not my own and definitely not the calamities of others. There’s something about heartbreak and injustice, death and destruction that breaks my heart over and over and over again. As somewhat of a depressive, these kinds of events can send me to the extremes of …
HeARTtalk - Healing Through Art and Story 