humanity
Humanity begins at home.
If Not For Me
I went to the ER last night. I definitely thought I was having kidney failure of some sort. It seemed so sudden that I was encased with horrific back pain and abdominal distress. I felt nauseous. I was crying, which is rare for me, the only times I've cried before this for pain was when I gave birth to my now three-year-old and when I was a teen and my menstrual cramps would be so bad that I would almost pass out from them.
By Tayla Bennett5 years ago in Families
The Impact of Kindness
I awoke one morning at three a.m. to the impatient demands of my older sister for me to wake up and get ready to leave. I was fifteen years old, and she, my younger sister, and I had spent the previous week visiting our mother who had recently remarried and moved to another city that was a four hour drive from where we lived. My older sister, Tiffany, had to work later that day so it was necessary for us to leave unreasonably early, which required us to get moving at a time of morning that my teenage self believed to be a time no one should ever experience consciously.
By Vince Coliam5 years ago in Families
Muna
Kabisa and Ghali Muna escorted the winner of the overall competition into Ghali’s office in her greenhouse. Two leather couches facing each other in a large space with associate gardeners busy working but attentive to Grandma’s needs, guidance, and personal advice. About 10 associates from ages of 10 to 80 worked happily as Kabisa and Ghali sat on one couch. Enye a seasoned garden worker from a village about 100 miles south of Kemet sat across from Kabisa after shaking hands. Enye is the father of Salli a 10 year old girl with bright eyes and a smile that melted her father’s heart every time. Her mother Nyongeza was from the same village as Ghali. They made the bubble around the group glow with friendship and kindness. The two old friends that are enjoying the connection they have been missing for years sometimes forget that everyone else is there and that they are supposed to be doing an orientation for Salli. Ghali brings tea to the small table between the couches, Nyongeza following laughing and chatting as they all sit and sip and glow.
By Clarence Bell III5 years ago in Families
I Was Trapped in This Tangle of Horror
When I was 14 or so I would ride along with my brother and brother-in-law on their truck routes during the summer. They were older than me by ten years or so, so this made for an interesting experience. There are many stories from the road that I can tell you, but this one is about the time my brother-in-law decided to throw his truck off of the side of a cliff with me and him in it.
By Christopher Harvey5 years ago in Families
My Favorite Addiction
♥️♥️♥️ My Love for Diet Coke ♥️♥️♥️ I love my warm, cozy bed in the morning times. Time to leave the comfort of snuggling up with either Cassie or Duke for the bathroom! Morning after morning, my bladder drags me out of bed before I wish, but here we go for another day. As my feet hit the ground, before I even stop at the bathroom, I scurry my cold bare feet across the kitchen floor for my main priority at that moment, my first Diet Coke for the day! I mention the bare feet because there have been too many mornings that my toes RAM right into a dog bone that Duke has deliberately placed. 😖
By Amanda Jones5 years ago in Families
"My Cozy Corner"
Our five bedroom home shelters myself, my husband, my daughter, my son in law, and my three grandchildren ages 16,14, and 3. Prior to covid, on any given day, you could add an extra five to fifteen teenagers, (sometimes more!) plus five to ten friends with their children who are visiting my daughter and her husband, at times a friend or two who are visiting me and my husband, oh and my other daughter and my son, their children and their significant others must be added to the total as well! Needless to say our home is active, full of laughter, love and chaos!
By Pamela Walsh-Holte5 years ago in Families
from young and madly in love to loving your young, madly.
From young and madly in love to loving your young, madly. there is a time in your life (the twenties) that everything revolves around love. finding love. making love last. accepting love into your heart. you get the idea. it is also around that time that getting into the “right”club or arriving late to the “in”party would harmonize with my pursuit of finding eternal and lasting love. all the sex, and mystery and sex and whimsy and sex and sex. looking at it now it seems a rather odd way of going about trying to make such serious search and ultimate decision. but i am a los angeles native and it felt acceptable almost normal at the time. who was going to question it? i’m a very interesting person and i’ll do what i want. (someone is laughing if he’s reading this) i’m lucky, i found that one true love not once or twice but three times. can i hear a forth? Nope not a forth. while in my early 40′s and on the second love it was never a thought to become a dad. My partner and I never discussed it, i don’t think we did. I’ve blocked so much out. i was getting older, there was a sale at prada etc...point is that fatherhood was NEVER a consideration of mine. not that i doubted my ability. I never thought about it. And it just didn’t seem practical. i laugh now. enter what sorta seemed to be the true love of my life. The man who excites me and challenges me. The man I ultimately left yet oddly find it difficult detaching from. He is 12 years my junior, a thrill seeker. His idea was to have a kid with me nonetheless, WTF? What? are you kidding me? was my first reaction. i somewhat quickly reeled those reactions in and decided to listen to my husbands desire and want for a child or children. queerly enough once i wrapped my head around the idea, i was ok with it. rather excited of a new prospect that didn’t have a revolving credit line. as my current therapist observes in amazement, when i accept an idea or consequence that’s it. the plan is put in motion sans regret. we all know where this one is headed. boy meets boy, falls deep and hard in love. adopts a baby, buys a home and has a destination wedding. a nightime soap right? unfortunately not my story. instead we mis-communicate, argue, take everything personal, experience no less then 5 marriage counselors, argue then separate from each other. enter coparenting! not for the weak at heart. it’s hard! i’m not going to sugarcoat it. the schedules, the communication still with a person you’re not talking to. the nanny(s) schedules, pick ups and drop offs. not to mention providing another safe and fabulous home for you and your part time son. the rest of this is still being written. but somewhere at a point in my marriage and being a father my priorities shifted. from young and madly in love to loving your young, madly. this shift is as meaningful as love itself. i hope everyone can get to a place with this kind of love. i couldn’t imagine my life without TKVW in it. RTVW 2.6.16
By Ronald Todd Woodward5 years ago in Families
Mind Over Matter
I recently submitted a discussion post amongst my peers in Psychology 101 at Strayer University, where we were asked, "Can our personalities change with time throughout our life span, or do we consistently do things similarly throughout our aging process?" An example was included regarding a convicted felon who had committed many murders, but was adamant that his incarceration time had given him the space and opportunity to truly turn over a new leaf and change. Critics argued, saying of course that would be his perception while still inside, as the case study persisted that if paroled his new, exemplary behavior would be his norm moving forward. The question still being, whether or not such a dramatic change in personality and actions was possible?
By Jennifer Brown5 years ago in Families
Hard Times=Desperate Measures
As I, a single mother waited in the waiting room at the Job and Family services office where I had been waiting for hours with my little girl to apply for some kind of help. I sat and watched as many people came in and waited with me for the next available social worker. One family that came in that day caught my attention. I had heard them ask the lady at the front desk if they were in the right place to recieve benefits for themselves and they're new baby, which they had in a stroller and they explained was only a week old. They were new parents and they were in need of the assistance they were looking for. However, this family lived on a county line and the previous office they had went to directed them to this office. The lady gave them forms to fill out but when they returned to her desk they despaired as she told them they were once again in the wrong office. They needed to go to another office. The new parents exclaimed they had already been there and they were sent here and they were running out of formula for their new infant. They needed help. With the mother hysterically crying and the father trying to console her, they pushed the stroller out the glass doors that led to the elevators. I had just received my tax return and had a couple hundred dollars left after paying my rent and other bills. I quickly gathered my things and ran out the glass doors and met them at the elevators. I asked them to please stop and explained that I had overheard the conversation that just occurred between them and the receptionist. I told them that I wanted to help to get them the formula they needed for their baby and some diapers and maybe some other things that could help them until they figured out where they needed to go. I do not drive due to medical reasons and these folks took a bus to get here. So I pulled out my checkbook and I wrote them a check for $150 dollars. I told them that I did not expect anything for this. All I wanted was for them to do it for someone else someday, kind of a pay-it-forward kind of deal. They asked if I wanted their information so they could pay me back or maybe text me a picture of the receipt of what they had bought. I said it was not necessary, the money was now in their hands and for their babies sake I believe they would do the right thing. I said my goodbyes and I returned to my waiting area. I hope one day the deed is passed along and they remember the day someone helped them and they do the same.
By Barbara Lee5 years ago in Families
Hometown Reclamation
When I first saw this prompt I balked at it. My hometown? Special? Yeah, okay. Despite my dismissal the topic kept settling in my mind; putting up photos, adding an accent chair, just making itself obnoxiously at home until I wrote my first draft of this. Except it wasn't this, at all, it was an incoherent rant about the illusion of hometown's mattering about how it's more about the intoxication of nostalgia than actual location, and, yes, there may be a little truth to that, it's not the whole truth.
By Christine Hollermann5 years ago in Families
