(My Not Kidding Face after a night shift)
I don’t consider reading people one of my gifts. When I need to, I can really tune in – and as a nurse, I have to tune into my patients in order to figure out things they won’t or can’t tell me with words.
With friends and acquaintances, I pull it together for conversation as often as I can. But I find this type of interpretation exhausting.
Sometimes, especially when I am tired or distracted, I can’t muster the energy needed to read folks and so I wind up feeling like I’ve missed something, without knowing quite what. I can sense a disruption in the Force, so to speak, but can’t tell what is causing it.
That happened this morning.
Black History Month is a great opportunity to introduce yourself to some new literature, and these books are good as read-alouds or for silent reading.
The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales by Virginia Hamilton, illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon.
Why is it easier to respond graciously to criticism when the person dispensing it isn’t close to us?
The ones who are most qualified to criticize, and do it with our best interest in mind, aren’t those acquaintances and even strangers who feel the need to make known how they feel about us and the way we choose to live. They are our loved ones, and if it isn’t safe for them to speak up when we’re not doing something right, then it might be time to re-examine priorities.
After I logged out of FB for the last time in mid December, I had a growing feeling that it was for good. I had a few false starts, but the headlines about social media’s role in our culture confirmed what I knew – that FB and I needed to break up for good.
I had it all planned out.
I was going to log in one final time, download my archive, and delete my account. I even did a search ahead of time so I would know what I was doing and wouldn’t have to spend any more time than was necessary on my account.
Yesterday, my second youngest turned three. The snow was falling softly outside and was coating our yard of frozen mud so that it was starting to look dreamy. I asked him if he would come outside with me for a birthday photo shoot, and he said yes.
