La Trenza del Barrio

Do you remember your favorite teacher or teachers? What makes them your favorite? What makes them your least favorite?  The teachers I have had, all taught me something I needed to know. Of course as a much younger person, I didn't correlate any of my experiences with my teachers as something I needed to know at that time. I just thought I had cool ones and not so cool ones.  Teachers have been entering and exiting our lives for the majority of our lived experience. And everyone we have encountered has been our teacher in some way, not just the ones in formal k-12 education.  This is why recurring cycles happen. Until I figured out the areas of myself that needed extra attention, I was still meeting the same person with the same lesson, just from a different human. I will never forget Adam. When I was a middle school teacher about a lifetime ago, Adam and his friend were in the same section of my Spanish I class. The two were complete opposites, but they tried not to be. ...

Life has become relatively calm.  I admit I made some drastic changes after some pretty difficult challenges these past several months which included the two main areas of my life: my job, my daughter. It amazes me that buried memories come out to the surface when you least expect them. It's like playing hide and seek, only you're hiding for 40 years and you surely don't want to seek what it is that has been in hiding. Ha! Three years ago, I made the decision to be a backer to a project that I was so proud of becoming a small part of as an executive producer. It is a film short called Grummy. It wouldn't be until three years later, after having my daughter that I actually recalled my own experiences as a child, and understanding the reason why I found myself so compelled at that time three years ago to be part of making sure that this story was made. Childhood abuse is not uncommon, it is actually so commonplace that it's scary. You'll know what I'm talking ...