Just give me time

Every once in awhile, music in the background urges my pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard...). Right now is one of those moments. Violet Hill is playing and I can't help but yearn for this song to find itself on repeat. At risk of sounding just like every other person - I love this album. I have to have it. 

Clouds broke through the morning sun today. We'll see who wins the battle, but it's looking pretty humid outside as well, so perhaps there will actually be a summer storm to read along with today. Soooo nice. 

Summer has an unquenchable beauty to it. The heat almost caresses your skin when you walk out the door, and nothing compares to late nights with friends and laughter echoing off of your walls. But as with every summer, there comes a lot of self-reflection. Where have I been this year? Where am I going? What does this year hold for Russ and me and what surprises await? 

Last summer was essential for me creatively. The writing workshop I went to in July was just what this writer's heart needed - I hadn't written in so long, hadn't trusted my voice to give a worth while message. That was just the beginning. 

I wrote about my great grandfather and the legacy he left - a deep love for wide open spaces, wilderness, and my namesake: a woman who grew up on horseback and shares my passion for reading and writing.

I wrote about my experiences with students. How it took three years of teaching to fully understand the implications of cutting. How one student single-handedly changed the way I viewed cutters and their struggle to fight the addiction. How TWLOHA found a breeding ground at BHS, where hope has needed to breathe for quite some time. 

However, despite encouragement and pleas to write about my experience with Schools for Schools and Invisible Children. I couldn't. My school had become alive with awareness during 2006-2007, but for something that I was so passionate about, the words never came. I mean, how do you describe watching a documentary in class and seeing the transformation before your eyes? Hardcore kids, crying and demanding justice. Kids with five dollars to their name giving it all in a change for change jar. Students literally breaking out of a dangerously silent shell and learning what activism really means. It was all too much. Too breathtaking, too close to who I was (and still am) as a person to risk putting it out there. I think though, looking back, my reluctance to write stemmed from the belief that there was more to be done. 

There still is, but I things are finally beginning to come out. My writing is slowly experiencing a sense of purging. It took me four years to really begin writing about my time in Haiti, and I expect the same out of what my kids and I do with IC. 

This past year has shown me what social justice in its purest form looks like, what community can do to a person and just how much joy can be had in a simple dance party. For my kids and I, we have realized that family doesn't always come with blood-ties. Opposition comes at a price, but always makes you stronger. 

So...it's coming. In bits and pieces stories are going to start coming out and revealing just how much this organization has changed who I am and how I see the world. 

Violet Hill has ended and the sun is starting to peak through the clouds. I can already feel the humidity. 

It's going to be a good day.