Julie Pippert: Using My Words

The time is right The time is right I'm gonna pack my bags And take that journey down the road Cause over the mountain I see the bright sun shinning And I want to live inside the glow Yeah I wanna go to a place where I am nothing and everything That exists between here and nowhere I wanna got to a place where time has no consequences oh yeah The sky opens to my prayers I wanna go to beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. . . Beautiful , by India Arie My soul needed cleansing this morning. Last night, I let it get dirty. Someone said ugly things about me, about me to my kid, and I let my temper overwhelm me. I said some ugly things about that person. Someone told me that same person said out of line things to her, as well. As she shared her story, I struggled back and forth about providing support or staying out of it. I feared, rightly, that were I to get involved and provide support, I'd be unable to set myself aside and simply be a friend. I rightly feared that My Feelings would as...

She is three, no four now, and she is running along a stretch of grassy lawn. Her feet flash over the mix of brown and green blades of grass and the skirt she wears---skirts and dresses only---peals behind her, bell-shaped. Her short hair, self-cut, flops beneath three bows placed strategically yet erratically on her head. She faces forward, never looking away to either side or behind herself. Her arms and legs pump fast and hard as she races to meet up with friends to play, big kids, who are waiting for her in the cul-de-sac. Except she never thinks they will wait for her and so she, the younger child, spends her life running to keep up. I shuffle more slowly behind her, trying to gauge the right distance to stay back---enough forward to assuage my desire to protect and enough back to respect her desire for freedom and independence. She has no idea I am there, but I watch her closely, not just for safety but for the remembrance of pure emotion I know she feels. She is unguarded, yet. ...

The last few months of 2008 were a little mind-blowing in a "I'll let you know when I've finished processing that" kind of way. Have you ever gotten busy and let your house go? You know what I mean...skip the laundry, dusting, cleaning, tidying, vacuuming and so forth and one day, walk in, notice the mess and dirt and think, "Holy crap, how did it get this big and bad so fast and where in the world do I start?" Have you ever just backed out of the house and decided to find errands to run and a good excuse to eat out in order to avoid the mess and all you have to do? Overwhelmed. I haven't written much because I've been so overwhelmed, and had no way of figuring how to break it down and which one thing to tackle first. The next thing I knew, the things I wanted to say had piled up on top of one another and I? had no time to get to it, but more than that, it was such a cluttered jumble in my mind that I needed to break it down. Let's go back a few ...