Strong is a word I used to hate. What does strong mean? What is strength? I feel like Pontius Pilate as I ask these kinds of questions. When I graduated from Union University a semester early, summa cum laude, I was called strong because I had achieved something. When I crawled out into the barren wasteland called the economy, I was called strong because even though I contemplated suicide, I kept trying to live.
Read MoreI remember as a little girl, there were two things that topped the list of my least favorites about spring. One was a bright orange windbreaker my mother insisted I wear, and the other was spring cleaning. It never failed, though. She would place the cleaning rag and off-brand dusting spray in my tiny hands no matter how many times I insisted that the house was clean enough.We would scrub away the remnants of seasons past, and at the end of a (very) long day, we would be able to start over clean.
Read MoreWe live in a critical society. Social media is mostly to blame for that, along with twenty-four-hour “news” networks and talk radio. Everyone has a voice whether they have anything worth saying or not. If you have a bad experience at a restaurant, Tweet about it. If your hotel bed isn’t as comfortable as you think it should be, grab your phone and give it two stars on Google. I don’t exempt myself from taking part in the reactionary culture in which we find ourselves.
Read MoreThere is nothing beautiful about a neighborhood razed and left for kudzu and vines to swallow trees whole, while grass begins forming veins in the cracks of the abandoned streets. There is nothing beautiful about a lot tended only enough to keep back tall grasses. So when I say I love the patch of abandoned land called Westwood Gardens, I get that it’s kind of weird.
Read MoreThe garden is a block away from the café, a small oasis of green amidst the severe office buildings and cloudy gray-scale urban landscape that makes up downtown Jackson. It doesn’t draw attention to itself, and many pedestrians walk quickly by without even noticing it, busy with their phones or their thoughts or their plans to hurry on to something, somewhere, sometime.
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