Monthly Archives:April 2016

My heart is heavy tonight. I seek answers that are not available.

Another young person committed suicide this week, the second this week. Our community is small. We all know someone who knew someone who knew these young people. Or, we knew them ourselves.

We share tears and deep sadness tonight asking the questions that will never be able to be answered. Because they took the questions AND the answers with them.

All we can do is reach out in love and compassion to the rest of the community. We care. You are worthy. You are loved.

Let us in.

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written with sadness for Tara’s 100 Word Challenge: Search.

Suicides often cluster. Our community had several just a few months ago. And, now these two. I am praying there will be no more.

“Don’t call me hillbilly,” Grandma always told us. “I was raised in Kentucky. I’m a hill-William!”

My sister and I giggled and plotted the next time we could raise her ire.

You see, there is the South, complete with gentle southerners; and there are the hills where gun-toting, moonshine-swilling, revenooer-hating hillbillies lived.

I grew up in the city surrounded by concrete, humanity and black-belching buses, from “the Bottoms,” a neighborhood mostly forgotten by the rest of Columbus. Nevertheless, it was not country – or hillbilly heaven – or southern.

They each have their place. I’m a city girl. My place was home.

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Written for Tara’s 100 Word Challenge: SOUTH. My sister and I loved to get Grandma’s ire up. Calling her hillbilly was just one of many ways.

There is power. And, then there is power.

I work in an educational program for men who are court ordered because of violence they perpetrated on their partners.

During classes we discuss Power and Control issues the men have displayed and how they can only change their own behaviors.

Stressful work as you might expect. To counteract that stress I work out. I do CrossFit. Three mornings a week next to those who can lift heavier (or not) than I. Next to those in better shape (or not) than I. Today I did Power Snatches. I like this power better.
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Written for Tara’s 100 Word Challenge. The prompt, as you might figure, is POWER. I do scaled movements in my CrossFit attempts. I work more on position and form sometimes than in lifting heavy. My goal is to someday be able to lift heavier, but I am thrilled when I hear my coach shout out in the middle of a WOD (Workout of the Day), “Great job on that snatch, Barbara!”

Today my hands are a bit sore. I didn’t tear, but rubbed the callouses a bit with the bar. See the picture below. 🙂

Hour upon hour. Minute upon minute. They tick down while I tick down. Getting older is not for sissies, you see. There will be doctors. There will be medicines. There will be little twinges letting you know this is not your first hour here. But the bright side? It is not your finishing either. Enjoy these hours. Give them your utmost. Listen to the birds. Revel in the wind. Twirl like no one else is. Greet the next genesis of you with joy. Enjoy their smiles, their hugs, their love. Spurred on by love, conquer the world.
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the above drivel about aging and grandchildren is written for Tara’s latest 100 Word challenge . . . to write 100 words without using the letter A. Seriously? Harder than you think. I mean, look at all the A’s in this after-word. Right?

Thanks for the challenge, Tara.