The Sentence That Comes After the Mistake There is a sentence I have probably said more times than I care to admit: “Well, I already blew it.” I may say it after eating something I promised myself I would avoid. I may say it after spending money that was not in my budget. I may
“I Already Blew It”: How One Mistake Becomes an Excuse to Give Up Read More »
The Lesson Pilots Learn One of the strongest lessons from aviation has very little to do with airplanes and a great deal to do with life. Pilots learn that there are moments when they cannot safely trust what their bodies are telling them. When clouds, fog, darkness, or bad weather remove the visible horizon, the
Trust Your Instruments: When Feelings and Facts Point in Different Directions Read More »
The Messages Can Begin Before We Understand Them A Black child can enter the world before having any idea what race means. Yet society may already have meanings waiting for that child’s skin. Long before the child understands those messages, other people may have already attached assumptions to Blackness. Some of those assumptions have been
When Racism Gets Inside the Mind: Anti-Blackness and the Black Psyche Read More »
When Anger Becomes a Question There are moments when Black Americans see another violent death, another disturbing attack, or another court decision and ask how much more we are expected to take. That frustration did not begin yesterday. Our history contains too many examples of racial violence for a new incident to exist completely by
When Black America Demands Justice: Turning Anger Into Power Read More »
The Scandal Most People Remember When people from my generation hear the name Milli Vanilli, the scandal often comes to mind before the music. Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan became international stars almost overnight. They had the long braids, the coordinated clothes, the dancing, and the kind of looks made for television. Their songs were
Milli Vanilli: The Faces of a Deception They Did Not Create Alone Read More »
A Different Way of Thinking About Money Most of us grow up with a pretty simple understanding of money. I work, somebody pays me, and then I decide what to do with what I earned. My time comes first, and the money comes afterward. I may give an employer forty hours of my life and
Looking Back at an Earlier Kind of Marriage I sometimes hear men say that today’s man has to work much harder to find a good woman than his grandfather did. They may also believe that women today bring less to a relationship than women did in earlier generations. The statement is exaggerated, but the frustration
Were Our Grandparents Better at Love, or Did They Live in a Different World? Read More »
Pain Has a Voice There is one voice in life I have learned not to dismiss too quickly, and that is the voice of pain. I am not talking only about the physical pain that comes when I injure myself. Life contains many kinds of pain. Pain comes into our lives in many ways, through
Listen to the Pain, but Learn What It Is Trying to Tell You Read More »
A Story That Almost Sounds Made Up Every once in a while, something happens in American government that sounds so strange I have to stop and make sure I understand it correctly. In 2026, President Donald Trump was involved in one of those situations. He and other plaintiffs sued the Internal Revenue Service and the
People Will Try to Define You One of the realities of life is that people become comfortable with the version of us they already know. Once they have placed me in a particular category, they may expect me to remain there. If I have spent years doing one kind of work, they assume that is
You Are More Than What You Have Always Done: Knowing When to Reinvent Yourself Read More »