The Double Letter South

For a long time, I've been chomping at the bit (or vomiting, or bleeding, or dying--or all of the above) to speak out against something that has, quite literally, driven me mad over the last almost forty years of my life.  I've created entire blogs about it. Commented under posts on social media. Made my own posts (only to delete them). Filmed videos that never made it to YouTube.  Up until today, I didn't know why I couldn't just talk openly about this subject, without any fear or shame creeping in.  It's not that I'm scared of offending anyone, not really. I've said plenty about my thoughts to plenty of people.  And I wouldn't say I'm ashamed of my beliefs now, either. Why should I be? I'm a rational thinking and feeling human being, capable of making my own decisions. We all are.  I guess it's that for my whole childhood, I grew up in a home where anxiety around the very subject I'd like to call out permeated our home.  Literally every...

It's April 11, 2026, but it might as well be April 11, 2025, or April 11, 2024, or April 11, 2004, for that matter.  What I mean is, I feel like for the last twenty-or-so-odd-years, my life hasn't changed much.  Sure, I've grown older. My husband and kids have too. I've moved--a few times, actually--although the home we're in now is the longest I've ever lived anywhere in my life (and believe me, I'm getting antsy as hell). I've changed jobs, yet I can't quite seem to ever change my career as a teacher. For some reason, I always return... and always regret it.   Life has brought some highs: victories lived through my children, health battles that didn't take me out of the game, a continued marriage, despite hard times.   My biggest victory of the last decade, no doubt was finally embracing my beliefs about God's Universal Grace to All Creation, including Mankind. Huge win in a religious world damned determined to make the Creator of the Unive...

I lost one of my favorite uncles this week.  Although it wasn't entirely unexpected, given that he'd been ill for over a month, I don't think I was fully prepared to lose him so young. He wasn't even seventy. At sixty-seven, he could pass for fifty on his worst day. Going through some of his items, stored in my garage ever since we let go of my grandparents' Mississippi Delta home of sixty-plus years—a death of its own, really—I came across this sweet card, probably drawn when he was just a little boy in Catholic school, most likely for his favorite person in all the world: his mama. "I love you! Let me give you my heart," it reads. Coming from my uncle, it's a bit ironic. He was like a porcupine, cute as could be until you got too close. He never married and never had a serious relationship (that I know of). I feel certain he passed holding onto some heartache, but maybe—Lord, hopefully—some memories of a good love too. The writings I found scribbled...