A Wheelchair View

"If my glass looks half empty, it is only because I've been blessed with the opportunity to share half of its contents with someone who was thirsty." Maria R. Palacios  When I was first married to my husband we moved to an apartment complex where I met two women who changed my life completely. We were all three survivors of abuse of various degrees. One of us was molested and controlled; one of us was brutally raped at gunpoint, and the other abused, neglected, and was forced to live with the man, whom she is certain killed her mother. Not only were the three of us survivors but we all used creative writing to cope and to work through the healing process. Our real healing didn’t really begin individually until we joined together and became friends. Together we supported each other; we drank coffee, buried ourselves in self-help and psychology books and shared our poetic journals. I gained strength that I never knew I could have again and while my experiences will always b...

In my Sophomore year of college I went through a very metamorphic and painful change. It was my year of enlightenment, the year I realized that the more I learned the more I knew very little about this world, the universe and how things work. I went head to head with an English professor whose heart and soul was into that years presidential election. That year I stood on everything that I was taught to believe and voted for a President that if I had known what it meant, the things that would transpire after and the regret I would feel afterward I would have never voted that way. It is very difficult to give up what you know sometimes when you have held on to it for so long, even for the truth. However, there comes a time when you have to ask yourself do you really want your fundamental beliefs centered around something you know is a lie? In this picture are some kids riding on a float in the 4 th of July parade. Independence Day! The day that marks freedom and liberty. The kids a...