don't call me pollyanna

Since I was a wee one, I've wanted to visit every country, make the world a better place, and write about it all.  I would twirl fast in my bright yellow dress, and dream of all that I would do as an adult.

The realists and the pessimists will scoff at the concept of this blog, at the whole premise on which I base my life.  They can cite statistics taller than Trump Tower in Dubai to prove that the world is going, as my grandmother would have said, to hell in a handbasket.

We are marvels.  Despite the statistics.  Perhaps as a result of them.

I know because of my work and because of my life.  My mother died when I was two years old, and it sometimes seemed to me that those of us who were left behind had sent the vital parts of ourselves into hiding.  I have spent time in places where the only furniture in the house was one chair and one hammock; where the walls were made of cardboard.  I have held the hands of brave and weary survivors of domestic violence.  I have walked with families through the bureaucratic and emotional mazes of foster care systems.  I have hugged, or been pushed away by, children and youth in schools, in homes, and on the streets.

So I know something about loneliness, isolation, fear, addiction, sadness, violence, grief, and spending long hours of your life crying under the bed.

And I know that each of us adds up to vastly more than the sum of our negative experiences.

My name means "woman who rages" and "god who provides."  My vision for this blog is to live up to my name.  I intend to take readers on a long journey through the shadowed woods of injustice and despair accompanied by the recognition that each of us holds in our hands and our hearts the seeds of sustenance from which bright flowers grow.