Author: Linda@heartponderings.com

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson So begins the book I recently found mentioned in a New York Times article. Written by Laurie Helgoe,…

Parents of disabled children … or any child that doesn’t fit the norm … rarely have opportunities to brag about their progeny. I’m grateful to have such an opportunity and I’m going to take it! Anniversary On July 1, 2023,…

The weather reports indicated that the worst of the weather was yet to come. Giant-sized hail was forecast. After arriving back at the hotel following our bus ride, Diana moved her new car into the garage under the hotel. While…

Rosa Park refused to move to the back of the bus. She hoped others would follow her example. And WOW, did they!! She made good trouble! The black community boycotted the buses for 381 days (12/5/55 to 12/20/56). They walked…

Sacred Ground This six-acre Memorial for Peace and Justice is definitely sacred ground … a sacred space for truth-telling and reflection about racial terror in America and its legacy. Whenever possible, names among the 4,400+ African American men, women, and…

Wisdom On our walk to the Ravello restaurant the previous evening, we saw this Maya Angelou quote on the side of a building. The next morning as we approached the Legacy Museum, we found this same quote on the back…

A monument erected to honor the sacrifice of women slaves subjected, without anesthetic, to experiments by the “father of modern gynecology” The Stars Were Aligned Sometime the week before Diana and I left, this segment appeared on the PBS nightly…

A Deep Longing This drive from Selma to Montgomery touched a deep longing I have carried for a long time … a longing for a different, more humane world. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech delivered at a…

Starting Our Day Before checking out of the hotel, we searched the internet and learned that the Selma Interpretive Center was closed due to lack of staffing. And so, before we ventured forth, we watched a powerful National Parks video of events surrounding “Bloody…

Diana and I had been talking about taking a Civil Rights tour of Selma and Montgomery, Alabama for several years. She knew it was on my bucket list. She made it possible by sandwiching the trip between visits with her…