Day 170: Today is Juneteenth, a fact I learned from my mom in the early eighties after she’d watched a documentary on PBS. She explained that it was really the second Independence Day for America, when the slaves in Texas found out they’d been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation . . . two and a half years earlier.
Of course there is MUCH more to the story than what I remember learning from my mother, much more for every American citizen to learn and remember, so that it doesn’t happen on our soil again. Yet, is it happening again? At our borders?
Living in the land of the free and the home of the brave has become a contentious thing. The value of every life must be recognized for us to really be the Land of the Free.
My main character in my Saying Goodbye series is a makeup artist who “sees in ten billion shades of human.” She sees the individuality of humanity. No two are alike to her, and she sees the beauty in each and every one. I love that about her. The man who falls in love with her is so inspired by her views, he becomes a documentarian, traveling the world to film the individuality of humanity she sees. His life’s work becomes many seasons of a documentary called “Ten Billion Shades of Human.” I am proud of these fictitious do-gooders roaming around in my head. And I couldn’t have written them without a lot of self-reflection on the matter. It’s what I truly believe.
If YOU see in ten billion shades of human, too, please do something about it. Speak up. Take action. Because this is The Land of the Free, and we’re gonna have to work hard to keep it that way. #MomsCompanyTowels #TenBillionShadesOfHuman #Juneteenth #FamiliesTogether
Comments