In college I met Cherene Snow an actress who played in Cooley High. Funny thing is she used to sit in my room and we would laugh and talk. She played Tooty Jackson. I wonder if she remembers me at all. Last I saw of her, she was playing in a couple of Law in Orders shows and the City of Angeles drama. I’ve met so many people in my lifetime, some who went on to do some great things. But I have never tried to reach out, or brag about knowing them. But tonight, she crossed my mind. I hope she is well and her career in acting is going strong for her.

Sometimes talking helps, maybe not when you want it too, but one day...


Okay there must be something in the food. Otherwise, why are these young girls in their teens like 13 and up so sexually active? If they are not, they are trying to. I am so tired of talking girls into waiting. Well, begging them to. But it must be done. You know that adage, if I can help one person, then my life is not in vain. Well, I think those words might even be a song too. But talking does work. When you take an interest in teens and they began to trust you, good things can happen.

Imagine this! I saw a teenage girl whose mother asked me to work with. She wanted me to encourage her daughter to refrain from sex until she was eighteen. Every year I upped the age. “Can you wait until 16, you waited this long? Let's wait okay.” Then at 17, I would ask again, “Would you wait until 17?” I would talk about boys using girls, leaving them with babies, no future, diseases, etc. The young girl told me no way. She loved her boyfriend and would not wait any longer. She was like, “I waited three years.”

So my instructions from the mother were this. If she will not wait, call her dad and make her a doctors’ appointment. Her dad will take her for birth control and counseling because I cannot imagine my daughter having sex this young and I don't want to know. So at 17, I called the girls' dad. He was sad but they honor their word that if she waited one of her parents would go with her and assure that she understood how to protect herself. (It was their only daughter).

Well to make a long story short, the young girl went to the college I graduated from. She became the first college graduate of her entire immediate and extended family. She went through domestic violence with the boy, and she broke up with him. She called me and we talked throughout her college days. Imagine she has her BS degree in Social Work, her Masters' in counseling and is now working on her PhD. She called to thank me for helping and encouraging her to be something. I am so proud of her. Though she did not wait until marriage, she was able to come to her senses and do something with her life. She is now counseling teen girls.
Imagine that!

Happy and Blessed!

This has been an amazing week. First my daughter, my only child turned 19. Where is the time going? I don’t feel as if I am getting old, I feel better than I did before she was born. We took her back to school on Thursday. I miss my child but know as the years pass she will graduate, get married and have her family. At least as her mother I pray that it happens that way. But if it doesn't, I'll love her still.

I was riding with her and we were following her dad as we took her back to college. About 2 hours from her school, in the dead of the night, we saw her dad’s SUV veer violently to the right. Then we saw a deer run as fast as the eye could see down the highway on the opposite side. We pulled over to check on him. As we did so, I said out loud, “thank you God.” I knew that he had hit a deer, but I knew that he had been saved. My daughter saw two of them. When we looked at the damage on his SUV the front of it was damaged. The grill and bumper were both knocked all the way in. He was able to pull the grill off the fan, thus allowing him to continue to drive. It was too dark to see what happened to the deer. But we knew that he was bless as most of the time when a deer is hit they come through the windshield or hit the roof of the car. Thankfully his SUV was so high; the deer could not do as much damage.

We are so blessed!