Opportune – New Blogging Challenge

June 3, 2018June 4, 2018Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Ideas, Muse and Flow, Professional Development, Resources and links, WordOfDayNY, Writing Tags: Blogging, Community, Finding your way, MerriamWebster, Opportunity, Postaday, Treasure, WordOfDayNY, WritingPrompt 61 Comments

This post begins what I’m trying on as a new twist on an old idea — I will be utilizing Merriam-Webster’s lovely Word of the Day, as my (hopefully daily) inspiration a-la the “Daily Prompt.”

Miss The Daily Post and want to join me in this experiment? Feel free to link to this post on your blog, and/or post a link to your blogpost in the comment section below so others can enjoy it, too. For more visibility, tag your post with #WordOfDayNY, so your post can be searchable.

“Follow” me if you want to receive future prompts, or just pop in when you’re looking for inspiration. Here’s to the fun of writing and our ever-evolving blogging community!

Merriam-Webster’s word for June 3, 2018:

Opportune

Photo: Osnat Halperin-Barlev

If one door

Has shut

On a path

Not yet over,

Opportune ways

May become

The future’s

Treasure trover.

For Merriam-Webster Word of the Day

Kind of Famous

May 27, 2018Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Professional Development, Reflections, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Childhood trauma, Disabilities, healing, hope, Postaday, Self-acceptance, speech therapy, The Daily Post, Things Kids Say 2 Comments

Photo: Dvora Freedman

“I’ll be famous,” she said, twirling and eyeing her reflection in the mirror. She was wearing a particularly twirl-worthy skirt and a shiny pair of sandals.

“Yep, famous,” she repeated with finality. She spun a few more times then stopped mid-turn to face me. “Do you know what famous means?”

I raised an eyebrow in half-query, half-invitation. Children’s explanations are immensely more informing than anything I might attempt to guess at.

“It means everybody knows you and everybody likes you a lot.”

“It does?” I lent a slight undulation to my voice in what I hoped was just a smidge of challenge for the second part.

She’s a perceptive little one. She caught it. Paused. Frowned. Pursed her lips and pursed them again in front of the mirror to inspect the effect. “Well, everybody knows famous people,” she countered and puckered her lips a few more times to make a point. “But … maybe not everybody likes them?”

I smiled and raised my eyebrow again.

She straightened and crossed the room to lean into me. “Because some famous people can be bad?”

I wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Some. Sometimes people get famous but not for very good things.”

She nodded into my side. “Like Hitler and … you know?”

“Yes. Hitler … and some other people … are known for doing very very bad things.”

“I don’t want to be that kind of famous.”

I gave her a squeeze. “I understand. I wouldn’t worry … You are nothing like that … You have a beautiful, loving, caring heart. It’s not a bad thing to want to be famous. Most famous people aren’t bad. Most people in general aren’t bad. Famous and not famous ones.”

She leaned into me a moment longer. She knows hardship. Young as she is, the pain of cruel actions isn’t abstract to her.

I took a deep breath to remind her she was safe. She followed. Took another. Shook the pensive worry off and looked down into her magnificently twirl-worthy skirt.

“Well,” she stood and made a quick half-turn, watching the edges of the fabric lift and roil and dance and fly. “I’ll be the good kind of famous.” She walked back to the full-length mirror to reinspect her reflection. “The beautiful heart kind …”

For The Daily Post

“Make Me Disappear”

May 22, 2018Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Professional Development, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Abuse, Depression, End violence, Have a voice, Postaday, Posttraumatic Stress, The cost of pain, The Daily Post, Trauma, Unseen 5 Comments

underground river SmadarHalperinEpshtein

Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein

“Make me disappear,” she said,

As her eyes pleaded to be seen.

“I don’t care anymore,” she said,

As her voice begged to be heard.

The bruises on her skin long faded

But the wounding in her heart remained

Unhealed

Unchanged.

“I want to not be anymore,” she said.

But it was pain and the isolating loss of shame

She needed to erase,

Not life itself.

For The Daily Post

For The Long Haul

April 6, 2018Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Photography, Professional Development, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Accountability, healing, Interconnectedness, Keeping children safe, Loss, Postaday, Poverty, Responsibility, The Daily Post, Trauma 4 Comments

Photo: Dvora Freedman

In places too many

On this one blue-green ball,

Children haul

More than the weight of firewood

On their backs,

Big or small.

Sorrow, loss, illness, agony

Needs unmet

Unheard calls …

Yet they are all

Our children,

Their pain is our

Shortfall.

They are worthy of better:

In the now

For the future

For humanity’s long haul.

For The Daily Post

Plumb The Depths

April 3, 2018April 3, 2018Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Photography, Professional Development, Reflections, Writing Tags: Curiosity, Exploration, learning, Lifelong, Open mind, Postaday, Self Discovery, The Daily Post Leave a comment

Photo: Ofir Asif

Explore the vistas

Still unseen

Below the concepts

Left to grasp

As depths of thoughts

Plumb deep

The mind

And Spirit knows

What to redeem.

For The Daily Post

The Lost Quartet

March 28, 2018Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Professional Development, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: coping, Grief, healing, Loss, Memoriam, Mourning, Postaday, speech therapy, speech-language-pathology, Things Kids Say 1 Comment

fishbowl

He reached into his pocket and rummaged around. “I’ve brought something to show you,” he said, eyes searching mine. “But it’s a secret …”

“Oh?” I offered.

“Well, sort of,” he shrugged as an uncertain smile worked its way into his cheeks. “I took them to school … but I didn’t tell anyone … because we’re not allowed to … The teacher woulda’ taken them away and other kids maybe woulda’ told her or asked to see them and then she’d know …”

I hiked my eyes up and nodded my expectation.

The grin grew but it still held a sheen of sad.

He pulled his fist out of his pocket and turned it so the back of his hand rested on the table, then ceremoniously uncurled his fingers.

Four grains of rice in tiny vials, strung onto a keychain ring.

“They have names on them,” he said reverently.

I squinted and reached for a magnifying glass. Handed him one.

Our heads met over the small nest of palm and he mouthed the words, more sigh than voice. “Fee, Fi, Fo and Fum.”

A quartet recently eaten not by a giant smelling the blood of an English man but by a feline with a swishing tail who had knocked the fishbowl over and left not one golden scale behind.

For The Daily Post

Jujus

March 22, 2018March 22, 2018Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Life and love, Professional Development, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: belief, Central Park, children, Magic, Postaday, speech therapy, Talisman, The Daily Post, Things Kids Say 1 Comment

Photo: Samantha Mars

She dragged her book bag up the stairs.

Step, bang. Step, bang.

“It looks heavy,” I noted.

“Yeah,” she huffed and paused to frown in the direction of the patchwork of princesses on the backpack. I found myself wondering whether she was directing discontent at her idolized figures not using their royal powers to, at the very least, summon genie help to manage gravity.

“Want me to help carry the bag for you?” I offered.

She raised an eyebrow as if the mere thought of my definitely-not-princess hands handling her bag was beneath the Disney figures that dignified it.

The first-grader lugged the bag another step and stopped, perhaps to reconsider if there are times when commoners’ help is better than none at all. “Yeah,” she nodded.

I walked down to take the bag from her. The thing was heavy!

“What do you have in there?!” I asked. “Rocks?!”

“Aha,” she nodded sagely, skipped a few steps up ahead of me and swiveled her head to look back at me. “Come faster. I want to show you.”

I lifted the bag (and an eyebrow) in her direction and she giggled. “Sorry… Thanks.”

Once upstairs she indicated I was to clear space for whatever that was, then ceremoniously unzipped the top of her school bag and pulled out a succession of boulders. She placed each with care onto the desk. Several pounds of them.

I waited. The lot looked to me like run-of-the-mill New York stones: mostly dark gray schist dappled with a bit of quartz glint.

She leaned back in her chair and waited. Clearly a reaction was warranted.

“That’s a lot of rocks!” I managed.

“Not regular rocks,” she admonished. “These have magic.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” she proclaimed. “They have real magic. And gold, too. Inside.”

I tilted my head a bit to one side and nodded my interest.

She narrowed her eyes at me, weighing the merits of talking to grown ups about matters of magic and gold. “They can even make your wishes come true …”

“But … ” she regarded me before adding, a bit haughtily and perhaps to punish me for my lack of immediate awe, “you do have to believe in them, so they’ll only do the magic for me.”

For The Daily Post

“I Am Waiting”

March 18, 2018Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Photography, Professional Development, Reflections, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: attachment, Learning to wait, parenting, Patience, Postaday, The Daily Post, Things Kids Say, Toddlers, Transitional Object 2 Comments

Photo: mostlymommyhood.com

“I am waiting,” she crouched with jaw ensconced by tiny fists supported on little elbows pressed into small knees.

Her eyes did not leave the circle of translucence and white suds.

“It will be a while,” her momma said. “How about we go have a snack? I think we still have some cookies left.”

“But I’m waiting,” the toddler admonished, as if the wait itself precluded any other thing from being done … not even the consumption of normally-tantrum-before-dinner-worthy cookies.

Then again, maybe this wait indeed required full attention. After all, it was her terry friends being tumbled, wet, forlorn and all alone, so far away from hug and hand.

For The Daily Post

For Photo and how-to: http://mostlymommyhood.com/2012/11/17/the-friends-get-a-bath/

Chasing Life

February 13, 2018Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Photography, Professional Development, Reflections, Speech Language Pathology, Writing Tags: babies, Central Park, children, fpj-photo-challenge, life, New York City, Photo Challenge, Pigeons, speech pathology 4 Comments

Photo: Chagit Moriah-Gibor

For all the little ones in my life: Right here, nearby, quite far; right now or not but in my heart you always are … For all of you who chase life (and sometimes Central Park pigeons), and grab hold of every moment’s possibility with two tenacious hands:

You teach me lots more than I ever could teach you.

You are each life, exemplified.

For Tuesday Photo Challenge

Mnemonically Challenged

February 11, 2018Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Professional Development, Reflections, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: Just listen, Memory, middle-school, Mnemonic, speech pathology, speech therapy, tests, The Daily Post, Things Kids Say 2 Comments

Photo: teachingmomster.com

“I failed the test,” she sighed and let her book bag slump to the floor.

“What test, and I’m so sorry.” I responded.

“Social studies. History stuff. I studied so hard!” She plunked herself into the chair. Dejection personified. “Who put all those stupid names and dates in there, anyway?”

“Names and dates can be really difficult to remember,” I noted. “I find it helpful to connect them with the story of what happened, or with something else to remind of what the name or date relate to.”

“Yeah, well,” her eyes rose to meet mine, accusatory at my not understanding she just needed me to let her vent. “But you are not mnemonically challenged!”

For The Daily Post