My Perceptions of Reality

My Perceptions of Reality

Originally posted in another blog on November 7, 2007

February 7, 2007

Like most Americans, I come from a mixture of peoples and cultures.  I chose the two that I think most express who I am.

The Irish castle respresents that part of me from the Emerald Isle.  Tempermentally, I am so very sterotypically Irish.

But the Cherokee, calls most to the deepest hunger of my soul and my values. 

It is ironic as well that both people have known ethnic genocide.

The Cherokee through the brutal actions of President Jackson and the dislocation of the Cherokee nation to Oklahoma.  The Cherokee history of that process, known as The Trail of Tears is filled with a people treated in a brutal and cruel manner.

The Irish too, know first hand this horror through the centuries of occupation and brutal mistreatment at the hands of the English.

It is a credit to both the courage and the strength of the Cherokee spirit and to the Irish spirit that BOTH have preserved their culture, history and language.

They have an indestructible heart that despite of and in the midst of their sorrow still chose to be a blessing to humanity.

My Own Introduction

I was born in West Palm Beach. Florida, in December of 1952.  You might think that being from the Palm Beach area, life would always be “another day in paradise.”

However, for some, that was not meant to be.  This is the first time I will share some of the “events” of my childhood.  I don’t do it for pity as pity is such a waste.

Also, I have long dealt with the shadows of my youth and have moved far beyond them.

My father was a chef and well, my mother was simply who she was.  They were divorced when I was barely a year old and so I have no cognitive memory of my father.  Those who knew him well have said many times that he was devoted to his children and strove to be a good father.

Less then a month later, mother married a Marine sargeant several years her junior.

Thus begins the story of paradise lost.

And I learned to walk in a world being filled with terrible silent pain and quiet tears.  A world where I was basically left to feel like a throw away.