angel with a feather allergy

Marie Antoinette- 2006’ Movie Costume

“I always wanted to be a mental health therapist.  Ever since high school, I’ve enjoyed encouraging people and giving them hope.  But I lost my way.  I got caught in a world of addiction.  I lost ten years of my life to drugs.  I stopped when I became pregnant with my child, but by that time it was too late to go back to school.  I started working as an office manager.  I never completely lost my dream.  But I just put it on a shelf for thirty years.  Then five years ago I to…ok it off the shelf.  I heard a lady in my choir talking about how she enrolled in community college.  I drove there the very next day.  I was so nervous when I filled out the application.  I was so nervous the first day of class.  All the old voices were telling me: ‘You never finish anything.’  But I said ‘fuck you’ to the old voices.  And I started getting A’s.  On my first test, I got the only perfect score in the class.  I graduated at the age of 50.  I got my Masters at 55.  And just last night I completed a mental health first aid course.  I’m so close now.  There’s still fear there.  I used to be afraid of it never happening.  Now I’m afraid of it happening.  The old voices try to come back sometimes.  They tell me: ‘You can rest,’ or ‘You’ve earned a break.’  But I’m not stopping this time.  Somebody out there is waiting for me to finish because they need my help.“

Fountain Faerie

yamada mineko

Julia Margaret Cameron, The First Born, 1865. 

The Evening News, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, September 21, 1928

by Jerry Hsu 

jeff buckley da uncut 2013

Believe playing from another room Cher