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  • Meet Maria
  • Writing
  • Living
    • Yoga
    • Testimonials
  • Blog
  • Stories & Poems
  • #HeartCenteredMedia
  • Newsletter
  • Contact
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    Mindfulness in the Media Storm

    What can Hurricane Dorian teach us about mindfulness? The storm begs a question: ‘who am I without the chaos?’

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  • book cover the way of the rose rosary with flowersRosary recovered: ‘The Way of the Rose’ digs up old path for modern seekers
  • honey molasses bread round doughPoem: Knowing and Kneading
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hotel room white bedsThe simple app that can help law enforcement — and you! — fight sex traffickers. — A new app called TraffickCam surfaced last year to help citizens become crime scene sleuths.

Heart-Centered Journalism

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Confronting the Emotional Toll of Hurricanes  — The time to put life on hold gives an opportunity to shatter the conventional illusion that everything is stable.

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POETRY IS A COUNTRY Over the weekend, I spent half POETRY IS A COUNTRY Over the weekend, I spent half a day at the National Gallery of Art @ngadc for a symposium on ekphrastic poetry -- poetry about art -- and specifically art in the gallery collections.

U.S. poet laureate Ada Limon's spellbinding keynote addressed the topic of "unknowing," yet filled with stories about how we can come to know a work of art intimately and how that relationship can teach us about ourselves. The other poets, also left me with a heart brimming fullness.

Each poet--one of them local--shared how each work of art resonated with deeply personal stories in their lives. The event ended at 4 P.M. and carried me throughout the rest of the day as if a hunger for beauty had been satiated. As if I had journeyed through countries without leaving my seat in the auditorium. Poetry is indeed a country.

You can read the poems here: https://www.nga.gov/learn/adults/poetry-country-wilmerding-symposium.html

And follow them here: @adalimonwriter @jasonreynolds83 @ilya_poet @nshihab2018 @jorie.graham

Poet Jorie Graham (not pictured here), regaled us via pre-recording.
Read a new prose poem "The Ghost Pain of Cuba" at Read a new prose poem "The Ghost Pain of Cuba" at the Second-Generation Immigrant Writers Mixer @thewriterscenter in Bethesda. My fellow wordsmiths were from all over the world and also shared beautiful drafts about the experience of immigration. 

This prose poem is an offshoot of some of the themes in the book that's finally coming into shape as @tanyataylorrubinstein and her #somaticwriting team doula me through this process. Currently on Chapter 5, but I like to call each chapter an impressionistic vignette. Some of you know that I left Miami forever in 2017 on a road trip with no plan. In the story, I'm already in Georgia, eating boiled peanuts.

#HispanicHeritageMonth
WE ARE MULTITUDES From northern Spain, with a one- WE ARE MULTITUDES From northern Spain, with a one-generation pit stop in Cuba.

Hispanic heritage is never homogeneous nor is it exclusively from Spain or even Latin America. For me, it also has Celtic roots, a deeper ancestral wisdom I feel in my bones. And it comes from sea-swept mountain range and fertile valleys where my maternal grandfather was born.

Hispanic heritage is also never uncomplicated. Yes, I'm aware of the history of slavery and the taking of Turtle Island that decimated First Nations.

Do I love flamenco? Yes. But that's not necessarily in my bloodline, although its music courses in me. It's from a whole other cultural world far away on the southern Iberian peninsula.

We are multitudes, as Whitman said.

#HispanicHeritageMonth

📸 #NaranjoDeBulnes in 2007
Walked by @iranianbus1401 on my way to the flamenc Walked by @iranianbus1401 on my way to the flamenco studio yesterday. The moving memorial to Mahsa Amini, and other victims ofcourse gave me pause. I'm blessed to have freedom of expression, freedom to dance. September 16 marks the one-year anniversary of Amini"s death at the hands of morality police in Iran. Her crime? She showed too much hair. Women all over the country publicly cut their hair in protest.
"Two negatives make a positive” is what our teac "Two negatives make a positive” is what our teacher said when asked why a dealer would get into a business that kills customers. In a sick, twisted way, it's "positive" for the dealer who knows there will always be another customer.

Earlier today, I went to a harm reduction community class in Woodley Park offered by @dcrecoveryca to educate myself on Narcan, a life-saving medication for anyone who has overdosed on opioids.

As many of you know, I understand the “cunning, baffling and powerful” condition of addiction first-hand. That I only had one poison — alcohol — is cold comfort.

When I left my treatment center nearly 19 months ago, I had a prescription for Narcan, which a pharmacist friend encouraged me to fill — it was free — because someday it might help save someone’s life.

Narcan is a nasal spray and while the instructions on the box are easy enough to understand, I wanted to learn more. Today's class was very helpful.

I recently posted about the Netflix series PAINKILLER that addresses the opioid crisis, and while I can do nothing about the sins of the Sacklers, I can atleast be more aware of how it's affecting my district.

As for the opioid crisis, which is staggering, I don’t have any answers but I can tell you that the drug war is not so much about geopolitical economics as much as it is a personal war inside the heart. And that starts at home and in community — rich or poor, black or white, addiction does not discriminate and it most certainly does not give f*cks if you live or die.

But I do.

Maybe I’ll never need to use Narcan on an unconscious human. If I do, I’ll be ready.
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