Beyond FAMILY: Why I’m Taking a Break from the Blog

Not a single break, but a series of them throughout the New Year as I opt to post much less frequently (though hopefully more often than once a month!). The past month has left no time for blogging for three main reasons: health, holidays, and home…with family, family, family, a huge part of all three. SHOVELING has been on the top of the “home” to-do list for most everyone in Denver lately, with a Christmas blizzard last week and a New Year sure-looks-like-another-blizzard-to-me howling out the front door. At least here in my home we enjoyed a fun, joyful Christmas and we’re looking forward to a New Year that’s already shaping up to be a very busy one. It’s all good, thankfully, and I look forward to maintaining BEYOND Understanding even if new posts will be fewer and farther between.

Over the past eighteen months, this blog has evolved into a solid resource that’s visited by a wide variety of people for a wide variety of reasons. Whether you’re a student of Civil Rights issues, a teacher trying to reach out to a biracial student, or a parent with children of mixed-race heritage, BEYOND Understanding highlights sites, books, articles, documentaries, and other resources that I hope will lead your research in surprising and enlightening directions.

Best wishes to you and yours for a New Year full of peace, joy, and—you guessed it—understanding. Only by striving to understand the incredibly diverse lives led by so many—the frustrations faced, the challenges overcome on a daily basis—can we hope to achieve glimmers of peace in our world. Only after acquiring such understanding through on-going research and reading and just talking to others can we turn around and teach such tolerance to our children so they’ll pass that understanding on to their own children. As Martin Luther King, Jr., put it, “Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.” I’ve met so many people of good will who possess shallow understandings of contemporary forms of prejudice. Tolerance is an important concept that deserves much more than a simple blog put together by a Denver mom/writer. Take what this blog offers and put it to good use. And when you need more food for thought, stop on back by. BEYOND Understanding will be here for you, even while I’m busy being a mom…who’s got to go shovel yet again. Enjoy!