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Kathleen Palm

~ A little light. A little dark. A lot weird.

Kathleen Palm

Tag Archives: truth

Words are Powerful

19 Thursday May 2016

Posted by Kathleen Palm in Thoughts

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

opinions, police, teaching, thoughts, truth

A strange thing happened at my daughter’s softball game the other day…

Well, strange? Maybe. A bit terrible too.

Softball game. Awesome metal bleachers. A neon yellow ball flying through the air. Families and friends cheering, laughing, at times groaning. Fun at the ball field.

Two county officers approached our side of the diamond and asked a man to stand up please. The woman beside him put her arm around him and told them he didn’t do anything. I tried to focus on the game…this show was none of my business. Words continued to flow from the bottom seat of the bleachers, getting more and more impossible to ignore. But finally the guy stood and the officers cuffed him and escorted him across the park.

And the woman who was with him wasn’t happy.

Another man (a friend of theirs, I learned later) asked if they really had to do that in the middle of a ball game.

To which the woman replied that the cops don’t care and they are pieces of s*%&. The cops should have better things to do like catch drug dealers. That this man hadn’t done anything.

And I began to shake with anger. My own thoughts and opinions of this screaming in my head. If you don’t know, my husband is a police officer, has been for 20 years. So this whole episode hit close to home.

I bit my tongue. I set my gaze on the game and worked on breathing calmly. Because nothing I could have said to this woman would have been good. Nothing would have helped the situation. My opinions were left better unsaid…just as hers would have been better unsaid.

For the scariest part of the evening, when my anger turned to sadness, was when a kid, maybe 11, repeated what the woman had said. He believed what she had said to be the truth. It was her truth, I suppose.

But when it comes to truth, we need to be careful. Truth isn’t fact.

I wanted to share a different truth with the boy, one that would help him see both sides. One that wouldn’t blind him to all the other truths out there.

The facts? Who knows. Had this guy done something? Probably. The police don’t put someone in handcuffs and take them away because they feel like it. They have reasons. Usually pretty good reasons.

Did the officers have something better to do, like rid the county of drug dealers and murders? At that moment…no. They were doing their job to the best of their ability. They handled themselves professionally.

Unlike the woman, who spewed hateful words, out of anger…maybe out of fear.

The person who screams loudest is heard. The person who yells over all the other voices must be right.

Nope.

All the nope.

So much NOPE!

I can’t help but think about how this kid might grow up hating the police. Just what the world needs.

What else do we…adults, society…teach kids? Kids aren’t born with thoughts of hate, with thoughts of violence, with ideas of prejudice. Those are learned.

Though some would argue with me that there are people born evil…and maybe that’s so.

To me, it’s our lives that mold us into who we are. It’s our experiences that shape our opinions and values. It’s the way we can climb out of the darkness to find the light with help from others, with a kind word, with acceptance that makes humans truly special.

Be careful what you say, you never know who’s listening. In the heat of the moment, many of us have said things we shouldn’t have…that’s human.

Yet in quieter moments, so many have been a ray of hope, a light in the dark…that’s human.

 

Our Truths

15 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by Kathleen Palm in Thoughts

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

be yourself, identity, just be, labels, our truths, truth

Funny thing… this thing we call truth.

Truth.

Such a little word.

One syllable.

But powerful.

And sometimes mistaken for fact, yet is not anything like fact at all.

For every person has their own truth. A core set of beliefs, of opinions, of thoughts and values. Each person’s truth is unique, like them. At times we connect with someone who shares similar beliefs, yet no two people’s truths will ever match exactly.

What a wonderful thing.

Until we feel as if we must hide our truths. Until we are attacked for who we are and what we believe.

A friend, who is almost 13 years old, revealed a truth to me. A marvelous, personal truth. And she did it with a smile, with pride, though she also admitted to struggling to say it the first few times. Some might say that she is too young to be able to proclaim such a thing.

But who are we to say?

Age has nothing to do with our truth. From 4 to 184 (though that age might only work for the faeries), everyone holds who they are wrapped up in their minds, spirits, and hearts. Maybe a four-year-old isn’t able to articulate what exists deep within, but if he can? More power to him. Over time our beliefs might shift, or perhaps time and experience help reveal who we are. Perhaps we should be jealous of the people who are able to really look at themselves, to find their true identity at a young age…where some of us fight our truths because of society.

Forever, society has dictated normal. And if you didn’t fit in you were…well, not normal. Though I seriously doubt normal even exists.

Lately, labels have been appearing as people find a word to describe themselves, to create an identity. I applause this. Though labels themselves can be a bit of a slippery slope, I like the idea of many communities living peacefully in the land of “not normal”. People have come forth to share what it is to live their truth, to bring all this into the realm of normal, for it should be. Or we can toss the word “normal” off a cliff and just be.

Live your truth, which has nothing to do with fact and everything to do with you, which has nothing to do with normal and everything to do with happy.

The Magic of Who You’ve Been

23 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by Kathleen Palm in Thoughts

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

being yourself, embrace the past, fond memories, kids, past, teens, thoughts, truth

So … I have an addiction to Facebook quizzes.

Do I want to know which character from Lord of the Rings I would be?

Do I want to know which type of book I would be?

Do I want to know in which fictional world I should live?

YES!

Why not? It’s fun. And some of them are semi-scarily-accurate.

Recently I took a quiz to see if the masterminds behind these quizzes could guess my age.

They said I was 29. 29! Ooooh!

For the record I am 41.

Oh, so long ago, I turned 29 on December 31st, 2001. Let’s see …

Hubs and I had bought a new house a month before. Ug. Two mortgages. And we were deep into remodeling so we could move in. Because when we bought it … ew.

I had no idea I wanted to be a writer.

My son was a week shy of being six months old. So I had just begun my life as stay-at-home mom and had not a clue what to do with the little bugger.

Weeks before, I had discovered that I was pregnant. Surprise! Not planned. I cried. For. Weeks.

So I was a bit stressed.

When I look back on that person, I cringe, I sigh. You couldn’t pay me enough to go back to being her. Heck no amount of money would get me to travel back to any period of my life. Awkward, shy teen-me with all her self-worth issues (some of which I still battle). Newly-married-scared-lost-me, who went a few rounds with depression. New-mom-me who stared at her kids and prayed to survive. The me who wet the bed until 11. The twenty-something-me who never told anyone what she really thought because they’d think she was crazy.

My kids roll their eyes whenever I tell them a story about when they were little, point out a cute cartoon they used to love, or pick up a once favorite book. Do they want that part of them to have never existed? Maybe. So I tell them to always accept who they were, where they have been, what they loved because that made them who they are. Never be ashamed of past you. Ever.

I embrace past-mes, making me who I am today. The most awesome-est version. Okay, possibly I exaggerate.

I am a work in progress. Always. Forever. I search for experiences to learn and grow.

What will 50-year-old-me think of 40-something-me? Don’t ask her. I don’t want to know yet.

Deep down, my core remains constant, the truth of me that I believe has always been and will always be there. Through all the changes, my truth doesn’t waver.

Everyone. All together. Give past-yous a hug. We needed them.

Any age, dear visitors, that you care to remember fondly … or not so fondly?

Sharing my search for magic in everything.

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Kathleen Palm, Author

Kathleen Palm, Author

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