“This Little Light o Mine,” to me, is a spiritual song about the determination and value of self-expression.

The timing of my post on Mother’s Day coincides with my monthly post about self-care. I made this vow at the beginning of 2016 to dedicate one of my two blog posts per month and remind myself about how important self-care is.  Today, I don’t have any one example in mind. Instead, as I’m wrapping up work on The Songbird’s Stand, I’m reminded of how many women in our lives have been silenced by the pressures and expectations of their lives.

Some may be mothers, or some may be caregivers of others. Their voices may be silenced by these life pressures. Tillie Olsen, in the aptly named book of essays, Silences, estimates that the literary work of only 1 in 12 women has been published and put forward in the world. Granted, Silences was written some time ago, but I believe that this statistic is still accurate and probably is even higher for women of color.

So if you have a woman in your life, and she doesn’t have to necessarily be a mother, one way to gift her is to make sure that she has the time and space to help her find her way to self-expression—whatever it is. Everyone deserves the opportunity to be creative.  Women find themselves without this opportunity a lot of the time, and society as a whole, needs to hear more of these voices.

The need to find a voice is a theme of The Songbird’s Stand.  I’m working hard on bringing it to you soon.  Thank you for reading my blog and please, keep watching this space!