About 40 years ago, I had an intense conversation with a man whose name I don’t remember, so I will just call him Paul. Both of us were nearing completion of our graduate coursework in psychology, and we met while interviewing for a clinical internship at a south Florida university. Following those interviews, Paul announced …
One of the many gifts I received from my mother is a healthy skepticism about religiosity. Although she was a deeply devout, churchgoing, Bible-loving, Sunday School teacher, she was intensely suspicious of anything that felt like performative spirituality. I remember a neighbor who would routinely greet her with “Praise the Lord!” – instead of a …
“Biblelistically” Blessed: Liberating Christianity from White Supremacy Read More »
Nothing has as much durability as a racialized trope. Memories of 60’s television include racing downstairs with my cousins to see the “Negro” who had been spotted in a soap commercial. Believe me, it was a race-worthy event (pun fully intended). At that time, Black bodies were rarely represented in the media except in highly …
There were some Southern traditions that my mother seemed to delight in ignoring. One was wearing roses on Mother’s Day: red if your mother was alive, white if she was deceased. I can almost imagine her wearing a dandelion in defiance of that tradition. It wasn’t that she had a fraught relationship with her mother; …
Mary, Full of Grace, with a Little Splash of Vinegar Read More »
I know next to nothing about barnyards and stables. In fact, I just learned that a manger is a feeding trough for animals. Other barnyard images that come to my mind involve buzzing flies, odious smells, as well as animal excretions and emissions of various sorts. I am also pretty sure you have to watch …
This recent spate of patriotic holidays has got me thinking about country music. It’s not that I’m an aficionado of that genre by any stretch of the imagination. It’s just that the songs brilliantly capture the anguish of “somebody done somebody wrong”. For me, the anguish is that spiritual-emotional space where the personal meets the …
Oh, Say Can You See… Somebody Done Somebody Wrong… Read More »
By Way of Prologue Anyone wanting an easy listening overview of a city’s attractions knows exactly what to do: climb aboard a climate-controlled tour bus. For the price of a ticket and minimal mental effort, you get to sit back, relax, and get an infotainment version of local history. Those were the likely expectations …
It’s finally fa-la-la-la-la time, and I couldn’t be more ready. Every year as soon as December rolls in (and not a minute sooner), I crank up the holiday music. However, this is 2020, a year in which everything is subject to deconstruction, even the iconic little, red-nosed reindeer. It’s not that I have something against …
Who Needs a Magical Reindeer? Or (#deconstruct 2020) Read More »
In gratitude and memoriam for Erica Garner, Heather Heyer, Fannie Lou Hamer, Coretta Scott King, Dorothy Parker, Ida B. Wells, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg I know. I can hear the indignant objections now. Somehow in the past two years, what was a “comical” media meme is now loaded with racialized invective, evoking everything from …
All this talk about history and statues reminded me of my third-grade lessons in Mrs. Bennett’s class. It was there that I learned to recite this little ditty: In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue… October 12 their dream came true You never saw a happier crew! At seven …
Maureen Walker, PhD, Licensed Psychologist
508-205-9841
maureen@maureenwalker.com
875 Massachusetts Avenue, Suite 65
Cambridge, MA 02139
