Na'ama Yehuda's Blog

The gate to joy is
Painted by empathy.
It is strung in love
Wreathed with light
Bathed by open skies
And
Awe-struck hearts.

https://naamayehuda.com/2017/07/21/jo...

Outlawed Hope is half-year-old TODAY!
Get it for $0.99 June 3-4 ONLY

http://www.amazon.com/Outlawed-Hope-N...

Since its publication six months ago today, Outlawed Hope has seen all five-star reviews and much heartwarming feedback besides.

To celebrate this happy half-birthday (hey, any reason for a good party!), Outlawed Hope for Kindle is available for only $0.99 today and tomorrow, June 3 and June 4, 2014!



[Regular e-book price is $7.99 so hurry up and grab Outlawed Hope before the price goes back up--the sale won't last but your reading pleasure will!]

http://www.amazon.com/Outlawed-Hope-N...

Prefer books you can actually hold and turn the pages on? No worries–you can still celebrate–Outlawed Hope is available in paperback and you can get it for 25% OFF the listed price on Amazon NOW!

Join the celebration and get Outlawed Hope for $0.99 TODAY!

http://www.amazon.com/Outlawed-Hope-N...

Some of the praise for Outlawed Hope:

“Brilliant, enchanting story telling!”

“Thrilling!”

“Marvelously written, fascinating book.”

“A great read”

“… a gem of a read. You won’t want to put it down …”

“Outstanding first novel”

“A sublime read!”

“Outlawed Hope is a wonderful, well written, heartful read for our times …”

“A winner”

“A captivating and addicting page turner …”

“… The book is an emotional roller coaster, intellectually challenging, and teeming with insightful dialogue and introspection.”

Don’t Delay!

Get Outlawed Hope for $0.99 TODAY!
http://www.amazon.com/Outlawed-Hope-N...

However you celebrate, note, commemorate or endure it, may this Passover–this Spring Holiday, also called the “Holiday of Freedom” herald your personal freedom from whatever binds you: worry, fret, self-critic, anxiety over judgment, unhealthy-habits, petty choices … and any manner of sticky strings-attached. May you be freed.

May this also be a time to end present day bondage. Present time slavery. Let us move to end it. Let us not look away.

Let us end trafficking in all its manifestations and myriad ‘cultural’, ‘economical’, ‘religious’, or political pretenses. Let us end the bondage of child-laborers; of girl-brides; of ‘modern-day’ slaves; of the abuse of sexual exploitation; of people forced into indentured servitude, an enduring poverty, a withheld education, and subsequent misery and desperation.

Let it be done. Over. Made no more. We are one. Let us all put forth to let our people go.

May this time of highlighting the freeing of a People from slavery and injustice of exploitation, murder, and impunity–become a springboard to reforming the similar injustices of today.

Let us no longer be appeased by looking away or minimizing (and by it passively endorsing those who–still today–consider slavery acceptable). Let the voice of freedom ring loud and clear: We shall not be content in the reality of human enslavement, cruelty, hatred, inequity, injustice and indignity. Let our people. All people. Go.

May this Passover be a passing of a threshold, a springing open the bloom of transformation and potential. Hope. Release. Rebirth. May it be, a time to Free.
http://naamayehuda.com/2014/04/15/pas...

Outlawed Hope

“Are trees sad when people cut them?” The little boy came out of a week of school focus on earth, nature, resources, deforestation, and endangered animals.

“What do you think?” I returned the question. He has a reason for asking, after all.

“Yeah,” the seven-year-old sobered. “I think trees get sad because then they die and they can’t make leaves and flowers and acorns anymore.”

I nodded, sensing he has not quite finished and wanting to give him time to find the words.

A quiet moment passed, then his right eyebrow shot up the way it does when he gets an idea. Ideas for mischief, yes; but also for an answer that eluded him or a solution he did not see before. He touched the top of the table with his fingertips, and his eyes wandered over the floor, the bookcase, the closet door.

“You think maybe the trees are also not so sad,” he continued, “if people make stuff from them and then they get to be other things?”

“Um…hmm …” I noted in agreement, letting him work this through.

“Like if the tree gets to be a table or a chair or even a book then it is still important, right? But …” his young face wrinkled in too-old-for-his-age consternation, “but … maybe the trees are sad if they get burnt in the fire or something … because then they’re gone and can’t be anything anymore?”

“I see what you mean,” I offered, “but what if burning the wood helps keep people warm in the winter or cook their food?”

He brightened. “Yeah! I think maybe then the trees don’t get so sad … because they kind of make the food … ” His face got transformed once more, this time to seriously didactic, “But … but people still have to be very careful to not cut too many trees, right?”

“Right … “

“… because the trees want to grow and be happy and also the squirrels and the birds need trees and monkeys and other things. Bugs, even. Some animals live on trees,” he instructed me, “That’s where they build their home. So people have to be careful because it is not fair to break all the animal homes and chop off all the trees to make things …” he paused. “And anyway, you can make tables from other things, too. Like plastic. Or maybe even a rock … I think …”

He quieted for a moment, his eyes wandered again around the room and rested on my bookshelves, on the National Geographic magazines on the side table, and the paper-packed folder with his work peeking out of the backpack on the wooden floor.

“I think trees really don’t mind if they get to be books, though” he added, satisfied. “Because then they can tell stories even if they can’t talk. I love trees and I love books.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

http://naamayehuda.com/2014/04/13/tre...

People ask me how I find the time to write. Though I know they often come from a true query, it never fails to puzzle me … For I don’t see how I could not find the time, when to me writing is like breathing. Writing is my heartbeat.

“How do you find the time to breathe?” I want to ask them back. “How do you make time to see, or hear, or learn, or live, or laugh?”

My heart beats in words. It strings them into sentences and puts them forth into the keyboard or the page. There is magic in writing, certainly. It is not something to claim to own but to allow the flow of. It has in it old life and lives that never happened or might or have not yet been found. It embroiders the fine threads of reality and mystery, interwoven as they are through the uncountable miles of words already written by those who came before: their words that I’ve read, their books that scratched their essence into my soul and changed me, the writers who forged manuscripts out of molten core, the teachers who chiseled rawness into finery, the poets who strung words into daisy chains of soul.

It is a force of nature, writing is. A cumulative tide. A mirror of what is and what could be and what still is hoped for. It is a pool of stillness and a roiling sea.

Writing does gather light from the eyes that read it. Through them it reflects the recognition of what unites all spirits, amplifies the rhythm of all hearts, connects the pace of tides, anchors the pull of moons into the hopes and dreams and grime and steepest climbs. Reading eyes infuses writing with continued life. It strengthens words that last into tomorrow. It is as it should be. Writing is meant to be read.

In its nascent state; however, writing unfurls shoots of new breath into pages for the pure joy of its birthing. It evolves for the very marvel of the stem unbending and the leaves uncurling and the buds of something that could never be imagined until it came through, come true.

“Where do you find the time to write?” I’m asked. “I wish I had the time to write, as you do,” some say. “It must be wonderful to be able to make time for writing,” they comment.

And I don’t know the answer for the ‘where’ or ‘how’ or ‘when’ questions. Nor do I have the key for finding more time (though I wish I did, with writing a vast ocean and only splattered drops finding their way into the daily grind). I do not know where one finds more time for living, when life happens to move through already, interlocking stories as we go. The wonder of the writing I do get, however. The deep gratitude for being allowed the magic in the heartbeat, in life’s pace.

“Writing is like breathing,” I want to tell them. “I can no more cease to do it than I can hold my breath. Oh, for a moment, surely, but not much more. For the words fight back and breathe me and sneak out … as they should. They are my heartbeat. The pulse that crosses time and space to hold together human thought, invention, wonder; life.”

I write because I breathe.

Why do you write?

She always comes in style.

Her own, that is: purple tutu over jeans and boots, flowered shirt under star-splattered sweater and deliberately mismatched socks, frilly short-sleeve shirts over chunky turtlenecks, her satiny pajamas with princesses on them, or a sheer dress under a sweatshirt along with leggings with holes in the knee.

Added to her ensembles are usually clues to the day she’d had: color splatter from finger painting at school, well placed smudges from lunch (shirts are so much more convenient than napkins!), crusted bits around her mouth that she refuses to wash off, unidentified grime, tears in filmy clothes that were not sewn with monkey-bars in mind.

It drives her mama nuts. Always impeccably put together herself, the mother is forever trying to wipe this or straighten that or offer alternate dressing solutions (that are summarily declined), and cannot contain her sighs and growing despair at her daughter’s flighty attitude toward cleanliness and matched-everything.

The girl? She could not care less. Or rather, she cares plenty, in her own way. Her language delay does not allow much expression of verbal subtlety (yet), but she certainly shows affinity to collating varied fabrics and textures and to weaving together combinations that feel artistically deliberate in an offhanded sort of way. She likes the way she looks. To me, this is more than good enough.

“Let her be,” I tell the mom one day when the little gal excuses herself to the bathroom and the mother follows her daughter’s mismatched wear with agonized eyes. I am admittedly somewhat amused at the perceived gulf between them, which in fact says a lot more about their similarities than differences. They are both acutely interested in how they look. It is just the “how” that may seem different … One immaculately coordinated harmoniously to appease the eye; the other explosively expressive in riotous combinations that cannot go unnoticed for their mishmash.

“It may not be how you’d choose to dress her,” I press, knowing that this little gal’s fashion-sense is pushing her mother well outside her comfort zone, “but there’s beauty in her freedom. She’s four, and she’s got a keen sense of her own being. I think it’s brilliant.”

The mother looks pained but nods in resignation. She understands, even if she does not quite love knowing it. After all, she does let her only daughter leave the house “all messy” and “in awful combinations,” and she generally suffers the seemingly incongruous pairing of the pretty clothes she buys for her not-so-cooperative princess. Ever hopeful, she fills the child’s closet with beautifully matching outfits that the girl turns into wild-combos in a blink of an eye: chunky socks with her patent leather or frilly tights under short jeans.

“I want her to be her own little person,” the mom whispers. “I just wish she was a bit less … how shall I say it … visible about it …” She blushes then, fussing with the satin hem of her tailored dress with carefully manicured fingers. “Do you think she’ll calm down when she grows up?” she adds, hesitating, vulnerable.

I smile. ”I don’t know,” I answer gently. “What would ‘calming down’ mean to you? Or for her? Who would she ‘calm down’ for?”

The water flushes in the bathroom and the little girl can be heard singing “fly me to the moon” at the top of her lungs as she washes her hands (splashing all around the sink, I am quite sure–she finds special pleasure in the way water droplets spatter and in how soap foam squirts between fingers). The mother looks up and we both grin. Such effervescent joy is contagious.

“She’s a free spirit,” she sighs. “I think I was a bit like her, at her age. Then I got too concerned with what others thought … and maybe lost the spark.”

As the little girl prances back to us, she swirls the edges of the tutu peeking under the shirttails of her button-down flannel over holey jeans. She has one brown sock, one purple with blue polka dots. Her tennis shoes have stickers and possibly some grape jelly on them. She’s radiating ease and unfettered delight.

“Maybe there’s nothing to calm down,” I offer. The girl’s a sight, for sure. A balm for sore eyes and achy hearts, too.

Mom takes a deep breath. Nods. She’s working on it. It is all one can truly ask …

I see children. As an integral part of what I do, I talk to them. They talk to me. We discuss stuff. Words, events, stories, happenings, expressions. Language, communication. School. Life.

Oftentimes it becomes an opportunity for all manner of learning. Sometimes I even teach them something (I think that more often than not, I am the one who learns more!)

A girl came in the other day, a preteen with all the loveliness, precocity, and gangly limbs that time of life implies, complete with early social angst over boys, hierarchies and wanting to fit in. She’s a precious girl. Relatively sheltered, only child and doted on. Popular, I know. Loved by teachers. Not the best learner, but she’s gracious about what others do better and tenacious about trying to improve her own results. She had made amazing leaps in the few months I’ve known her.

She has also opened up some more. About what is not often spoken of. The real problems of childhood that are frequently hidden under layers of “fine”, “okay”, and “nothing much.”

Yesterday, she spoke about something that is both a numbing non-stop conversation and taboo: Bullying...

To read more go to:
http://naamayehuda.com/2014/01/29/i-j...

Do you read for pleasure? Do you read when you're sad? Do you read for inspiration? Just for school? (not likely if you're on this site... ;)).

Do you read for passing time? Do you read for friendship? Do you read to find ideas? Do you read to make use of waiting, lines, or travel? Do you read to find out what is current or what happened in times before your time? Do you read for imagination? Do you read for knowledge? Do you read for all of these and read some more for courage?

Do you read books, magazines, publications, journals, newspapers, memos, signs? Do you read old notebooks, children's homework, bits of stickies left in library books by other someones?

Do you read for comfort?
Do you read for hope?
Do you read to understand?
Do you read because you cannot, would not, do not want to, stop...?

One of the children I work with recently became a big sister. A fortuitous event, for sure. A healthy baby, healthy mother, family growing as wished for and planned. At four-years-old, however, it is an adjustment for the girl who was everyone’s princess till this new arrival emerged to share the spotlight and potentially grab attention as “Most Doted On.”

To read more... go to:
http://naamayehuda.com/2014/01/25/mak...

Blogpost re-visit...
http://naamayehuda.com/2014/01/21/wri...

Snow is blanketing the East Coast, burying the rulers of measuring reporters, blowing microphones and umbrellas out of people’s hands, stranding motorist on highways, passengers on buses, travelers en route.

And it is COLD.

Too many cars on streets made plows lag in coming. They are yet to transform some paths from the look of dusted by ruptured sacks of confectioners sugar … to gray mushy lines of hiding blacktop. There’s a hush outside. The world stunned by winter’s hold.

People walk gingerly–confectioners sugar it might look like, but up close underfoot this is mighty slippery stuff.

From my window, everyone is a walking story:
Here are the sturdy footers, placing one foot in front of the other in assured steps;
There come the triers, delicately placing one foot and then another, almost in a dance;
The best-spot-placers, scanning the sidewalk for less slippy spots before zigzagging their way along, concentration at the full;
The text-n-sliders, keeping half an eye on the sidewalk and the rest on the small screen;
The unprepared, stepping tentatively in not-quite-appropriate footwear and attempting to ignore physics–a body in flat shoes will sink in snow piles;
And the snow-welcomers, faces upturned to the wind against tugging-hands at their wrappings. Many grasshoppers-size with bookbags and lunch boxes, dismissed early from school, drunk on Snow-Day delight;
There are the careful-balancers, holding canes and walkers or clinging to shopping carts or someone else’s elbow, praying to not throw out backs or hips or knees or ankles, casting yearnful glances at the sure-steppers and grinners, nostalgic peeks at grasshopper magic, and a half-envious, half-knowing shake of head at the texting and unprepared, for their careless take-for-granted health.

From my window, everyone becomes walking story. Stories in the snow.

How do you write stories in the snow?