Category: Denise-Nicole

10.27.2018

Saturday morning, an anti-semitic terrorist entered Tree of Life synagogue and opened fire, killing 11 people and wounding more. When I saw this news, my heart broke. I grew up in Pittsburgh. I love Pittsburgh. And Squirrel Hill is one of my favorite areas. As a child, Tree of Life synagogue was a landmark, I knew I […]

So what now?

We treat one another horribly. Those words have run on a loop through my mind the last few months. Reinforced by the news stories, travel, museum visits, movies, and books, but also by the smaller but corrosive tendency to refuse to acknowledge the humanity in one another. Over and over I have paused, shook my […]

Tinotenda

Recently, I have been thinking about my “Ebenezer moments” the big moments that led me here. I’ve been very lucky to have the opportunity to travel and I’ve realized that most of my piles of stones are around those experiences. They introduced me to my best friends, they stretched me, showed me new opportunities and […]

Lessons

I was raised in the United Methodist Church. My mother is an active lay member of our local church and serves in the conference. Therefore, I grew up playing in corners during church meetings. Watching my parents, I learned about various expressions of faith-service, friendship, worship. I wasn’t raised to think of church as an […]

“Both…And”

As 2017 draws to a close, I thought I’d share the biggest thing it’s taught me:There are more answers than yes and no. Okay, I already knew this, but 2017 has reaffirmed it. 2017 was the year I wanted to finally figure out exactly what I thought about everything in the world. This was going […]

Space

  Last weekend, I got to go to Leadership Development Days for United Methodist Women in St. Louis. LDD are special events, they speak to the core of who we are as an organization. I haven’t attended one since I was a sophomore in high school and being in that space, I felt like I […]

Hometowns

I went to Pittsburgh last weekend for the Western Pennsylvania United Methodist Women’s annual meeting. As the weekend approached, my focus was less on the meeting and more on being home. My bed, my favorite ice cream shop, driving, highschool friends-everything I have missed. So, I  traveled to Pittsburgh. I drove familiar streets. I visited […]

Transition Space

I have been thinking  about the future a lot recently, particularly as I am constantly confronted with questions like, “what do you want to do?”, “how will you use this?” As a result, I regularly reflect on the person I am and the person I want to be. Recently, these thoughts have been focused on  transition. […]

Life is a Highway

Growing up, my family regularly took road trips-mostly to visit relatives. The average trip was ten hours, if you didn’t like long trips that was too bad. For most of my life, it has been my job to stay up with the driver. I’ve spent a lot of time staring through windshields, both front and […]

I hate leaving

“ You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place. Like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again” I spent the weekend in New York City at board meetings […]