Talia's Blog

Talia Rivera
A mother’s life; arrived at from drugs, teen pregnancy, and jail, through faith and gang intervention.

archives

March 30, 2009
Forgiveness
I am afraid of forgiveness. I heard someone say of forgiveness, “It is like knowingly giving yourself, clean and pure, to a person who will then walk over you with mud.” Yet Jesus is low enough to be willingly walked over with mud.
Religious Faith
March 27, 2009
The Case of Mercy Hospital and the Brown Belt
I sat in class today and I just didn’t understand. The professor lectured, “Mercy Hospital is a large, multi-service, religious affiliated, non-profit private hospital….” There was something about his clothes. We were reviewing a human resource case study. “In 2007, the hospital’s total expenditures were projected to be $30,000,000 and 5% of that was devoted to nursing services….” I understood him wearing a wrinkle-free white collared dress shirt under a twill two-button blazer. “The hospital needed a cost saving strategy. Over the past five years staffing patterns had changed to...
Classtime, Fashion
March 26, 2009
The Little Girl
The therapist asked me for my earliest memory of myself. I remember at age four standing in the middle of our living room floor wearing an extra-large, bright yellow t-shirt. If it is true that our brains are patterned after our childhood, than I am an adult that has simply grown into a t-shirt that was once too big. If a child never learned to swim, do we expect him as an adult to hold a mouthful of air and dive under water? If a child was never taught to read, do we expect her as an adult to comprehend a string of letters; such as, “Love is like a child that longs for everything it...
Childhood Memory, Therapy
March 24, 2009
Bloody love
I opened the email. I read. It caused a memory that nearly paralyzed me. “AM I RIGHT OR WRONG!?” He screamed at my mother, squeezing his hands around her throat. Before he blackened her eye blue, before her face swelled, before she surrendered to be beaten, he demanded an answer. She never answered. And I couldn’t reply. I remembered how he repeatedly stabbed her in the chest, as my sisters watched, and left her lying in a puddle of blood. When I heard that he was dead I locked myself in the bathroom and cried. He was the only father I knew. And oddly enough I loved him. And...
Childhood Memory, Daughters, Mothers
March 23, 2009
Trying
A young man wearing a black leather jacket, baggy blue jeans, and a tear-drop tattoo under his right eye stood next to me in line at the local Dunkin Donuts. He asked for the manager. The manager arrived, still tense from having just kicked out a drunk, “How can I help you?” The young man replied, “I haven’t heard from you and I wanted to check in.” Nothing. “Do you remember me?” he asked. “I filled out a job application.” The manager responded, loudly, “You don’t get a job because you fill out an application. I will call you when I am ready.” I could see the tear drop fill with...
Intervention, Urban Life, Working
March 19, 2009
"1968"
I watched a History Channel documentary entitled, “1968.” I witnessed Dr. David Smith, in the summer of ’67, during a cultural and political rebellion, find love in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco. After beating his own LSD dependency, he sought to help other users. He walked through apartments with young men and women sprawled over the arms of loveseats, or passed out on toilets, the bathroom walls their headrests, with syringes nearby. He loved them high and helped them sober with a free clinic. Sex, drugs, and rock & roll poisoned a culture just as HIV, Hip Hop, and Purple Haze have...
1968, Activism, Social Change
March 16, 2009
March Madness
The holiday season is three months passed. Nevertheless, the cars in Boston are decorated with bright orange florescent parking tickets. “Ho, ho, ho!” The city of Boston is generating revenue and using my Impala as their reindeer. The city of Boston has hit me hard with fees and fines; in three days, three tickets. The city of Boston collected $340 from us. A secret Santa? I was told the city of Boston offered 40 police cadets jobs as meter maids; instead of, because of budget cuts, the jobs of protection, safety, and enforcement for which they were trained.
Economy, Parking Tickets, Urban Life
March 15, 2009
The Oven is Hot
“If the oven is hot, don’t touch it!” I screeched at my Sunday school class. “If I’ve been burnt and have the wound to prove the oven is hot, why would you purposely touch it?” My son runs into the kitchen to share what he thinks is very important, “Mommy, I know what Irish people eat on Saint Patrick’s Day.” He so excited about this new information, that like Tigger, his bouncy personality won’t allow him to stand still. He gets too close, and I scream in panic, “Son, be careful! The oven is hot!” Then I give him the talk about burning, pain, swelling, wet and open blisters, bright...
Sunday School, Truth and Consequences
March 12, 2009
Copies of Me
It was a long day’s work. My muscles felt like those of a man making steel from sunup to sundown. And my back ached like I had lugged a ton of that steel. I sighed. I lay down next to my husband. (He sleeps, snoring.) I fantasize about how much easier my days would be if I could “create an organism that is the exact genetic copy” of me. I could send one of “me” to a lecture about a youth violence systems mapping project. While another “me” moderates two 90-minute focus groups with girls that deal with violence prevention. As another “me” facilitates a youth policy budget task force...
Faith, Stress, Work
March 11, 2009
The Blister
Every day I take Levoxyl, a “man-made form of the hormone made by a healthy thyroid gland.” I have also been prescribed Zyrtec, to treat my allergy symptoms. After I took my pills this morning, I also did some Benadryl to relieve my itchy throat. It took me almost five minutes to get the Benadryl capsule out of the blister. I am not sure why, but the manufacturers use push blisters with an aluminum lid web and a thermoformed web base to protect the product. On the back of the blister it says: 1) Fold 2) Pull and 3) Or use – and it has a picture of a pair of scissors. I followed...
Blister packs, Medicine
March 10, 2009
Why I love Boston
It was 60 degrees in Boston on Saturday – nearly a breezy summer day. People wore shorts and T-shirts, and I even wore sandals. My husband and I drove throughout the city, running errands. I love to study urban neighborhoods, so we canvassed the city. There are the bodegas we call “Puerto Rican stores” (because the owners of these mini-markets are usually Latino). I counted the liquor stores and the aged African-American men loitering, inebriated and intoxicated, sipping alcohol dressed in brown paper bags. We drove past a New York Fried Chicken fast food restaurant – yes, there is New...
Boston, Urban Life
March 6, 2009
Therapy begins
I stood, marveling at the four-story brownstone. I was mulling over whether I should enter. At the receptionist's desk, a young Asian man paid his co-payment. Then the receptionist asked, “Can I help you?” “Yes, I have an appointment with Rita.” “Is this your first time visiting with us?” he asked. “Yes.” “I need you to fill out these forms, and she will be with you shortly.” I sat in a waiting area that would have been a living room if the space was still being used as originally intended. Landscape paintings hung on the walls. The room was welcoming and still. It reminded me of peace....
Stress, Therapy
March 5, 2009
Having Trouble with the Car
Our car has self-diagnosed some sort of problem. The “check engine” light has been on for about half a year. Despite the warning light, we continued to drive the car. What my husband and I have done for the last six months is assumed possible problems. My husband thought it could be the transmission. Then he thought it was the catalytic converter. Then the oxygen censors. Finally, I recommended getting a diagnostic test to see what is really wrong with the car. What baffles me is how often we assume, without thoroughly finding out the facts. There is something comfortable about not...
Cars, Problems
March 4, 2009
I'm all over the place
A HEARING This morning I attended a Massachusetts House of Representatives Ways and Means Public Hearing. Ugh. Our senators and state representatives, sitting behind tables on a stage, discussed the Executive Office of Health and Human Services budget. Nearly 15 delegates presented and participated. Two of them were minorities, four were women. The majority were older white men with gray hair. AT HARVARD The day before, I spoke at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government about grassroots innovations in the Criminal Justice Sector. I hate doing sessions like that, but a good friend invited me...
Stress, Urban Life
March 3, 2009
Listen
As I waited to pick up my son up from school, I was aware of all the noise around me. Tractor trailers, cranes, and backhoes. Construction workers. A busy intersection with a police officer blowing his whistle non-stop. Parents laughing and talking. I wondered if young people will set the volume high enough on God’s voice to hear it over the clatter of peer pressures – sex, drugs, drinking; and simply the pressure to forget God. I think of all the youth I know who allowed God’s voice to fade away, and I hope they will soon again turn up the volume. Blare and blast Him like you...
Faith, Urban Life
March 2, 2009
A Reading Miracle
My son is in the second grade. His teacher has her students read daily for a maximum of 30 minutes, and complete a writing assignment related to the reading. We’ve tried everything to encourage our son's reading. We purchased books about animals. And books by Roger Hargreaves about Mr. Grumpy and Mr. Messy and Mr. Funny – all fitting for my son’s personality. We even purchased High School Musical chapter books. But my son insists on reading – and writing about – the same book over and over again: I Like Me by Nancy Carlson. So it isn’t a secret in my house that our son...
Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Reading, Sons