Sterling Terrell

smart ideas from books

Barbadosed

Barbadosed

I had to Google “Barbadosed.”

Apparently, large numbers of Irish “criminals and vagrants” were sent against their will to Barbados by the English during the 17th century as indentured servants.

They were Barbadosed into a foreign land.

But seriously, what is deal with famous creatives growing up in difficult situations?

Three are in the quote below. And here are 5 more just for context. Read more about these in the link above.

  • Oprah Winfrey
  • Tyler Perry
  • Charlize Theron
  • Woody Harrelson
  • Kelsey Grammer

LIKE BRITNEY SPEARS AND Kelly Clarkson, Robyn Rihanna Fenty experienced a childhood fraught with parental discord, a violent domestic nightmare from which fame seemed to offer safe harbor. Her father, Ronald, was descended from the seventeenth-century Irish who had been “Barbadosed” by Oliver Cromwell’s troops and sold to British planters on the island as indentured servants.

-John Seabrook, The Song Machine

You Pick Your Daughter Up

You Pick Your Daughter Up

This is such a great piece of advice. The beginning and end of it is that: You pick your daughter up when she asks. Period.

I am good about this most of the time.

But sometimes I am tired. Sometimes I have a headache. And sometimes I feel like I just need a second.

This all hit home when I read this piece on Parents.com titled: I Always Say ‘Yes’ When My Daughter Asks to Be Picked Up—Here’s Why

In my favorite passage, Matthew Dicks says:

I also have a torn ligament in my left foot. Still, when she asks, I always do.

I lift her as the light filters in through the back windows. She wraps her hands around my neck and squeezes. Eventually my foot throbs, and my arms ache with fatigue. So I move to put her down. In response, she jams her face into the crook of my neck and whispers, “It’s just so nice to be held like this.”

I freeze. It occurs to me—for the very first time—that I am the only person in Clara’s life who can still hold her so close for so long. She’s too big for my wife to lift her. Too heavy for her grandparents. She’s nearly as tall as her uncle. In the yellow glow of the morning, I realize that I’m the last person who will ever hold my little girl like a little girl.

For our beautiful girls, the time slips quietly away.

It slips quietly away for all of us.

And it breaks our hearts with beauty as it moves.

Dear God, I am so thankful that this is not the end.