For the past three years I have been employed by an organization key to special education in my region. This has placed me as a substitute in a variety of classrooms and social environments, and the one thing that I’ve noticed among all of these positions is that the human mind has an incredibly ability to cope in the face of trauma. Continue reading Trauma and Formation of Self →

In my Freshman year of college, I was required to memorize one poem from a Literature anthology. That poem happened to be “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar. The poem proceeds like this:

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, –

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties. Continue reading Who Wears the Mask? →