Near Miscarriage

      “Two months after the wedding, I was in Marva’s yard playing skip with her daughters, unaware that skipping could cause me to miscarry my two-month old pregnancy. Later that night, I felt a terrible pain in my hip. My entire body ached. I could barely move. Fortunately, Tracy came home that night to bring me some of her delicious sweet potato pudding.”

      These are the opening sentences of “Jumping Hoops,” a story in my book: The Talking Palm:How the childhood storms of a young woman’s life remained hidden until a palm fruit started talking http://www.amzn.to/175EzBh

      Newly-wed Sheryl is pregnant. She knows that. But she is nineteen. When her teenage neighbors sound as if they are having so much fun jumping hoop, what does she do? Join the fun. So what if she is pregnant? She is invincible, isn't she? After all, she is a teenager. Do teenagers think they can get harmed when they do harmful things? Do they think they can hurt themselves or others when they do reckless things like drink and drive, or or rendezvous with strangers they meet through the internet?

      Sheryl is not deliberately pounding herself, or throwing herself against an object, or doing anything so stupid that a rock would know that she has gone too far. She is not even thinking about her baby, her first baby, her precious baby to come, one she cannot wait to see. She has no reason to.

      Her baby is safe. Deep inside of her. Nothing can go wrong since she is not expecting anything to go wrong. Right? As far as Sheryl knows, she is jut skipping. How can anything go wrong when she is just having a good time?

      Later that night, when pain engulfs her body, she realizes her mistake. Her idea of having fun is really a reckless act that has jeopardized the life of her baby

      Perhaps if the teens' mother had known that Sheryl was pregnant, she would have warned Sheryl against jumping hoop.

     Ether Jno-Charles

     Author: The Talking Palm:How the childhood storms of a young woman’s life remained hidden until a palm fruit started talking http://www.amzn.to/175EzBh

The Help Sheryl Speak Loud and Far Movement

     In “The Skerrit,” little Sheryl thinks she is going to die in a house in the ocean. She thinks she deserves such cruel punishment for her truancy. She also believes that no one, not even her mother, can rescue her from the tragedy that awaits her. So she stands alone, scared, powerless and silent before a powerful adult her culture has led her to believe has the absolute right to hurt her.

     Like Sheryl, thousands of girls around the world are led to believe that they deserve to be ill treated, dream-deprived, uneducated and silenced. Let us reverse that legacy for the silenced girls of the world by helping Sheryl speak loud and far. Make her voice reach at least one million people. We can do it. Together. With your help, Sheryl will no longer face the world alone. With your support, Sheryl’s voice will be heard.

You help broadcast Sheryl’s voice when you tell 5 people or more to get The Talking Palm at 

http://www.amzn.to/175EzBh

      Then tell each of the five or more to tell 5 others and so on.

     On behalf of the once silenced Sheryls of the world, I thank you.

     Esther Jno-Charles

Invited or not Invited to the Wedding

     In The Talking Palm, nineteen-year old Sheryl is preparing to get married, but she does not invite her closest friends and relatives. Sheryl lives in a small village where everyone knows who your friends are and who are not.       

     Therefore, not inviting close associates whom people expect to be invited will elicit vicious gossip and ill-will toward Sheryl. Sheryl knows that, and that bothers her. Yet, she does it anyway.

     Ladies, should your close friends and relatives be expected to be invited to your wedding? Which friends or relatives would you not or did you not invite to your wedding?

     Share your thoughts and or experiences.

     By Esther Jno-Charles

Book: The Talking Palm:How the childhood storms of a young woman’s life remained hidden until a palm fruit started talking: http://www.amzn.to/175EzB

Is Sheryl Psychologically Ready to Get Married?

     In The Talking Palm, nineteen-year old Sheryl is planning to get married, but she is very frustrated. Neither she nor her family can invite their relatives or friends to her wedding. According to Sheryl's fiancé, Marvin, Sheryl's associates are not religious folks (130-138).

      Yet, Sheryl or her family do not resist Marvin's demand or ask him to reciprocate. Instead, they grudgingly comply but complain behind his back.

      When Sheryl blindly obeys Marvin's demand without holding a serious discussion or calling for mutual compromise, is she setting up the stage for a disastrous relationship? Has she created an unhealthy template of how her husband should treat her in the future?

      Does Sheryl's misery about her decision to comply while simultaneously feeling powerless to direct her path show a fundamental flaw in Sheryl's character? Isn't she morally obligated to nurture her soul, which in turn will enhance the quality of her relationships? Is Sheryl mature enough to make right decisions for her good?

     What do you think? 
     By Esther Jno-Charles 

Read about Sheryl in The Talking Palm:How the childhood storms of a young woman’s life remained hidden until a palm fruit started talking http://www.amzn.to/175EzBh

Uncomfortable in Her Tall Skin

     When nineteen-year old Sheryl enters holy matrimony, according to The Talking Palm: How the childhood storms of a young woman’s life remained hidden until a palm fruit started talking: http://www.amzn.to/175EzBh she does so with a measure of low self-esteem. She thinks she is too tall. In fact, she is taller than her peers and as tall as her six-foot tall fiance. Sheryl does not like that. She does not want to be as tall as her fiancé. That makes her uncomfortable, especially because she grows up hearing and believing that girls should be shorter than men.

     But Sheryl has never fitted that man-woman height mold. To her, she has always towered over her peers. In fact, when she was younger, she felt so desperate, that she asked God to shorten her.

She now stands at the threshold of womanhood, and looks across her fiancé's face, not up at him. Sheryl is not happy about that because the ability to look up at the man, she thinks, is what makes a woman feel pretty, fragile and feminine. She goes into her wedding not feeling as feminine and pretty as her shorter girlfriends.

     The problem here is that teenager Sheryl has not yet learned that God, not culture, should be the source of her identity. If she discovers and believes whom God says she is and what He thinks of her, that knowledge is enough to ground her and build her up into a confident and powerful young woman.

     How do you think a young woman's dependence on societal norms of beauty can impact her sense of self and hence, her marriage?

Thank you.

Esther  Jno-Charles

 http://www.amzn.to/175EzBh

Your “Talking Palm Moment”

Hi Friends,

Sheryl is thirty-eight years, a mother of three and a student at Smith College in Northampton with a writing assignment that is due in a few days. She does not know what to write. Even though lots of ideas spin through her mind, they seem irrelevant and uninteresting. The fact that her assignment is based on her childhood experiences does not necessarily help her.  

Sheryl is in trouble. She may not be able to submit her homework on time. Late work will lower her grade.  How embarrassing would that be?

Fortunately, Sheryl does not have to spend another night pecking at her head for specks of inspiration.  A coconut shows up unexpectedly in a bag of groceries her brother brings in from New York City.  Sheryl has used the coconut so many times in her adult life without it reminding her of her childhood connections to it. But somehow, that night, seeing and feeling that brown palm triggers her childhood memories. 

The Talking Palm http://www.amzn.to/175EzBh

The mere appearance of that hard-shelled palm fruit opens Sheryl's heart.  Sheryl has a "talking palm moment," for out of her heart, like the water in the nut, pours forth some of her childhood experiences, happy and sad. That night, Sheryl's grade is saved. 

What is your “talking palm moment”? Where were you in your life when something you were once connected to stormed back into your life, triggering memories you thought you had forgotten?

Read Sheryl's stories at http://www.amzn.to/175EzBh

Urge 5 other people to read as well.

Forever at your service,

Esther Jno-Charles

Coconut Milk and Cocoa

“When he wanted someone to fetch the breakfast that my mother had prepared for him, hot cocoa without milk, codfish stewed with coconut oil and onions, and lettuce and tomato salad, I was it.” The Talking Palm http://amzn.to/175EzBh

Sheryl, the main character in The Talking Palm, http://amzn.to/175EzBh grows up helping her father bake bread in her family's bakery in Dominica. She usually gets up while the village is still asleep to help her father prepare the bread for the morning rush. In addition to kneading and rolling and blasting dough into loaves, albeit to her father's dissatisfaction, Sheryl does other errands, which she would prefer not to do, but must.

One of these errands includes fetching her father's breakfast. Sometimes that breakfast includes hot cocoa with no milk. Without milk, the tea is deep brown with a pure earthy taste. Who could afford to buy evaporated or powder milk to whiten cocoa tea and make it more palatable? But sweetened cocoa tea flavored with cinnamon or lime skin or bay leaf or nutmeg tasted as good as it could be.

Coconut milk could surely add a delicious blast to the dark cocoa. But Sheryl's mother would have had to find the coconut, break it, grind it and then milk it for its tongue-pleasing effect. Which mother has that time?

Fortunately, in America, we don't need that hard labor. We can just run to our local supermarket, grab a tin of coconut milk, one of the healthiest milks in the world, and add some to our cocoa tea. Then, while relaxing at the table, we just surrender to that tongue-teasing flavor of coconut milk and cocoa. Ah.

By Esther Jno-Charles, author of The Talking Palm http://amzn.to/175EzBh