I'm a hard worker. I get my hands dirty.

When I am able to be present, listening - really listening - to a viewpoint described through someone else's lens, I am here in the now and alive.

I'm too young for a man, but I'm too old for a boy. So, can't we just pretend, that I'm older than I really am, but then, only little girls pretend.

These precious things, let them bleed.

My mother says I was two-and-a-half when I started playing. My father was a minister, and when he went to church in the morning, she would put on Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole and Cole Porter records. I'd crawl up on the piano stool, sit on a phone book and play.

We can all choose to become our potential, not just talk about it or dream about it. But daily, make a shift whereby we begin living and being our potential. With each day, that potential can expand because we are open to learning something every day.

I became a mom at 37 and having a child has been an emancipation for me.