Tulip Girl

I'll rip the band aide of fast. I've tried just minimising my blog time, working it into my ever changing schedule, what not, but it isn't working. I have slowly realized over the last year that I've just got to take a break. I am thankful to those of you who have supported me and encouraged me as I've struggled with this. You don't know what that means to me. I thought about just doing it occasionally or writing every once in a while but I feel this is the only way. Gosh, I've formulated this post a lot. If there were a trash can with the scrapped versions, it would be overflowing with balled up scraps of posts. I've got to step away for a while. Thank you for being a part of my real world because as I see it, you are all apart of my real life. I never liked when I heard bloggers refer to their real life as if we are all somehow imaginary. That is why I will continue commenting and visiting, I just can't be posting right now. Of course some of you, ...

Ever wondered if you there were slaves living in your neighborhood? Probably not. But there could be. There are after all, thousands upon thousands living in the United States. Yesterday I went to a luncheon with John and Kimberly Quinley, founders of Step Ahead a not for profit working to combat human trafficking in Thailand and Janell Rardon , International Speaker and Author of Rock Solid Families. I was surprised to find that today there are more slaves than at the height of the African slave trade. There is an estimated 100,000 in the United States. There are no laws to protect children in slavery, particularly girls enslaved in the sex slave trade forced into prostitution here in the state of Virginia. Have we really learned nothing from our nation's history? So what if a girl is found to be taken from her home in another country? Send her back to her family is the logical response...accept that is where she was taken in the first place, most likely sold by her own family. St...