I fall victim to the most annoying earworms. Perhaps they’re parts of my better self, siren songs calling me to and reminding me to be the better person I’m supposed to want to be. Sirens, though, lured folks to their deaths, so…

These days it’s always Nina Simone, and it’s always “Mississippi, Goddamn. I should have seen this coming. It’s not like I haven’t written about it all before, how coming to this place at this time in my life has changed the way I think and see and feel. As a colleague put it this morning as we watched the campus’ MLK Day celebration, “I’m still processing all of it.” What that means for you, dear reader, remains to be seen.

What it means for Nina is that I’m stuck with her now, her voice relentlessly challenging and strengthening me as I learn more and more about the state I’m in. After all, everybody knows about Mississippi—but you don’t, not really, not until you’re there on the inside looking out, trying to understand how so much natural beauty and ugly can live in the same space.

So that’s what I’m writing about these days, about being a forty-something, black woman living and working in Mississippi, USA. I’m married and have a son who is, at age 3, one of my greatest joys and madnesses. I write about these things—how they connect, disconnect, reconnect, interconnect—and by writing about them, I find that I write my way through them. Let’s see where this journey takes us.

This post has been written in response to the Week 0 prompt for therealljidol, "Introduction". Hope you enjoyed.