I started this campaign for peace and justice just 3 days ago now, today I received an email from a film maker in GA that had heard about my efforts on behalf of the victims of Moore's Ford and wanted to thank me. I was blown away by that alone - that he'd taken the time out of his busy day to send ME an email. As I continued to read, the last sentence brought tears to my eyes as I realized that it never dawned on me that the couples had children. Essentially left orphans by this terrible crime. This mission resonated within my spirit that much more when he told me that he intended to share the link for the poem with Roger's son, now a Pastor. My son too is the child of a murdered father...my heart sank even lower.

I took Sunday off for much needed personal rest, I won't be able to give the cause my very best if I do not take care of myself and allow my body to rest when it must and mind. This evening I will write 3 pieces for the mission project. One for Sunday, one for today, and one for tomorrow because it is my son's 6th birthday and I will be doing the mommy thing all day except for the 2 hours that Hassan and I tape The Reporter's Roundtable, and I take a moment to visit Bernard's grave with his mother (he and Shawn share the same birthday). His children too are in the same boat as my son and Roger's son.

There's a reason that God made me cross paths with the woman that brought me to this cause I think, I thought so all along but wondered (or doubted rather) whether or not I was the right person, but today's revelation was my confirmation. God brought me to this place and to this cause for a reason. Not only will this help to bring healing to a community in Georgia, I believe that when all is said and done - I too will be a bit more healed than I am now. I just have to do this with pure heart and genuine desire to aid in the effort for peace and justice. I pray that I don't let anyone down, especially not my deceased loved ones or those that I write on behalf of.

Can't believe it never dawned on me at all to ask whether or not they had children. Now I intend to find out if he is the only one or if there are others. In the meantime I send prayers up for them all.

Last night's interview on Soul City Radio was fantastic. I admit to being nervous before we went on the air because I had no idea what DeWayne and Mina would ask me. But the convo flowed effortlessly - so much so in fact that I think we did more talking than playing music lol. I truly enjoyed myself and appreciate them having me on. The Soul City show was the first podcast or telecast that I'd recorded since taking on a role in the Moore's Ford Mission Project.

The site will be featuring updates and participation information daily to the cause, while still going forward with it's plans to launch the online magazine The Diaspora on May 1, 2009 and a BlogTalk radio program in April. This is all in addition to the freelance contracts that I am considering and/or working on and the new feature column's that I have been blessed with the opportunity to write. This year will be busy...but busy with the work of inspiring and encouraging people, a job that may at times get tiring or weigh on one's soul at times, but at the end of the day - should we succeed - will bring the best kind of satisfaction...accomplishment.

Ladies VERSE 9 is tonight at the Walter's Art Museum and I already know that it will be fantastic! I will blog about that later in the evening once I return home.

On July 25, 1946 not far from the foot of the bridge at Moore's Ford, just 60 some miles outside of Atlanta, Georgia 10-15 unmasked assailants kidnapped and murdered two young black couples. George & Mae Murray Dorsey and Roger & Dorothy Malcolm were in the vehicle of white farmer Loy Harrison, who was giving the couples a ride home across town at the time that the incident occurred. Some 63 years later, after national outrage and actions taken by previous presidents...to this day still - no one has been tried or convicted for these four slayings.

Committed during a time of tense race relations and accepted bigotry especially in the southern region, this crime went on without punishment being sentenced - though there was never any doubt as to who had committed the murders. Fear of retaliation by both white and black members of the community stifled cooperation with law enforcement. That climate has not changed much in the 63 years since I am sad to say. However, the voice of the people and the tolerance of such intolerance is not - and justice can be served for these families.

In the days and weeks ahead this blog, the main Catalina Byrd website, and various pages on other social networking sites will feature more information on this case and what can be done now to help insure that justice and peace are achieved for the families of the Malcolm's and the Dorsey's. Though when (Lord willing) the surviving members of the lynch mob are tried it will only be for 4 lives, know also that Mrs. Dorsey was 8 months pregnant, so really 5 lives were lost that day. I've agreed to lend my voice and my pen to the other organizations in Georgia and throughout the U.S. in asking that those still left living step up and speak the truth and relieve themselves the burden of the secrets weight. Allow the rest of us to make such a fuss that justice is served, no matter how late and be those that take the weight of the pain from the shoulders of the surviving family....and give their mind rest as we do their loved one's spirits.

There are many phases and stages of this widow shit, as I am learning I have not transcended through them all yet - and these days I am starting to think that I never will. Each time I come to grips with some new facet of my life as it is now....there is another brick wall painted to look like a lesson blocking me and happiness from getting together on the same stage again. The whole fucking process makes you just want to stay put in whatever stage you find yourself in now and say fuck the rest. For real. Today I woke up there...and on today I do not wish to break down not another damn wall - feeling better is never on the other side, I think they just tell you that so you smile instead of cry cause no one likes to see someone in pain. It really has nothing to do with actual healing. More so making comfortable the people left around you for the time that you have left.
When Byrd died, everyone that knows me knows that I lost it. There is no pretty way to put it....I lost my mind. I shut myself in the house for 4 months and the only people I talked to were on the internet. Somedays were so bad I had to ask my brother to keep my son away from me, because the sight of his face made me ill. I love my son with all my heart, but he looks, acts, and sounds just like his daddy. His very existence in those times was salt in an open wound and I couldn't deal. Bernard tried to help but I was too far gone at the time and I hurt him in the process of him trying to help me. I live with that every day now that he too is gone. I wasted the last year he and I had together trying to "fix" me. I thought if I got married again, didn't matter to who that it would make my life fall back into place. I was wrong, I know that now. So in that year I learned the following:
1. I could not replace Byrd, he was the only one and no other man is going to be to me what he was
2. Byrd and Bernard may have loved me as I was and for who I was, but I may still have to make changes in me to be with someone else in the future
3. Loving someone else (new) does nothing to diminish how much I miss them both everyday...in fact it just complicates the emotions.
Once I thought I had a good grasp of these things I decided that I probably wouldn't ever get married again, the notion pained me. Beyond all my talents, I think that I was made to be a wife. Aside from being a mother it is the only thing that I can do that makes me feel good and like I have a purpose. I'd trade my gift with words and politics to have my life back and be what felt like the best of me again. I've come pretty close but something always made it go awry and I still have the gifts and no husband. The way I was raised family came before all else - before work, before play, before everything but God and voting. I don't have one anymore. I want my life back.
I met someone in the most recent weeks, his voice hauntingly is almost exact to that of Byrd's. He could talk to me, and with me, about any and everything. I can honestly say I fell in love in less than a week - didn't alarm me because Byrd and I had too. But soon after the emotions began to produce faster and more abundantly beyond my control, he decided that we weren't a good match. Though he says he loves me, he doesn't think that we will be happy together - though he admits to not being happy that we're not, and I'm not...he's saving us from some much more dismal end in his mind by ending us now. Before I met him I had resigned to the notion that I wouldn't marry again and was looking into sperm banks as an alternative to having more children. But we made plans to have a family, he understood my mourning, and even me I thought. Well maybe he didn't - maybe I just thought he did. I don't know. All I know is that I am at the brink of everything everyone ever said my career was supposed to be. And I couldn't feel more alone than I do now. I miss my husband and Bernard....I miss the new dude too as he changed how we interact when he decided we weren't a good match. But no one understands what I am feeling it seems but me. Tired of trying to explain...I give up. Instead I will say this:

I used to be - not so long ago a wife. I reveled in making dinner and being there to support the dreams of my husband. I want my life back....this one I am living - I don't know who it belongs too but I wish she'd come get it. Tell her I'll ghostwrite if she need...but I want to be back in the arms of a man that loves me, understands and supports me, helps me to grow inside....making and raising babies. Tell her cause I want my life back....and I will no longer accept these awful imitations being offered as substitutes to life as I know it. I am not a workaholic and won't be...I am not a celebrity....I am not even really a damn journalist...I JUST WRITE....and this writer wants her life back like YESTERDAY!

Lord have mercy on my soul please

I have had this page for almost a year I think, long before I ever got the idea to "brand myself" as they call it now, or quit my job on faith because I knew that that wasn't what I was intended to do...I had this page. I was just getting to this place in my last post in 2009 and now that the internet is so much a part of what I do the strategist in me knows that I should delete some of these posts on this page before I link my website to it...but I won't. I only changed pics for the most part and feeds that I follow to include new found friends. Because what has aligned me all this time for where I am going and all that I was meant to be is my experiences...my struggles with my demons inside and out...and with grief...for the most part I wrote it all down, in either poetry or prose. I'm not a businessman, I'm the business - man...

Further confirmation that I am where I am supposed to be, have been where I needed to get here - and that God is using me for something greater than myself...I don't mind telling you - I am hard headed and so I sometimes need the signs, and then some...

1. I created this page before I ever thought of marketing me...Catalina Byrd

2. It is called "In Cat's Mind For A Moment" - and I am marketing my mind

3. What makes my mind so unique is my experiences in life - I have on this page vented and been very vulnerable and honest (because back then no one was really watching - you can make these pages for free)...and yet it is my story that I am marketing

Either you feel me or you think that I am crazy...either way I submit to Him and can't sweat the judgment too much, my worst has been displayed on this page and so has my best. This year is about putting forth more of my best and trying through my story to reach someone else and help someone else and in time heal more. That is who I have always been...anyone that truly knows me - knows that.

This year is about using my talents as they were intended when bestowed upon me, this year is a tribute to both my husband and my dear friend Bernard Soloman. This year is for my son who will have to live in this world that I have brought him into and one day will have to leave him alone in. This year is about your children too. God has been moving things and putting them in place for years to bring me to this point, as TI said on Paper Trail "God will take you through hell to get you to Heaven". And who can say I haven't been thru hell in the last 18 months alone in the lose of my husband, my fiance', and my grandmother? And still remain...no matter what - bent but not broken.

I have a goal to be the Mayor of Baltimore as soon as I am old enough, that may become an opportunity in 2012, it would mean alot to me. I may be young, I may not have finished college (but I went long enough to find out I was a natural born philospher), I will have built a body of work that can reflect over 10 years of public service and participation in MD politics. a body of work that can prove that I have been writing poetry for over 25 years now, though you've never heard of me - and the first time I ever touched a mic, I shared a stage with Sandra St. Victor in Brooklyn, NY. A body of work that lead me to this point, to this understanding, to this comfort with just being who I am.

I am the diaspora...and this year I intend to bridge the gap - my President called for CHANGE, and he can't do it all himself.

(previously written on a now disabled blogspot page, additional posts to come...)