Hawaiian Supermom

I’ve been following Maya Angelou’s facebook feed for years and was shocked when I read the status update on her page when I woke up.

Just two days ago she wrote two posts. The first one read:

“An unexpected medical emergency caused me the greatest disappointment of having to cancel my visit to the Major League Baseball Civil Rights Game ceremony. I am so proud to be selected as its honoree. However, my doctors told me it would be unadvisable for me to travel at that time. My thanks to Robin Roberts for speaking up for me and thank you for all your prayers. I am each day better.”

And the second one said:

“And now we come to the day where we can honor the brave men and women who have risked their lives to honor our country and our principles. Our history is rife with citizens who care and who are courageous enough to say we care for those who went before us.“

So I was shocked this morning, when her family let the world know that she had passed away.

Growing up in Hawai’i, Maya Angelou’s work was never required reading. We read the standards: T.S. Elliot, Elizabeth Barret Browning, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickenson, Shakespeare, but never Maya Angelou– in fact, even when we read African American poetry, it was limited to the time of the Harlem Renaissance. No, I discovered her work on my own when I was in high school and actually, I have the movie Poetic Justice to thank for that.

Throughout the years, I’ve read her words, felt them grow within me, let them simmer into that stuff called motivation, and today, it is so apparent that she’s touched a lot of people from many different backgrounds in positive ways and to me, that makes her a hero.

My absolute favorite poem by her is called, “Still I Rise”:

Thank you for your sharing your soul with the world, Dr. Angelou. May God’s angels guide you home, and may you rest peacefully there.