Sympathetic Ink: The Personal, Professional, and Everything in Between
Mimi V. Chapman, MSW, Ph.D. I'm a professor at UNC Chapel Hill. The perspectives here are both personal and professional. All opinions are my own.
Where is home really? Where do we shelter when we are in unfamiliar territory? How do mere mortals do something transcendent? Which strangers will become friends that guide and walk with us? What does it mean to be someone’s mother or father? How do we keep children safe and raise them to adulthood? Struggle, displacement, uncertainty, identity, fear, perhaps longing for something easier or something past, all wrapped up in that humble nativity scene.
On our kitchen wall there is a framed piece of paper dated August 1944, curiously signed by Neptunus Rex with the assistance of his scribe,
At this point in the pandemic, daytime brings hope. Pictures of friends getting vaccines, talk of summer travel, and, at work, I am not responding
Note: Friends and colleagues have asked me to write about leading during these last few months at UNC. I’ve found the writing challenging, even though I think about such questions all the time.
But where was the recipe? Once through the recipe box. No cookie dough. The second time I landed on the “drunken meatball” recipe, a staple at my parents’ Christmas parties, but still no cookie dough. With rising panic, I spread the box’s contents on the kitchen table. If it wasn’t there, it was gone.
On October 23rd, my father would have been 100 years old. Last year for his 99th, I flew to San Antonio with a suitcase full of