I’m so excited my friend Darykk agreed to find time in her insane schedule to share her story as part of the summer of small voices. I think you will agree there is nothing small about her ambition, or the impact she and women like her are making on the world.
I guess my story is interesting in that it even surprises me. Whenever someone points out how far I’ve come and what I’ve accomplished, my response is something like, “I know! Holy crap, right?!?” I’ve fumbled through life in Charlie Brown-like fashion. If there was a mistake I could make, I probably made it. If something could go wrong, it probably did. The main difference between Charlie Brown and me though, is that when life pulls the football out of my path, I don’t feel sorry for myself. I get mad. When I’m mad, I dig in my heels, I evaluate my options, and then I figure out a way to not only kick the ball, but kick it out of the park. I guess it has worked in my favor that a lot of things make me mad. Injustice makes me mad. Lack of opportunity makes me mad. The fact that some people just never seem to catch a break makes me mad. So what did I do with all this stubborn anger? I did the most logical thing I could think of:
I went to law school. Continue reading
1918 – Dallas, Tx. World War I is winding down, the influenza epidemic is starting to rear its ugly head and one woman, Emma Wylie Ballard – a caseworker for the Dallas County Humane Society – when it dealt with people, not cats, rats, dogs and ferrets, despaired of the hundreds of children abandoned on the streets of Dallas. Unwed pregnancy was a shameful condition and these women had no other alternatives than to leave their children in cars, in barns and even, in the case of one tot, on an anthill. 
