Coach Elliott

It is not a coincidence that the majority of men in jail are men of color.  It is equally not so surprising that we have uncovered situations involving men of color who are found to be innocent.  There have even been cases where white people have made up a crime story and use a person of color as part of their made up scenario.  In one such story a woman who killed her three children in her car claimed that a black man jumped into her car, high jacked it wiith her and her kids and killed her three children.  In fact Miss Crazy had killed her own children and the black man did nto exist.  In yet another situation of many a white woman picked a man of color from a line up accusing him of being the man who raped her.  After many years in jail and a mother who would not give up he was found to be innocent based on DNA samples that were ignored by law officials, the judge and a court system that loves to put people of color in jail, in fact as my sister puts it ...

I remember meeting someone's brother and knowing immediately that he was an atheist.  My intuition told me this information and when I shared it with my former friend he denied it as though he had no doubt I was wrong.  The next time we went to visit his brother I simply asked him if he believed in God to which he responded: "No, I am an atheist".  Right there in that moment I knew that his brother's denial was attached to something he wanted to conceal about himself for as it turned out he too was an atheist who was in the closet.  In both cases I was not in judgement but did think about their poor behavior and how it might be related to them being non-believers in anything.  What I feel today is that we must believe in something or someone. Here are my thoughts: Believing in yourself: When we believe in ourselves we are saying that who we are is special and worthy of whatever comes to us of good.  When we believe in ourselves we live a genuine life w...

Life seems a lot like a game and to some it is almost exclusively a game.  It is a game of survival, a game of who is right and who is not, a game of who can make who  wrong and a game of how much we can get without exerting ourselves.  People seem to like to play the game of life and at times that games can become serious mishaps and result in severe consequences.  In order to live life we have to be in an awareness about the games people play and why they play them. Here are some games people play and why: 1.  The game of making the other person wrong 2.  The game of who is smarter and better 3.  The game of lies 4.  The game of survival 5.  The game of getting more than you give The game of making the other person wrong is one that is likely the most common way of manipulation.  In this game your partner does everything possible to get you to believe you are wrong almost all if not all the time.  This is a game of contr...

Sometimes I think that the truth about intimate love is that there is nothing true about it.  We spend years with people who abuse us and who we don't even like.  It makes one wonder about love and whether there is anything about love that is truly loving.  After all we often spend our lives either looking for love or inside a relationship where we are conflicted about love. I learned a lot about love over a span of two relationships each of which lasted about ten years.  In the first one I was very young when I got married, nineteen to be exact.  I started out wishing that someone somewhere would find me and take care of me.  I was a needy young person with a lot to learn and very little experience about life, love or all things related to love.  I was so injured that all I could think about was finding someone to take care of me.  In spite of myself I found that person in the form of another nineteen year old girl.  What I remember most a...

When at first I was told I had "cancer" I would wake up each day believing that maybe the news was a dream I'd had and that eventually I would find that out.  I would wake up from this dream like state and realize that it was all a mistake.  As it turns out this not only did not happen, I am still waking up at times thinking that one day it will all go away.  The truth about it is that I won't wake up one day and realize it's not true but that one day I will awaken every day with joy in my heart instead of this feeling I sometimes have of emptyness and disbelief.  One day I will wake up and living will be always be what matters the most, making the best of what I have. Cancer creates a courage inside of me that I cannot explain.  Out of this horrible illness and pain of the treatements comes forth a warrior inside of me that I cannot deny or make go away.  Cancer has a way of teaching us courage as do many terminal illnesses.  I feel like it is the v...

Every now and then we all need to take a reality check and ask ourselves why we continue to do the same things expecting that we will get different results. We continue to do things in the same way over and over again and think that somehow miraculously  we are going to experience something new from old behaviors and old actions, ones we have repeated without thinking. Reality check number one is that we will not get different results by doing the same things in the same way.  The good news is that we can adopt a different view and a different approach if we just give ourselves some time to think outside the box we've been inside of for a long time.  The truth is that we can do things differently and get better results. The very first thing to ask ourselves is whether we would like to see things happen for us differently from other times.  The other is whether we are willing to do something differently so that we can experience a better outcome, the one we would ...

Today my brother and his wife invited me to join them as they were planning to meet my mother for dinner.  At the last moment my brother asked if I would not mind picking my mother up on the way in from the south end of town where I am staying with a friend.  I agreed but knew deep inside that my mom, although told of the time of pick up, would not be ready.  When I arrived at my mother's apartment she was not only not ready she was still in her pajamas smoking as usual.  I immediately called my brother to tell him that she was not ready and when I asked her when she'd be ready she responded with her usual: "It takes me a while to get ready".  My usual response to that would have been an argumentative type of response but this time I simply sat down where I could find some space, looking around the room at what felt like a disarray of stuff.  It felt like the mother I once knew did not live in this state of affairs.  She could not be the same mother wh...