Barefootin'

Dear correspondents and mentors,

I wanted to start the first official day of VOF by sending you one of my favorite quotes. It's written by a woman I lived with during a summer internship at a newspaper in Jackson, Miss. five years ago. Sending lots of wonderful thoughts and good energy to you all today.

\"When you’re starting out on the road barefootin’, you don’t know where you’re going. But you’ve got to step out, or you’ll never get anywhere. And you keep on going, one step at a time.

You have to have faith to go barefooted—you don’t know what you might step on, what pain might come—but you keep on walking. And it makes you tough. Sometimes you skip and jump and run. Sometimes you get a thorn in your toe or trip over a limb, but there’s no turning back.

Barefootin’ means getting mud between your toes and dancing on the water! Your spirit is in your feet, and your spirit can run free.\"

• Unita Blackwell with JoAnne Prichard Morris

Warmly,
Lisa