Lisa Maxine Blogs

When did everybody else get a vote in how we love? From Grandma making Clarence a plate to TikTok experts armed with microphones and ring lights, we're exploring how outside opinions have complicated even the simplest acts of love and kindness. In this installment of The Uncomfortable Truth, we examine the psychology of outside influence, the advice we accept without question, and why sometimes we need to stop listening to everybody else. Because everybody's entitled to an

What happens when someone becomes so convinced they're controlling a relationship that they fail to recognize how predictable they've become? In *The Elf on a Shelf Theory: Don't Underestimate the Elf*, Lisa Maxine explores relational gamesmanship, emotional immaturity, and the illusion of control through an unexpected holiday metaphor. Meet Geppetto, who believes he's pulling the strings, and an observant little elf who knows more than he realizes. Because recognizing the

In The Education of Impunity, author and educator Nicole Yarde examines how language, institutional power, and cultural attitudes shape the way society responds to sexual assault allegations. Using the Cornell University case as a lens, she challenges readers to consider how responsibility becomes obscured, whose voices are prioritized, and how institutions can reinforce the very systems of accountability they claim to uphold.

Different voices bring different perspectives to the table. This space is reserved for contributing writers whose insight, expertise, and lived experience will add new threads to the conversation.

WHAT IF? A Seven Threads™ Reflection on Recognition, Visibility, and the Stories We Carry By Lisa Maxine There is something interesting about the word "if". Two letters can hold an extraordinary amount of a person's life. “If I had made a different choice. If I had taken that opportunity. If they had appreciated me. If someone had recognized what I contributed. If things had happened differently.” We tend to point “if” backward, toward decisions already made, relationships al

There are stories we tell about ourselves, and then some stories were told about us before we had the language, power, or confidence to challenge them. Some were written by society. Some by institutions. Some took shape in classrooms, workplaces, churches, neighborhoods, and courtrooms. And some of the most enduring stories were written much closer to home, inside our own families, by people whose voices carried enough authority that we did not yet know we were allowed to que

Different voices bring different perspectives to the table. This space is reserved for contributing writers whose insight, expertise, and lived experience will add new threads to the conversation.

There's a reason therapists so often say: Write about it. Journal what happened. Write the letter you may never send. Writing can't change what happened. But it can change our relationship to what happened. And sometimes, that's where healing begins. Thoughts feel different once they leave our heads. Inside the mind, memories overlap, emotions trigger other emotions, and conversations replay without resolution. Writing slows that down. To put something into words, we have to

Every life is made of experiences. Some are easy to name: the relationships that changed us, the opportunities we took, the losses we endured, the moments we are proud of. Others are harder to recognize because someone else decided they weren't important. Maybe something happened that mattered deeply to you, but someone minimized it, dismissed it and told you that you were overreacting. Perhaps no one said those words at all, but their response taught you that your experience

Different voices bring different perspectives to the table. This space is reserved for contributing writers whose insight, expertise, and lived experience will add new threads to the conversation.

This article introduces what I term the Missy Anne Archetype (Johnson, 2025), a framework for understanding aversive racism rooted in perceived innocence, social image, and moral withdrawal. In case most haven't already figured it out after the 2025 election, Black women are over it, exhausted. We've reached the point where the performance, the platitudes, and the carefully curated "solidarity" gestures don't move us anymore, because we've seen the playbook too many times to

The Verdict That Sparked Reflection This morning, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, by a jury of eight men and four women, was convicted on two of the five charges he was accused of. The charges he was acquitted of — which I find most disturbing — were counts two and four: sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion. It is here that I’ll begin. The Hidden Crisis of Human Trafficking First and foremost, human trafficking is a hidden crisis in America. Its victims are often lured through

On Literacy, Inequity, Defensiveness, and What Our Conscience Requires of Us I’ve been following a high school teacher on social media who became emotional while talking about something happening in his classroom: some of his students cannot read. His emotion was difficult to watch because you could see that he cared. I understood the weight of what he was describing. But as I listened, I found myself thinking about something we don't talk about enough when discussing educati

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from constantly being asked to make other people more comfortable with truths that have never been comfortable for you to live through. Not because you are unclear. Not because the harm is imagined. Not because there is no evidence. But because your honesty unsettles people who have spent most of their lives protected from needing to confront what you are describing directly. As a mental health counselor and a Black woman, I

There is a quiet discomfort that enters rooms the moment someone begins to outgrow the role people assigned to them. Not fail. Not collapse. Just outgrow. People will clap for your survival story because survival keeps you relatable. They will support your healing as long as your healing remains aesthetically pleasing and non-threatening. They will encourage your growth until your growth begins to challenge the version of themselves they’ve avoided confronting. That’s the par

Picture yourself seated in a graduate school classroom, listening to a professor at a predominantly white institution proclaim, “Poor Black children don’t have books in their homes.” As if I were being pranked, I immediately scanned the room for allies, co-conspirators who would aid me in correcting his ignorance. There was only one person, one Latina sista in the struggle, who volunteered to join me in an attempt to address his verbal assault on Black families. My remaining

This might be a rant….I'm okay with that. I am endlessly fascinated by human behavior. I had my usual crime-and-mystery shows running in the background when a show came on about a man who murdered his three sons just to hurt his estranged wife. Needless to say, it worked — and now that woman has to spend the rest of her life mourning her boys. Her babies. Unfortunately, her story Is not an isolated event. The first question that any clear-thinking person might ask is how

PREFACE This Isn’t About Blame—It’s About Showing Up Now, Even If You Couldn't Then If you’re a father reading this, I’m asking you to stay. Sit with discomfort. Read with an open mind and an open heart. This article isn’t about attacking men or blaming fathers. And no, it’s not ignoring the equally harmful cases where women have falsely accused men of rape. Those situations matter, too, and the damage they cause is real. But that’s not what this piece is about. This is about

Illiteracy in the Face of “Highly Effective” Teachers Literacy in New York City is often discussed as if it were a technical issue. A matter of curriculum. Of funding. Of access. While those factors matter, they do not fully explain what we continue to see. In a city filled with resources, initiatives, and reform efforts, the outcome remains the same: students who spend years in classrooms, present, promoted, counted, still leave without the ability to read with depth, clarit

Before We Begin Let’s be clear about one thing: This is not about the fathers who show up every single day, the ones who are present, consistent, and intentional. The ones who lead with love, who carry their role with care, and who put in the work quietly without needing applause. This is also not about toxic mothers. That’s another conversation, and I've addressed this already. This is about the actors, the manipulators, and the full-time victims, the ones who turn parenting