Get Into Houa's Mind

March is almost gone and April is approaching. Can you believe in two more months, it'll be halfway through 2017? Didn't it seem like we just celebrated new years? I sure felt like it was. This year is another year growing older for me and the first birthday and mother's day where I face without my mother. But I've come to learn that she's always with me if I truly believe she is. So in another word, it'll be the first birthday and mother's day where I will spend it with her spiritually. I know she's here...in her own way. Houa Production is kicking off strong this year. We are halfway through filming our second feature length film and just released our first short film titled Ob Txiv Tub, which got major hits and raves. I'm super excited and I can't wait to see what else is in store. On another note, did I mention that I started dancing again? Yeah! After a 20 year absence from the dance floor, our line dance team is burning the floor. It st...

It's been four months since my mother passed and I've been struggling emotionally, mentally, and physically to pull myself together. Anyone who has lost a parent will tell you how difficult it is to try to move forward. It's exhausting. There are days where you want to just throw in the white towel. I remembered I told myself that I would be strong and try to not let anything break me apart. And then I remembered breaking apart. It felt good to just let go and break. For a while there, I was doing good. I was getting things done, I was smiling and having a normal life with friends and families. Then I began to feel drained, physically drained to the point where I almost fainted. I thought, this is me working too hard. This is my body giving up and my body telling me I need to slow down. So I slowed down, but it didn't work. I just grew more tired until I decided something was cooking up...inside of me. I remember seeing those two lines staring back at me and the fir...

Each layer peeled away reveals something hidden beneath that no one wants to be seen. It hurts and it still bleeds carelessly. Sometimes at the end of the day, you sit down and you wonder to yourself if it will ever heal. You stitch it and hope it will heal, leaving just a scar for a memory. Some days, it doesn't bother you. Others, it is like a ghost phantom that troubles you without end. Letting go is one of the hardest things we can do. We hang onto something so small and let it grow and grow until it becomes something so large that it owns us. We back away into the corner and become defenseless as it takes control. It eats at us until we're nearly perished, leaving only a faint beating heart. And only when we're hanging on by a thread do we find the little strength we have left to fight. It starts with forgiveness; with yourself and others. But you must first overcome your own demons and forgive you. Otherwise you'll be walking in a dark shadow forever. It...

Not far down the road sits a farm with tall cornfields There is a house with blue shutters and a broken down front porch An overgrown bush of dead roses sits waiting to be saved The yellow dried grass speaks volumes of abuse There, inside the house lives an old man who sits on his tractor He wears an old flannel shirt with torn overalls His white hair glistens in the hot sun Along with sad hollow eyes, all that proves he’s living Is the pulse that beats softly inside his wrists Each day he watches as his corn stalks grow another inch Every afternoon he wanders through the high fields And wishes he could take back what he did Each day he cries a river of tears that could drown his own crops But no one comes to visit him and he’s dying He lives in silence with his regrets and his choices When night falls and a heavy cloak of stars decorate the sky He sits silently on his broken chair with his glass of wine And he drowns himself into a forgotten t...

Dear Frank, I am sitting here by the lantern writing to you as mother sleeps soundly in the next room. I can hear my little sister coughing in her room and I remind myself to make her some cough syrup in the morning. It is dark and everyone is sleeping, but me. I am awake because I long for your arms around me. I miss the sound of my name on your lips. I miss your lingering kisses that leave me wanting more. I miss the way how you touch me when you hold me. I can’t help, but be robbed of sleep as I think of you. It’s been six months since you’ve left me for the war and I fear I go insane each day when I think of you over there fighting. I pray each day that you will make it back to your tent where you will light your lantern and write me a letter. I pray that each time you go out to fight, bullets run past you and that you will come home to me. Winter has settled upon our small town of New Ulm and with a freezing frame of an everlasting white powder. Each time I go out, I am...