Yesterday was June 19th. It was the anniversary of my parents’ wedding in 1936. That day is worth celebrating because without it, my three wonderful siblings would not be on this earth, and neither would I. I am so grateful for their love and commitment to another and to God. They decided to take one another for life, and to do their part to honor God with their pledges to one another.
Yesterday was also the commemoration of Juneteenth, the day in 1865 that a group of slaves in Texas found out that they had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, and by the end of the Civil War some two months earlier.
I first heard of Juneteenth in 1973 when I began my career as a social worker. I was 23 years old, and I had not heard of this momentous day in all my years of education up to that time. It was a moment of cultural awakening for me as I was working with African-American co-workers who helped me to expand my rather narrow (at the time) cultural horizons.
So, June 19th is a special day to be celebrated – for a lot of reasons.
Reflections of a Counselor 