#islandlife – Tattoo It On Your Heart

📣🥳🌴It’s launch day for #TropicalDreams my debut #childrenspicturebook! It’s also just happens to be the 10-year anniversary of launching my website in obedience to God. (I’ll share that amazing God story another time.)

Welcome to a journey into the heart of island life with Tropical Dreams, inspired by #Jamaica, (land of my birth). Please join us for the Zoom celebration today (4/21/2026) if you’re able at the link below. Hear a little backstory to the story (more to come) in the embedded podcast where I was a guest of my illustrator the gifted Dr. Katherine Hutchinson-Hayes. See if you can answer the Tropical Trivia questions at the end, hear what others are saying about Tropical Dreams, and listen to a reggae song.

I needed to return and see if it was true. My sudden departure and extended absence left me longing for closure. I hadn’t said goodbye to my childhood home in Jamaica. Up the winding mountain route with its lush tropical vistas, past the vendors of fruit and roadside roasted corn. Over Flat Bridge edged with inches-high stone hemispheres and hung just over the troubled Rio Cobre River. In heavy rains, the waters cover the bridge, but not on this day. Through the cool shade of the bamboo arched Fern Gully roadway to Windsong, Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Ocho Rios, where I grew up. I prayed the new owners would let me on the grounds and was grateful when they welcomed me.