Blood and Backbone

Blood and Backbone Writer of faith, truth, & the courage to stand. Poetry, reflections, and a record of standing from past & present seasons.

07/04/2026

Still We Raise the Flag
Celebrating 250 Years of America

For two hundred and fifty years,
this land has buried its sons and daughters,
welcomed strangers,
mourned its failures,
celebrated its victories,
and awakened every morning
still believing tomorrow could be better than yesterday.

We are not a people without scars.

We are a people who kept building
with scarred hands.

We crossed mountains
without knowing what waited beyond them.
We planted crops in stubborn soil.
We raised barns.
We raised children.
We raised churches.
And when the moment demanded it…

we raised a flag.

Not because cloth is sacred.

But because of what it represents.

The stubborn conviction
that liberty is worth defending,
that conscience should remain free,
that every generation bears the responsibility
to leave something stronger
than it inherited.

Freedom has never been effortless.

It has been carried
through frozen winters,
across distant battlefields,
into courthouse halls,
through factories,
classrooms,
family tables,
and quiet prayers whispered
by ordinary people
whose names history may never remember.

America has stumbled.

She has known division.
She has known sorrow.
She has known moments
when her own reflection
called her to become better.

Yet every generation has been given
the same choice:

To surrender hope…

or strengthen it.

For two hundred and fifty years,
millions have chosen
to strengthen it.

Today,
our celebration is more than fireworks
painting the night sky.

It is gratitude.

For every farmer
who believed the harvest would come.

For every teacher
who opened another book.

For every mother and father
who taught their children
that character matters.

For every soldier
who stood watch while others slept.

For every first responder
who ran toward danger.

For every neighbor
who quietly loved the community
without asking for recognition.

America has never belonged
to one generation.

She is entrusted,
one heartbeat at a time,
to those willing
to carry her forward.

May we be worthy
of those who came before us.

May we leave courage
where we found fear.

May we choose truth
over convenience.

Justice
over pride.

Mercy
without abandoning conviction.

And freedom…
always freedom.

So today,
as flags wave
and children laugh,
as families gather
beneath summer skies,

we remember that this nation
was never sustained
by perfection.

It was sustained
by people
who refused to quit.

Happy Birthday, America.

May the next chapter
be written with the same grit,
the same determination,
and the same enduring hope
that has carried this republic
for two hundred and fifty years.

God bless America. 🇺🇸

© 2026 Sherry Branam-Norman (Sherry Branam) – All Rights Reserved.

Their opinions belong to them. My decisions belong to me.
06/30/2026

Their opinions belong to them. My decisions belong to me.

05/17/2026

Under the Roots

I buried the girl I used to be
beneath the roots of a dying pine.

Not because I hated her.
Not because she was weak.

But because the world kept teaching her
that softness was dangerous.

So little by little,
I learned how to survive instead.

I learned how to brace myself
before disappointment arrived.

How to speak carefully.
How to carry grief quietly.
How to stand in rooms
where love sometimes felt conditional.

I learned how to become useful.
Steady.
Strong.

The kind of woman people lean on
without asking what it costs her to remain standing.

And for a long time
I thought that was healing.

But survival and healing
are not always the same thing.

Because beneath all that strength,
something tender remained buried—

waiting.

Waiting beneath years of responsibility,
beneath fear,
beneath silence,
beneath all the versions of myself
I built to make it through.

And now, standing here among the trees,
I can feel her still.

Not dead.

Just quiet.

Like something hidden under the earth
through a hard winter.

Waiting to know
whether it is finally safe
to come home again.

Under the Roots
From Blood and Backbone
© 2026 Sherry Branam-Norman (Sherry Branam) – All Rights Reserved.

Two HousesI am building two housesat the same time.One is made of fieldstoneand timber,of beams that riselike ribs above...
05/11/2026

Two Houses

I am building two houses
at the same time.

One is made of fieldstone
and timber,
of beams that rise
like ribs above a quiet room,
of a stove that holds fire
the way an old heart holds memory.

The other is made of words.

Page by page
I lay them down
the way a mason lays stone—
carefully,
knowing that what I place today
will carry weight later.

One house will hold my body.

The Cottage in the Clearing,
where wagon-wheel beams stretch wide
and firelight settles softly
against the walls.
A place where the doors open
toward the trees
and the night air moves freely,
where my soul
finally exhales.

The other house will hold my story.

Blood and Backbone—
the record of standing,
of not folding
when the wind came hard,
of learning that strength
is sometimes nothing more
than remaining.

Stone and sentence.

Timber and truth.

Two houses
rising in the same lifetime,
built by the same hands
that once wondered
if they were strong enough
to build anything at all.

And someday
when the fire is steady
and the evening grows quiet,

I will sit in the first house
and read the second,
and know
they were never separate.

They were simply
two ways
of coming home.

© 2026 Sherry Branam-Norman (Sherry Branam)
All Rights Reserved.

03/11/2026

Nurse Log

In the forest
nothing is embarrassed
to fall.

The tall trees do not whisper
about the one that leaned too far
or the one the wind finally claimed.

They simply make room.

For years
a great tree stands
with its roots buried deep
in the unseen dark.

It holds storms in its branches.
It breaks the winter wind.
It lifts green hands
toward the sun.

Birds build their small worlds there.
Animals pass beneath its shade.
Generations grow
in the quiet shelter of its strength.

It becomes
part of the forest’s memory.

And then
slowly,
almost gently,
time places its hand
upon the trunk.

A crack forms
somewhere deep inside
where no one can see.

Not weakness—
just the honest work
of years.

One day
the wind arrives.

It presses
against the tired wood.

And the tree
that stood for decades
finally leans.

There is a sound
through the woods
like a door opening.

And the tree
returns
to the earth.

For a while
it lies there
like something finished.

A giant
laid low.

People who pass
might only see
the fall.

They might think
the story ended there.

But the forest
knows better.

Rain enters first.

It slips into the small wounds
in the bark
like grace
finding its way
into a broken life.

The hard center
softens.

Time begins
its quiet work.

Moss comes
like mercy
covering what was once exposed.

Fungi bloom
like lanterns
in the dim cathedral of the woods.

And deep within
the old wood
something begins again.

A seed
no larger than a breath
pushes a root downward.

It finds
the quiet strength
stored in the fallen tree.

And it drinks.

Years pass.

The great trunk
slowly dissolves
into the soil.

Not gone.

Transformed.

And above it
young trees rise.

Their roots tangled
in the unseen bones
of what once stood tall.

They reach upward
toward the same sky
the old tree loved.

Alive
because something before them
was willing
to become the ground.

The forest
has a name
for the fallen tree
that nourishes new life.

A nurse log.

But the forest
is not the only place
this mystery lives.

Sometimes
a human life
becomes the same thing.

A life
that stands for years
holding storms.

A life
that shelters others
without applause.

A life
that endures
more wind
than anyone sees.

And when it finally bends
under the weight of time
or grief
or sacrifice—

the world
may only notice
that it fell.

But heaven
notices something else.

It sees the roots
growing quietly
through the wounds.

It sees courage
taking hold
in hearts
that watched that life stand.

It sees mercy
rising
from places
that once knew pain.

Perhaps the deepest purpose
of a life
is not how long it stands.

Perhaps it is this:

That when it finally returns
to the earth of humanity
it leaves behind
soil rich enough

for another soul
to rise
toward the light.

© 2026 Sherry Branam-Norman (Sherry Branam)
All Rights Reserved.

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Knoxville, TN

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