At 32 years old, Ar­i­an­na Sookram of Chase Vil­lage, Ch­agua­nas, is known by many for her warm spir­it, gen­tle na­ture, and gen­uine care for oth­ers. A young woman of great faith and a qui­et in­ner strength, her sto­ry is one shaped by per­se­ver­ance and a deep sense of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to loved ones. In the cir­cum­stances of ad­ver­si­ty she has faced, her un­shake­able sense of self has made her ex­tra­or­di­nary, and those who know her recog­nise a woman who has qui­et­ly built a life root­ed in hard work, hu­mil­i­ty, and trust in God.

If teenage Lisa-Marie Brown had it her way and fol­lowed her first love, she would like­ly be an al­ter­na­tive rock mu­sic artiste tour­ing some far-flung cor­ner of the globe, prob­a­bly with an al­bum or two to her name. Grow­ing up in a house­hold filled with the sounds of church choirs and fam­i­ly singers, mu­sic was her en­tire world. By 16, she was the lead singer of the lo­cal al­ter­na­tive band Mor­ris Can Be Con­tact­ed, a quirky name plucked straight from a news­pa­per’s clas­si­fied sec­tion. “It felt like I was liv­ing my dream,” she rem­i­nisces. “I loved be­ing on stage, I loved re­hearsals, and I loved the en­er­gy of cre­at­ing some­thing to­geth­er every week.”

The yel­low poui blooms un­der grey skies, sur­viv­ing Sa­hara dust and dry sea­son rain, as East­er ar­rives af­ter the hush of Eid and the colour of Phag­wa. And what a sea­son it is to sur­vive.

When her son was three years old, Saira La Fou­cade took him to mass one Sun­day. As the al­tar serv­er led the pro­ces­sion, swing­ing the in­cense to his side, La Fou­cade’s son be­came ir­ri­tat­ed and start­ed cry­ing and rolling around. She couldn’t un­der­stand why. Mere weeks be­fore, he was di­ag­nosed as autis­tic, but she still thought she could take him to some­thing as solemn as a church ser­vice. She was wrong. The in­cense was trig­ger­ing his autism. More alarm­ing­ly, La Fou­cade found spe­cial needs peo­ple across Trinidad and To­ba­go were suf­fer­ing through the lack of sup­port at mass­es, and it was far more than just autism.

These im­ages cap­ture qui­et, joy­ful and re­flec­tive mo­ments as women take part in sa­cred ob­ser­vances dur­ing Holy Week, from the solemn pro­ces­sion of Palm Sun­day to the prayer­ful jour­ney of the Sta­tions of the Cross. Each frame re­flects de­vo­tion, strength, and rev­er­ence, as faith is ex­pressed through tra­di­tion, com­mu­ni­ty, and per­son­al re­flec­tion.

Al­low the spir­it of God to lead you, and live in love,” are two of the many pro­found mes­sages Laven­tille res­i­dent Genelle Bharat ad­vo­cates.

East­er Sun­day is fi­nal­ly here! It’s a joy­ful cel­e­bra­tion with dif­fer­ent de­li­cious foods af­ter weeks of Lent. Lent is a deeply sig­nif­i­cant sea­son in the Chris­t­ian cal­en­dar. Lent is a 40-day pe­ri­od of re­flec­tion, sac­ri­fice, and spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­pline ob­served by many Chris­tians in prepa­ra­tion for East­er. The usu­al type of fast­ing is giv­ing up meat or oth­er types of food. To pre­vent overindulging af­ter re­stric­tions dur­ing East­er, it’s im­por­tant to fo­cus on shift­ing the mind­set and idea of “good” and “bad” food. The goal is to pre­vent the feel­ing of guilt, overeat­ing and phys­i­cal dis­com­fort that might arise dur­ing this hol­i­day. As women, we may have more crav­ings, de­pend­ing on how our hor­mones are reg­u­lat­ing. Our fo­cus needs to be on a bal­anced ap­proach, health and well-be­ing, while ful­ly en­joy­ing East­er.

Shahi­ra Ali can be seen do­ing the re­gion­al roundup on Gayelle TV on Wednes­days, and her two gospel sin­gles, Grate­ful and We Need Love, are mak­ing the rounds on the air­waves – a far cry from the child who strug­gled with the symp­toms of autism be­fore know­ing and un­der­stand­ing what she was fac­ing.

T&T pro­duc­er and singer-song­writer Kur­tis “Lon­don Fu­ture” Wells feels grate­ful and ec­sta­t­ic af­ter work­ing with Ko­re­an megas­tars BTS. He co-wrote two songs on their lat­est al­bum, ARI­RANG.

On March 28, ace mu­si­cian, com­pos­er, arranger and pro­duc­er Dr Pel­ham God­dard gave pa­trons a night to re­mem­ber when he and a cadre of mu­si­cal col­lab­o­ra­tors cel­e­brat­ed his jour­ney in the pro­duc­tion Echoes of an Era: Friend­ship at Kafe Blue in Port-of-Spain.

So­ca star De­stra Gar­cia stepped in­to a dif­fer­ent mu­si­cal and spir­i­tu­al space last week­end when she staged her gospel con­cert Re­flec­tions at Queen’s Hall, of­fer­ing au­di­ences an evening cen­tred on faith, tes­ti­mo­ny and vo­cal ex­pres­sion.

This Good Fri­day, one young man takes on the role of Je­sus. And as he car­ries the cross, he car­ries with him not just a role, but the faith of an en­tire com­mu­ni­ty.