My stomach is growling while I'm writing this. I'm thirsty and a little cranky and have already violated the rule about abstaining from swearing while fasting.

(I work in a newsroom. There must be dispensation for language.)

I suppose I've also ruined my effort to make it through the month of Ramadan without complaining about hunger and its related side effects.

In theory, I look forward to this month when Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. I can appreciate the discomfort that a prolonged period of fasting can provoke. It's a constant reminder of how plentiful food and clean water are in my life. I realize that I have more self-control and discipline than I typically exercise. Like any worthwhile spiritual practice, it offers a chance for reflection.

But the month also wears on me -- headaches, fatigue and a dramatic drop in patience as sunset approaches. This year, I wanted to try something different: I offered to make a donation to the St. Louis Area Foodbank for each person who wanted to fast a day during the month. I was curious to learn from the experiences of people who wanted to try.

I put out the offer on social media and soon had a roster of volunteers. Those who accepted the challenge are from a variety of faith traditions, including agnostics and atheists.

Whether they were first-time fasters or had observed a similar practice in their own faiths, I asked them to reflect on their motivations and the daylong experiences.

Anna Branch, 37, from California, says she is Russian and was brought up during communism. She was not allowed to learn anything about religion.

"I was 15 when my family moved to the States. Only then I learned that part of my family is Russian Orthodox, Catholic and Jewish. At this point, religion is too late for me," she wrote. But she wants her children to know and experience different religions. Her teenage son also wanted to fast, but he is diabetic. Instead, he spent a day researching and learning about Ramadan.

"Understanding and acceptance that we are all different is the best lesson I can give them," Branch said. As for her day of fasting, she said, "Life took over today. I did not get a minute to pause, think and reflect. Maybe this is why Ramadan is a month and not one day. I will do another one tomorrow."

Madeline Roberts Vann, 39, a practicing Christian from Virginia, said she tried the fast, but was so hungry and shaky by noon that she didn't think it wise to continue. She matched my donation with a donation to her local food bank, for a program that gives children in need backpacks of food to get them through the weekends during the school year.

She also shared a thought from an Old Testament prophet. Isaiah 58:6-7 often comes up during the times when Christians fast, she said: "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter -- when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?"

Sarah Windham, 31, from Texas, also a practicing Christian, said she experienced some ups and downs during the day, especially when she was cooking and preparing meals for her family.

"I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting from the day. Perhaps some spiritual connection or awakening? Some emotional pull that would make me a better Christian?" she wrote.

In the afternoon, she sat down in the hallway while her children played in the other room.

"I had made it to the halfway point in the day and was disheartened to find that the fast wasn't producing what I wanted it to. I didn't feel closer to God. I didn't feel more peaceful or filled with joy. Instead, I felt the same, but now with more guilt at having not felt something more. ... Then I realized, that wasn't the point. I didn't need some spiritual awakening. I didn't need to feel some emotional high. Rather, I simply needed to be still before God. I needed to quiet the noises in my life and just listen."

She said that in the days following her fast, she did feel a sense of change.

"While the experience may not have met my expectations, it did confirm that this journey isn't about me, but about God," she wrote.

Her experience was markedly different than that of Brian Sirimaturos, 38, of Missouri, who confessed: "My biggest motivation for fasting was purely so that when I talked to my Catholic grandparents that night, who are from southeast Mo., I could tell them I was fasting for Ramadan."

He said he called them, which "may have been deliberate," during "The O'Reilly Factor."

"I waited all day for that," he said. "Plus it kept my mind off of eating and drinking."

Normally, I have a heightened sense of gratitude during Ramadan. But all the people who fasted with me outside of any religious obligation -- simply to broaden their perspectives, show support, raise a few dollars for charity or, in Brian's case, provoke their relatives -- reminded me of a different sort of blessing: open-hearted, open-minded people the world over.

When Christi Sterling heard about two mothers who nearly got into a fistfight over the last locker chandelier in a retail store, even the woman who helped spawn the locker-decor industry had to shake her head.

"We thought, good grief. It's locker decorations," Sterling, co-founder of LockerLookz said. She's one of two moms from Plano, Texas who launched the company in 2010, a year after they made custom locker decorations for their daughters entering sixth grade. The moms' phones started ringing off the hook from other mothers whose daughters wanted the same magnetic mini-chandeliers, wallpaper and organizing pockets. The moms figured they were on to something.

Were they ever.

They went from having their products -- from the best-selling battery-operated chandelier ($24.99) to the mini shag rugs -- in 80 stores in 2010 to 2,200 stores last year. The manufacturers they use in China couldn't keep up with the orders, creating a frenzy of demand during previous back-to-school shopping seasons.

The fledgling entrepreneurs said they were getting 2,000 calls a week, many from retailers begging for more product since they couldn't keep what they had on the shelf. Sterling says a retailer called to tell them about a mother and daughter who wanted to buy the only remaining display items. When the store refused to sell the display, the two threw a tantrum, plopped on the floor and refused to leave until they got what they wanted. (The store caved and sold them the display.)

Other specialty stores said they had to hold lotteries to decide who could purchase the items and reported lines of 300 customers outside their doors.

Sterling said they received emails from girls whose parents drove them 200 miles in search of the locker accessories they wanted, only to find them sold out. And they heard calls from sobbing tween girls.

"That was an interesting summer," Sterling said.

Interesting, indeed. The duo and their wares have been featured relentlessly on national and local media.

Why would zebra-print magnetic wallpaper, hot pink swatches of shag carpet and dry-erase boards provoke such a reaction among young girls and their mothers and captivate our collective attention?

It's because this duo hit upon a burgeoning rite of passage and turned it into a commercial bonanza. These lockers, like so much of what is de rigueur for this demographic, seems worlds removed from the stuff we had.

Sterling says much of the summer conversation among girls entering middle school centers on how they will decorate their lockers. My greatest locker-related concern the summer before middle school was whether I'd be able to remember the combination and work the lock.

Of course, tweens want to express their individuality, and today's tweens have had their own branding since birth. From their Pottery Barn-decorated playrooms to their mural-enhanced bedrooms, we've created a stylized aesthetic for each stage of their young lives. They've had more designed around them and for them than any 9- to 13-year-olds in recent history. They expect a customized childhood.

And parents have become used to demonstrating their affection through things, especially if they see other parents doing it. Like so many other aspects of parenting, it becomes a race: Will my daughter feel left out because her locker is so 1980s industrial gray metal?

Tweens have tremendous spending power and influence on purchases. In fact, ages 9 to 13 are the "new power players of consumerism," as described by POPAI, the Global Association for Marketing at Retail. They are responsible for $200 billion in sales a year, of which $43 billion comes from direct spending of their own disposable income, according to the POPAI "Tweens R Shoppers" report.

In this transition from child to teen, we've created strange expectations of what real life may look like. I can sympathize with the impulse to give a daughter something special to look at every day in school. But regardless of how adorable those chandeliers are, how unique is it when everyone else has one? We may try to understand such trends as an expression of individuality, but mass-produced is hardly a unique look.

LockerLookz has worked out its earlier production issues, and a number of copycat accessories have cropped up.

Rest assured, you can now give your child a designer locker without having to beat up any other parents in line.

If I have raised you right, you should have felt a sadness, a pinch, a gut check, an anger, a hurt when that verdict was read.

Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old boy, was senselessly killed. Yes, that hurts. It should.

George Zimmerman, the man who shot him, was acquitted by a jury of six women in Florida.

A boy lost his life. And there was no acknowledgment from our criminal justice system that a wrong occurred.

We know the prosecution had an uphill battle to make a case in the land of Stand Your Ground. But this we know: Trayvon had bought Skittles and iced tea at a convenience store. He was walking back to where he was staying when Zimmerman followed him, and ended up in a confrontation.

Rather than repeat the rules you've heard from those who love you about how you should behave if you ever find yourself in a similar situation (because, hopefully, you know that survival matters most), let me say what we know in our hearts to be true:

That man should not have assumed Trayvon was a criminal because of how he was dressed or because he was black.

He should not have ignored the 911 dispatcher, who said he did not need to follow the teenager.

He should not have taken the law into his own hands.

All of that was wrong.

It's OK to feel outraged.

It's OK to feel scared for a moment.

Anything man-made is imperfect. Our laws, our government, our justice system can never be completely fair. And, if you look anything like Trayvon or have ever been looked at with suspicion simply for what and who you are, you know that better than most.

I know how that look feels. I hope that you will never learn how that look feels, but odds are that you will.

Anger. Fear. Resentment. These are powerful emotions. They can paralyze us, or they can call us to action. They are never justification for resignation or apathy or violence. Despite what louder voices might try to say, our country is not where it was 100 or 50 years ago. We will not discount the progress that has been made, the battles that have been fought and won. There are friendships and families that exist more easily, with more respect, that may not have been possible mere decades ago.

Any time we bear witness to injustice it is a reminder of how great our responsibility is, and that each of us has a role to play.

Look in the mirror. You may wear a hoodie. You might share Trayvon's features or color. Or you may not look a thing like him. It doesn't matter.

We are familiar with the saying that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. In 2008, then-Sen. Barack Obama added, "It bends towards justice, but here is the thing: It does not bend on its own. It bends because each of us in our own ways put our hand on that arc and we bend it in the direction of justice."

Where are your hands on that arc?

Read. Read even more. Educate yourself. Make your voice heard. Call your elected officials. When you are able, vote. Work to help elect those who you believe will make things more fair. Stand up to bigotry when you hear it. Challenge assumptions when those around you make them.

And take a minute to feel what a teenager being questioned, followed and confronted by an unidentified man with a gun might have felt in the moments before he was shot.

After the anger and hurt, injustice is meant to remind us of our own power. It is the most stark reminder that our worth is not derived from others' assessment of us. It is intrinsic to us as human beings.

You know that you belong. You know your own value and worth, just as I know mine.

I still don't feel right inside about what happened with Trayvon or the man who killed him. Any of it.

I don't think we ever should.