4/44

This week I had a birthday, in my family birthdays are a big deal it’s always a chance to spoil and to celebrate each other.  The truth is I love any excuse to celebrate others, celebrating myself is another issue however. It has always been a bit harder for me; it places me right in the middle of uncomfortable.  

As I stand on the cusp of a new year, I look and focus on all the gifts I have received and lessons I have learnt throughout my 40 odd years.  I’m looking forward to the next frontier; I don’t really have a master plan for what that entails that’s okay though, because I've learned that life interrupts the best of plans.  The important thing for me is that I know one who has crafted a master plan and that’s enough for me. 

This past year some friends and family died without warning. I disappointed myself and others, people I counted on didn't come through, I walked away from toxic relationships, but then again it wasn't all loss — total strangers showed up and my life was all the richer.

So in honour of this week’s celebrations I share 4 top lessons I learnt in 44 years. I share them with you now, mostly just because I can, but also in the hope that they might help you on your own journey to live more authentically, to live more of life without judgement of yourself and/or others, so that when the time comes for you to ‘check out’, you will have few regrets and more pride in what you left behind.

4/44

1.    Embrace the age you are and stop wishing you were a different age.

 Wishing yourself to be a different stage of your life is a waste of where you are.   You    cannot be productive if you are absent in your present stage.

2.    Stop worrying about other people’s opinion of you; it’s a huge waste of     your time.

        

Consuming your valuable time second guessing other people peoples opinion of you is a waste of resource, resource you could be using to build yourself. You've got to remember it’s only their opinion at the end of the day.

3.  Make friends with your children’s friends. They’ll make you laugh and  give you valuable Intel.

           The older you get there is a natural propensity to lean to grumpiness; laughter is good            for your soul.

4.   Stay out of other people’s business. It’s a full time job trying to deal   with  your own.

          Trying to work out your own issues is exhausting enough, why load yourself with other           people's complexities? as my girls would say, I am not about that life!

I have noticed that as I have grown my speech filters have become looser; this means I am more at ease about sharing my life viewpoints without fear of being too politically correct. I find this self-observation amusing because those who have known me for a considerable length of time might disagree with me and say probably my filters were already loose in my twenties!

 
I read a quote sometime back that makes me laugh every time I remember it. It said; you either like me or you don’t, It took me 40 something years to learn how to love myself I don’t have that kind of time to try and convince someone else to like me too. 

       

Mama Said

My Mama deposited treasure in me.  Mother B as she is fondly known to all my friends is the strongest and most inspiring lady I know. I may be biased as she is my mother but the challenges she has faced raising me and my siblings, mostly on her own, I think deserves her more than a medal.

In honour of her I thought I’d share a few things she taught me

Mama said: Love is a verb

It’s a doing word she said, it dies if you keep it as a noun! The warm fuzzy factor doesn’t last, it can’t last.  I’ve learnt that the WFF exists as an indicator of initial attraction. After that love must work to survive.
Relationships with other people bring up anxiety at times-- in them and in us. And when people are anxious, they sometimes do dumb things, like pick fights and act a little selfish. Relationships require work they require focus and nurturing and the willingness to stick with things even when they're hard. So it won't be all rainbows but the effort will be worth it -- when it's right.

Mama said: No one can love you like you (and God!)

Until you can love yourself she said, you will never believe anyone when they tell you they love you. So you will distrust and you will be needy trying to get them to convince you of something that they will never be able to convince you of. Nothing robs attraction like neediness!

If you can't accept all parts of yourself, even the parts you are not happy with, like your arms (yes the arms again) or your temper, then you will never be able to believe it if someone tells you they love you.

Finding someone to love, who will also love you back all of you, your darkness and all your light is to love yourself. That doesn't mean you don't work on yourself to make yourself better. It just means you start with acceptance: accepting and loving yourself exactly the way you are.

Mama said they are called the opposite sex for a reason

I'm not sure if it's true that men are so different from women that they could be from another planet – sometimes sure feels like it. What I know is there are huge differences in how males process things compared to females.

If we expect men to act like women emotionally, we will be hugely disappointed and resentful a lot of the time ~there are books about this subject.  The bottom line is that women still need to have girlfriends in their lives. There is need for girlfriends to vent to, ponder the same subjects over and over and over again, get fashion advice from. Girl, don’t ditch all your girlfriends just because you have a new guy in your life! Girlfriends can add to your life in many ways men never can.

Mama said your man doesn’t define you; don’t give him a milestone he cannot carry.

First love consumes you; it can feel like you are possessed. You can't eat, you can't sleep. All you want to do is be with your new beloved. That's normal, but not realistic for any length of time. Just like you can't eat cake all day every day and still expect to healthy, you can't devote every waking moment to your significant other and be healthy.

You both need your own time apart -- time with friends; time for school or work; time for separate interests or hobbies; time to be alone time to be with God, time to grow. You have a higher definition of who you are.

Mama said: have self-respect.

The law of attraction states: like attracts like, it’s science. What I know for sure about the law of attraction and love is that self-respect attracts respect. When you stand for something, others will respect you for it. They will see that you love yourself and take care of yourself and it will inspire them to do the same toward you.
Mama knows best

This is in honour of all Mothers and the wisdom we glean, to all Mamas walking the gold pavement in heaven and the legacy you left, WE SALUTE YOU!

Baggage Carrier

I have in later years of life discovered the power to journal, the power to free myself by writing my story! Life scars you, you end up carrying the scars with you through many of your days.

Most of us can relate on some level to that feeling, we all have a story of being hurt. Though some of us have endured more serious situations, you really can’t quantify or compare people’s emotional pain.

Like everyone, I've been hurt, in both profound and trivial ways, the journey I share was by far the most traumatic.

What hurts?

For me at times my world became the adversary; my pain re-shaped my world. It’s not always easy to identify and understand what’s hurting you; it became difficult to separate and identify what was hurting. I was carrying all this baggage, I was carrying anger, carrying un-forgiveness, carrying pain, carrying shame! This baggage was not mine to carry. Because the load was heavy the road was difficult to walk.

I needed to unpick and begin to re-define my pain.

There’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to communicate how you feel to the person who hurt you; and if you can, there’s no guarantee they’ll respond how you want them to. Mine didn’t; for years we lived as if it never happened. His life appeared to me to flourish whilst mine was dying inside.

Pain will keep you trapped in the past reliving an old record.  At times the thought of freeing myself through forgiveness felt as if it was a betrayal to my dad’s memory. 

I have learnt however that reliving the past is detrimental to your present, reliving the past can be addictive. It gives you the opportunity to do it again and respond differently—to fight back instead of submitting, to speak your mind instead of silencing yourself. It also allows you to possibly understand better. What happened? What should you have done?

In other words, it allows you to torture yourself. Regardless of what you should have done, you can’t do it now.  I learnt to fight the urge to relive the pain; I couldn't go back and find happiness there. I told myself to change the story I was telling myself. 

No amount of reassurance would change what happened. I couldn't find happiness whilst holding onto a painful story. I went past what I will never get over. I will never get over how my father died, it's not something you can. You can however get past the pain of 'what if's and ‘how could they?'. You move on from the pain cycle.

Forgive and fly

I wasn't a victim, so I stopped playing the blame/victim game; it only holds you back. You can’t feel good about yourself if you use the present moment to feel bad about another person’s past actions.

The only way to experience happiness is to take responsibility for creating it. You’re not responsible for what happened to you in the past but you're responsible for your attitude now. Why let someone who hurt you in the past have power over your present?  
You can have a sad story in your past without building your present around it. 

Reconnect with who you were before the pain.

It’s not easy to release a pain identity, particularly if you've carried it around for a long time. It may help to remember who you were before that experience—or to consider who you might have become if it hadn't happened. You can still be that person, someone who doesn't feel bitter or angry frequently.

Someone once asked if forgiving my cousin was letting him off the hook?  To this I reply of course I am,  because by letting him off my hook I give room for God to deal with HIS hook, I like the sound of those odds better. 

For Real?

I took a break from telling my story; felt we all needed a break some light relief after “See you later.”

Mental illness doesn't kill you, so what just happened in that hospital bed was beyond me. I had to ask the question, what occurred here?

Towards the end of his life my father lived with a number of relations.  They had previously made a lot of noise about being better supporters and carer’s of my father and had hounded my mother out of her marriage.

My father was too soft for his own good, we talked about this at length and probably the only topic that made us both mad at each other.

Like for real ?

It turns out my father had a mental health crisis and one of my cousins took it upon himself to beat him up because he didn't like the way my father was behaving.  Lesson number one if you don’t like how someone is behaving in their own house you move out, you don’t put your grubby hands on a frail old man! 

Entitlement puffs you; it fools you into believing you own what doesn't belong to you!

Apparently this was not the only time he had done this but on this occasion he beat my father so bad cracked his ribs and perforated his lungs!

My dad drowned in his own blood.

The thing is this, I know he was fighting mental illness, I know it was getting worse as he grew older; I know he was imperfect but he was mine and I loved him with all his imperfections!

Some of the family knew this abuse was happening and they covered it. I will never understand whether it was out of fear of facing ugly or whether they just didn't care. I took it they just didn't care because if you love someone in my world you don’t bury your head in the sand you stand up face ugly and you fight!

As if this wasn't enough, they took advantage of our pain and confusion and swindled us out of our inheritance.

But I was coming for them, I didn't plan it, that day just came, and when it did I said enough is enough.

Get unstuck

Family sometimes looks polished on the outside, from an external perspective we may be attracted by the cars the homes or even kids. Behind closed door however family can be hard work, There is a degree of functionality that I suspect every family needs but every family at some level has some  dysfunction The distinction should maybe not be how dysfunctional they are but more so how committed the family is to make it work.

I write this in memory of my dad, he was more than a man with a tag with mental illness; he was intelligent funny hard-working kind and generous individual.  If I were to choose a dad all over even with what I know now I would chose him.

It took me years to come to a place of peace, years of pain, years of anger. Anger is a poison when brewed it turns to bitterness, bitterness will distort your personality and change your name.

My heart is mending, other places are still tender but that is ok, healing is a process. I refuse to let the pain of my past stop me from flying.

I am learning to forgive, not because I necessarily want to mend relationships, I just want to be free unforgiveness will glue you to your past.

My dad died too early in my life I think, but then again I am not God so I trust, I just trust.

Own Your Story

Break up your unploughed ground, and do not sow among thorns

Changing calendars may be a good time for reassessment. How did last year go? What do I want to do differently this year? Over time, the New Year seems to have developed camps determining our approach to it. There is the camp for resolutions and those against.  Then there are those that call them goals but not resolutions; someone help me out with the difference here.

All in all I guess at some level, we all need changes. Some changes we find hard to admit to others and maybe even to ourselves. There is great power in confession. Owning up to our failures is the first, painful step on the road to something better. For the person who determines to learn from it, failure is a friend, failure is not the end.

The New Year somewhat puts a requirement on us to do better. We all at some level have a desire to be better, to do better.

So for me this year, I refuse to do nothing but equally refuse to attempt something and fail miserably in a secret resolution. Yes I said it I have something I want to improve, to change, to be.  Call it a goal, an aim, call it what you may but 2016 is the year I get summer arms!!!

Yes I know there are more important things to life than my bingo wings but get this, I don’t want to bore you with my list of do better be better. I have those and I am dealing with them. But I have decided where my arms are concerned? We are going to do this together.

It takes a whole village

I will not hide this resolution; to borrow an old African saying it takes a whole village….
I am tired of all the undercover “resolutions” that have been recycling on my list for years. I am tired of secretly failing so this year I am going to try something new, I am making it public.  I know I have pushed myself into a corner and attracted the arm measuring police, the gym superintendents the food inspectors and the exercise monitors, for this year all of these people are my friends.

So my friends if you ask about my arms, talk about them, comment about them it’s your problem too, I fail you fail I succeed you succeed.

My story

The thing is my arms have bothered me for years and as I grow older they have grown bigger and I have acquired my own personal fan when I walk around.
To some my resolution may appear a bit shallow, it’s the New Year, indulge me!
This issue  doesn't define me, it doesn't rule me but I figured if I can do something about it why can’t I at least attempt to change it and quit moaning.

Change can be scary but don’t let scared stop you from evolving this year, it might not work and you don’t have to go public. Any change is always accompanied by discomfort but like one writer once said “your desire to change must be greater than your desire to remain the same”.


Michelle Obama I am coming for those arms!

Merry Christmas

I am unsure whether it's a measure of impatience on my part or it’s just me getting older and turning into my grandmother. I am beginning to find the hand to hand combat with human beings over Christmas shopping weary, it’s a little bit grating. 

Self-defence or attack?

Christmas shoppers to me always seem to prey on those they perceive to be weak of course, they want to be in and out as quickly as possible avoiding those who they think can put up a fight.  This is why as the conceived prey, you may always be at a disadvantage. Especially if you're face to face with him, the guy who has just picked your bird. If it's the last bird in the fridge and its Christmas Eve then yes, the dreaded bird is yours.

Unless you want to exit empty handed, you have to know how you can take down an opponent, this can open up bigger possibilities for you so you have to survive the attack. It's an idea however, to get out of there as soon as he's down.

This got me thinking, why do I have to be in combat with someone just to buy a bird that will take me hours to cook and will last weeks to be eaten? So three Christmas’ ago I stopped buying it, that bird wasn't going to torture me. I was going to buy at Christmas only what I liked to eat. Sandwiches this Christmas? Yes please!

Connection

This Christmas I have decided to connect more than to consume, to look around at the people around me and find the blessing in all of them.

I am going to allow myself to be disrupted.  Among the trees, the lights the presents and maybe even that bird; I will allow myself to be interrupted by the people that have been placed in my life; disrupted by the relationships that matter to me.

There is a possibility I have become complacent in some relationships, taken some for granted and even neglected some. It’s hard accepting you have been wrong at times. 

Sometimes in relationships we think it's about how tough we are when all we are required to be is vulnerable. Vulnerability gives an opportunity to be transparent, transparency allows growth in any relationship.

So this Christmas I won't cry over failed relationships I will look at the people around me and be thankful for the relationships that remain working. Failure teaches us the value in that which still remains a success.  

I will aim not to be too busy being everything to everyone that I forget to be something to myself.  Life is about what you allow God to do through you in spite of what is happening to you.  I will intentionally park with the people that not only make me become better but hopefully I too will in turn try to make others become the best they can be.

So this is not to judge you if you are still Christmas shopping or even perhaps looking for that bird, don’t forget to wear that helmet and shin pads and maybe even some gloves for the upcoming combat good luck  AND

Merry Christmas

See You Later

          

I hope to see you soon, and we will talk face to face. Peace to you. The friends here send their greetings. Greet the friends there by name.

I got a call telling me I needed to get home as my father was ill.  I was a little confused, being mentally ill and sectioned surely wasn't life threatening.  It turns out he was in a “normal” hospital, whatever normal may be. He hadn't been ill or anything but now they were telling me he was critical.

My plane ride home was agonising; imagine being alone on a plane, isolated, entertaining thoughts of uncertainty and despair not fully understanding the situation but praying for a miracle anyway. Terror grips you, the torture of “what if” torments you.  I panicked, the fear he wouldn't hold on, the fear that I wouldn't see him breathe, the fear of darkness, the fear of pain, the fear of the unknown….

The fear period!

I was taken straight to the hospital when I arrived, he was unconscious but I sensed he knew I was there. I had willed him to hold on, I had prayed for him to hold on and he had.

I had never seen my father look so frail, look so ill but also look so peaceful.  I remember being desperate for him to be right with God, this may not be important to others but it was important to me.  I prayed with him and asked him to give me a sign if he agreed with me. I saw the slightest of smiles, his smile gave me hope.  This was his way of saying to me its ok chick- I get my cheekiness from my father.

I remember looking around the room and being slightly aware that I had an aunt huddled in a combination of fear and panic in a corner holding  the largest praying beads I had ever seen in my life!  That memory is forever imprinted in my story about my father and for some reason in the midst of the sadness that memory makes me crack up and laugh hysterically.

 See you later

I was only with him for a few hours when his breathing changed, became slightly laboured.  In one moment I saw him breathe in, I waited, and I waited!  I remember being filled with a sense of panic that he would suffocate if he didn't exhale.

It never came.

God tapped me on the shoulders that night and said “pardon me”; Eternity interrupted time and said “excuse me, this one’s mine!”

Just like that my father stepped from this side of time into the next; just like that they moved from referring to “him” to referring to “the body”.

Someone switched off the lights in my world that day, my heart broke, somebody pulled it out of my chest cavity stomped on it and tossed it out the window!  I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream, I wanted to punch somebody.  To me, what had just happened in that moment? that wasn't right, it wasn't fair - Come on God!

My Dad died, that’s my “tag line” when people ask me about him. It sums up all the information they need.  But for me, it carries a greater reality I felt when he died that day– that I will never be the same.  I will never be the same as I was before.  

In some ways, I see life as a puzzle, every experience you have forms a piece of your unique puzzle. When combined, they form the entire picture of your life. My Dad took a piece of my puzzle with him, a piece that will never return. I am incomplete without it, I am incomplete without him.

I have learnt that it doesn't matter how badly your heart is broken, the world doesn't stop for your grief.  How can it? The world can’t, no matter how badly it wants to stop.