Comfort

The following is a message I sent to a friend who was having a very hard time dealing with a loss of a loved one. When I read the words back, I realized that even I had not done what I had written to my friend. I had not just taken a step back to breathe in the world, to just live.

"People come and go, that is the truth and the circle of life. However, our lives are molded and shaped by those who have come into it. We could keep everyone at a distance shielding ourselves from the probable hurt and discomfort we would feel upon their leaving, whether that leaving be by choice or by nature. We would only be left with this empty void that we would have no way of filling. Our souls are not made by instinct but by example and by experience. We are who were are by what we have done in our lives. It is what makes us unique and makes us real and human. Things hurt, believe me, I should be the shining example of that statement. However, the hurt fades and the realization of that fact that life is still moving, breathing, and livable hits you. You move on. You get out of that bed, smiling occasionally. You will notice the sun is shining brighter and the trees are a bit greener someday. Maybe not today, nor tomorrow. But one day you will notice, and it is that day that your "happy" will be back. I promise, it is waiting somewhere. You just need to step back and wait for it.."

Use Your Heart, Not Your Words

Changing schools is always a huge ordeal; you have left your friends and your comfort zone. You have put all your energy into the school you have just left and now are expected to try and build a whole new life in this vast, strange world. Yes, that was what was expected of me between my 6th and 7th grade year of junior high in 1987, but it did not stop there. Not only was I asked to change schools, I was asked to start school right after a major surgery in which I was to start school on crutches. It would not have been so terrible had I been in casts or in a wheelchair, which I could have handled. However, to start with normal legs, or so they appeared, and to have to walk with crutches was so horrifying to me. You see, I have clubfoot. A deformity which I was born with in both the left and right foot, leaving me with over 15 surgeries on each leg up until the age of 18. I was never ashamed of my legs, until that day. I wanted to crawl into a hole and never return to the light. I did not make to many friends that day. Some people remembered me from when we went to the same grade school from before, so they had said hello, but kids are cruel. I received stares, laughter, and humiliation throughout the entire day. It was probably the most horrific day of my entire life. The problem was, it stuck with me and the rest of them forever. No one forgot that I was handicapped. I forgot the minute I could lose the crutches, but they still saw them. It is so sad that people cannot see past the physical and see what is on the inside of people. I truly believe there is more to life than a crutch or a wheelchair. People have more to offer than the speed at which they can run, walk, or jump. I believe it is what is in you heart that moves you neither your feet nor your body.

This post was written for the People History. You can visit this website at www.thepeoplehistory.com

Does It Really Come Back Around?

When you lose in love, you feel like all is lost. You can hear every sound, every motion made by the smallest of objects floating along the breeze. The breeze is cooler, the leaves rustle louder on the tree in the gentle wind, and sun is just a bit stronger in your eyes. You look at the world as if it just became so large that it will swallow you whole just by stepping outside the door. Love and relationships have this enormous way of consuming every inch of your soul, taking all of your senses and manipulating them to see what it wants you to see. When that is gone, or if it was not real or hidden, the pain that was there all along is palpable and so compressing it feels as if your being crushed at all angles. As we emerge from this state of repression and smallness, we really must ask this question: Does it really come back around? We all become re-involved in relationships and life, but do we really reclaim the trust, that sense of calmness with the person in which we have found? Our hearts are so eager to feel that excitement, that passion; can we really be sure that we are so trusting of that other person or do we immediately implant our preconceived notions of failure onto that person because we have subconsciously failed to let go of the past? Do some of us avoid relationships just because we are afraid of love and afraid of being hurt so that we just cannot let ourselves feel that intimacy again? That we feel that we cannot let go of the past so that we just isolate ourselves to a life of unfeeling and loneliness rather than feel that joy even if it is for just a moment? Maybe the question of it coming back around will never be answered? Maybe we just can never know why we are why we are. This also could just be the ramblings of a hopeless romantic still looking at the stars with all her might knowing that someday that somewhere it will come back. It has to, right?

Who Knew Forrest Gump Had It Right?

Who knew that those few words of that catchy little phrase would hold so much meaning, so much power? "Life is like a box of chocolate's, you never know what your going to get". No truer statement has ever been uttered has it? It is the truth that you must first take a bite out of life before you realize what it is your going to get out of it. The same goes for love and relationships. You have no clue what is going to happen until you try. I guess you could just sit alone in your room, watching old movies waiting for the the world to change. Believe you me, I have pondered the notion as of late. But, where would that get me but a tired,lonely heart with no memories to share and no one to have shared them with. I would rather have a few moments of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special. For that is what life is all about really. Those few moments, the moments that make you realize you are alive. That is what life is made up of, that is what your legacy is about. It is about the people you have touched while you were here that matters the most, not what you have left behind.

Can We Really Learn From a Script?

We all have done it, sat up and screamed “Exactly” at the movie or television screen when the script writer has given the perfect answer to the actor or actress and they have displayed in such a way that it is obvious that no one would be able to miss it. However, is it that obvious? Can we all get that subtle hint that is being nudged in our general direction? Can we really learn love from a script? Men, I have noticed, are so uneager to attend the proverbial “chic flick” for one reason and one reason only-FEAR. Fear that they are going to be scrutinized every minute that the female that they with are will be analyzing every thing they have done up until that point and may decide that they need to move to greener and plusher pastures. However, what the men do not realize is that the girls are on that same date thinking “What haven’t I done to make him want to be like that with me”. So you see, the “chic flick” is not just torture for the male species but for the female mind as well. We go to these movies or watch these television shows because we want to know that true love is out there, that in some form love is real, tangible, and in bloom. We want to think that the unimaginable is actually plausible. That someday that one person who didn’t think that “happy” was attainable can look in the mirror and see that happy was just around the corner that whole time waiting. Script writers bring out emotions deep inside that we try to say are not really there, that we say we do not feel for the fear of hurt and sorrow. We have become afraid of love and affection, afraid of the need of human contact. We allow ourselves to become involved in the movies and in the television because we know its not forever. We can relate to that shortness of time and inevitability that it will leave someday. We cannot equate that in real life trials and tribulations. We cannot establish in our hearts that level of readiness for the end in love, so we form walls and build hard shells in hopes to keep those feelings from getting all the way through. Maybe some day we will learn to “Hear” and “Learn” from the script writers. Maybe we can actually live a page or two from our beloved movies and hopefully maybe just maybe, we can find that true love isn’t just $8.50 and the phrase “Pass the popcorn”.

Things Change When You Become A Mom-At 19

It was a hard choice, the choice I made to become a teenage mother at the age of 19. I did not go looking to do this, it just happened. It was not a wish that was granted by my fairy Godmother, for I would have asked for the body of a Victoria Secret model and the money of Donald Trump. No, this was a decision that was made by shear nerve and perseverance, to know that I was making the ultimate sacrifice for something that I truly believed in. I knew that deep in my heart that I was meant to be a mother, I just wasn’t prepared for it to have happened so early on in life. However, I took it in stride. I gave birth to a healthy, beautiful baby boy. I named him after a wonderful friend and a charismatic little charmer of a boy in my class at the school where I was a teacher aide at the time. It was not easy, not by any means. I struggled; I struggled to maintain a life of my own and the life of a mother. To some, it was if I had died. They thought because I could not go out, I had be given a death sentence. They had no idea the joy that came with being able to hold and soothe a small, helpless life that solely depended on you. There were others that viewed from a distance looking down through their lashes at what they thought was sin, a young girl out of wed-lock with a young baby with no father. The only sin was the thoughts they were having of my child and me. I held my head high through the hard times and through the good. It is a lonely place to be when you have had a child at such a young age, no one really understands unless you have been there. Unless you have given up your entire existence to give life to another, you cannot even fathom the loneliness that comes every night when you close your eyes. To have not experienced life as others have is a tremendous burden to bear. To which I must say I would not trade that burden for one moment if it meant I would not have my son, for he is my soul. No matter how hard my day with him as been, he is my life at the end of it. My children are the air I breathe each and every day. Learning to grow with my children as been a journey I will never forget as I hope they will remember how their mom gave her all to them as they grow to be men. I hope they can take that love to their families and learn from their moms’ mistakes and remember that it is not what you have or who you know, but how you love that matters.

A New Road.

" We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal." Is this not what the doctrine of our great nation proclaim? Is that not what we fight for every day in and out of this land to preserve so fervently? Everywhere we turn these days we see the abuse of the political front on each and every corner of rural and city America. When did our choices become governed by the States and by the Democracy? When did we lose our right to choose whom we love, how we conceive, and how we heal? When did we lose our rights as people of this great land? It did not happen with Bush, it did not happen with Clinton, however unyielding in their strides to try,it was not them. It was us, We the people. We the people gave up our freedoms by forgetting to vote on election day or saying we were to tired to care. We the people throw away our choice when we choose to let the voices come from single minded individuals who are only out there to bolster a race, religion, or single cause. We the people need to stand firm for one common cause-We the People. It is us that is suffering and with no hand to pull us up from the brink. We the people are caught in the cross-fire of a blood shed of power and greed. No more is this great Democracy about strength, pride, and civil liberties. It is now about money, power, and the hold of the globe in it's entirety. So many want it, so few attain it. It is so much stronger today than it was in years past. We are watching the first woman and African-American run for the Presidency. Never were there higher stakes than these, than watching to see if this country proceeds on making history or making choices. We the people have to start realizing that if we do not start thinking and making "Choices" we will lose this great nation to a game that has been long played but never with such costly stakes. We must demand that our country be returned to us before we lose her. We must demand that she is brought to some resemblance of her former self. We must stop the bickering amongst ourselves day in and day out about war, research, and the line between red and blue. This is a line between America and the death of a nation. Are we willing to lose that war?