I Must Rise

Today peeps, I am feeling a little better and I will embrace my mind more with positive thoughts and thinkings. I found myself reading BeliefNet http://www.beliefnet.com last night, an inspirational site of faith, spirituality amongst other things and then I did some meditating.

As I inhaled and Exhaled, focussing my mind on positives - I began to feel better. I also realised that I had to work on myself in order to bring me out of the state I was rapidly heading into. Yet I also realised that I had to take time out for me. Not just a day here and there but a total block of about a week or so.

For me the past two weeks had leapt at me the way they did because I was dwelling on my life too much. I wanted to become absorbed by my grief. I actually wanted to remain in that dark place and sometimes, I realise I will go there. But it's not healthy to remain there. I realise that what I am going through is a process. The process of grieving and I have to learn to just let whatever I feel be. I also have to stop being strong, yet being strong is so many things to different people. Yet I must not and cannot allow myself to wallow for too long, because I could easily slip into the murky depths of despair.

I also am beginning to realise that I have not and am not giving myself time, space to really reflect and heal and to understand what I am feeling. Therefore, I will be taking myself off somewhere soon, somewhere quiet, somewhere where I can get in touch with my soul and just be. Somewhere where if I feel to cry I will cry, or if I feel to sing or to just sit and think, I will.

Therefore, I will leave you with the following, by Dr Maya Angelou:

"I can be changed by what happens to me. but i refuse to be reduced by it.”


Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave, I rise, I rise, I rise.

I so love this because there is so much strength and reassurance in this quote, and it gives me courage to move on and upward.

THIS WEEK HAS BEEN A STRUGGLE

This week, ending February 9th 2007 has been a tough week for me emotionally. I am so used to being strong, used to dealing with crisis, maybe even suppressing my emotions and carrying on as best as I can. I am very used to just doing what must be done, asking God to strengthen me.

Yet this week has been a struggle for me. Even I have been surprised at how I am struggling internally, emotionally. My best friend admitted that this is the first time she has heard me say I am Fed Up, and we have known each other for over 25 years.

This week has been a journey of much reflection, thought, decision making. The pain seated in the pit of my stomach is incredible. I have been conscious as from last Wednesday of myself spiralling into a pit, heading for a place where I actually wanted to be. A place where I wanted to cut myself off from everyone and everything. Even my children, could not reach out and make a difference to where I actually wanted to be.

I took a lot of long walks and I am enjoying being alone, on my own and in the loneliness of this journey – I crave that absence from interacting with others, selfish but that’s where I am at the moment.

I have never experienced anything on this level before. On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, there were a few times when I felt total despair. I know this is a process I will have to work through and for the first time ever, I am actually admitting that this journey is hard. I don’t like being here, yet conflictingly, sometimes I want to remain here, to dwell where I am at. It’s not that I want to become a victim of my emotions or circumstances and neither am I looking for pity. I just want to be left alone. I don’t want to communicate with anyone, I want just to be.

I have also started to have flash-backs of times when I saw my sister suffering and these have been happening frequently at around 1am or 2am in the morning. I guess that is why sometimes I work late through the night into the early hours of the morning. I guess, in a way this is my way of trying to keep the memories and pain at bay. I also miss my partner terribly, so in effect this is a double loss I am dealing with and working through.

YET

In all that I feel, things are happening for me. I am still striving and moving forward. I am working hard – yes sometimes I am in a surreal place and mode, but I am still managing to function at a driven capacity which is producing.

I also believe that some of this incredible pain is due to growth. I am changing. I can feel that change within and I know that when I come through at the other end, I will be a more refined, stronger and hopefully wiser individual.

So, as I have said before, where there is life, there is hope. Time is a healer and it is on time that I now wait.

WHAT ARE THE TRUE QUALITIES OF A CELEBRITY?

Celebrity status? What does it mean today? What attributes does one need to be recognised as a real celebrity. Well from what I can see and from what we are bombarded with, we have role models such a Jade Goody “whose zat den”? who is only famous for winning “I’m as Celebrity – Get Me Out of here. another reality tv show. Pouting Posh whose only credentials as far as I am concerned, is that she has a very large and varied wardrobe, looks like a well-groomed stick insect and an incredibly ugly pout and so the list goes on an on. Reality TV, yep that’s where we see our stars portray their talents and that’s what our young people are seeing as their heroes and sheroes, people to aspire to becoming.

Yet compared to bygone days – days when celebrities brought something to the table, when talent and skill, intelligence, knowledge and star quality were important attributes to celebrity status, today’s celebrities are certainly well off the mark.

Yet someone who can truly claim to have made it because of her talent is Jennifer Hudson, who stars alongside, Beyonce, Jamie Fox, Eddie Murphy in Dream Girls.
Jennifer Hudson was born in Chicago, Illinois. She attended Dunbar Vocational Career Academy, where she graduated in 1999. She auditioned for the third season of American Idol in Atlanta, Georgia. She was a member of the first group of semifinalists, but was not voted through to the final round. However, she was brought back on the wildcard round and put through as a finalist by contest judge Randy Jackson.
Hudson struggled to gain popularity in the early stages of the live shows, receiving the second lowest number of votes in two of the first three shows.
In November 2005, Hudson was cast in the prized role of Effie White in the film adaptation of Dreamgirls She beat hundreds of professional singers and actresses for the role including, ironically, Fantasia Barrino who had beaten Hudson in American Idol.
Reviews of the film acclaimed Hudson's performance, and, along with winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress, she has been lauded as a possible front-runner for 2007's Academy Award for Best Supporting Actressand was nominated on January 23, 2007. She has since won the Screen Actor's Guild Award for Supporting actress, which has further made her the likely recipient of the oscar.
Now people, don’t tell me that it cannot be done. Don’t tell me that true star qualitity is a myth, a has-been and don’t tell me that you too can’t reach for the stars.
My catch phrase is “Aspire to Inspire – Dare to Dream” and that is what we all should be doing. Like I have always said, some people are quite happy being where they aer at, and that is pefectly fine. Yet there is a growing band of individuals who have become despondent, disillusioned. So what we need to do more than ever before is to inspire each other, support each other and encourage each other. Surround yourself with likemined people and draw strength from that.

The 9-5 is a sad and painful reality for many, who feel trapped, stagnant within a place or a role which is going no-place at all. Yet until you feel the pain of stagnation, until you feel it so deep inside you that you no longer have the urge to get out of your bed in the morning to face the day, then you will never take action to reach for the skies.
We all have the potential to aspire to more within us, yet are you prepared to make scarifices to get there?

PAINFUL LESSONS IN LOVE? DON'T GET MAD - GET RID OF YOUR PAIN

The beauty of life is that I want to be everything sometimes, as I dream very big and other times, I just am, in the moment, beavering away to attain all that I dream of. I know I will get there because within my basket of success is determination, ambition, passion, my vision, tenacity and energy. So therefore, whatever stumbling blocks life throws at me I use pain as my stepping stone.

Life is certainly an interesting journey of sorts. A myriad of experiences which form and mould us into the individuals we become. I use these experiences as a measuring jug, a learning curve, a source of experimental navigation. In life we are guided by many things intuition, spiritual guidance, faith - all elements which leads to destiny’s seductive call. Life also incorporates making mistakes, which sometimes take us into dark places, but the beauty here is that we can all learn from these experiences so that we can successfully move forward.

For me what makes us who we truly are is our level and type of interaction with others. What are our motives and are they honourable? Key factors in life are communication, respect, honesty and integrity. There is something called the circle of life and I believe that if we ill-treat others life certainly has a way of getting its own back at us.

A relationship I had been in for just over two years, suddenly collapsed around me recently. I had lost my sister to breast cancer in November 2006, burying her on December 4. My then partner had stood by my side at her graveside, shovelling dirt onto her grave. He spent Christmas with my family and yet he spent the New Year with someone else, a relationship he had been in for a while, apparently.

I struggled gravely for two weeks after discovering this deception. I struggled because I thought we had an honest relationship. I struggled as I had dearly and deeply loved this individual. He was my partner, soul-mate and hopefully later my husband. We worked well as a team personally and professionally. Even though he was not all what I was about, he added to who I was as a woman and people often commented on the chemistry between us.

I struggled more gravely because he would look me in the eye, telling me he loved me yet deceiving me at the same time. We had promised to be honest with each other, which was one of the mainstays of this relationship. This was important to us, because of expectations and past experiences. I felt used and betrayed. I hoped that my children, who got on well with this man and enjoyed his company would not see me as anything less than their mother who they loved and respected. I did not want to face family nor friends, because I felt ashamed. These people knew me and respected me for who I was. I had high standards. I was no longer a young 16 year old, who threw herself at any passing fancy in frivolity for the sake of love. I was a 40 year old woman who made important decisions, a product of life’s experiences, hopefully older and wiser. Yet here I was my heart stripped raw and bare, whose dreams had been briefly shattered and whose strong sense of being, dignity, value, pride and self-worth, the very foundations upon which my life had been built on, had been compromised.

Yet what lessons, can I learn here? Forgiveness. I had to learn to forgive quickly. I had to continue to love this man, for my sanity’s sake as I knew that if I did not have the courage to do this, I would be filled with rage and resentment that would eat away at my dreams and hopes in building a better future for myself and my children. It would also eat away at the very core, beauty and essence of who I was as a unique individual. The pain was unbearable but I knew I deserved better than this travesty.

I have learned that whatever life throws at you, to use pain as a stepping stone. He apologised over the phone, yet not face to face as a real man should. He realised he had demons to deal with and needed time and space to sort himself out. Whether in practicality he will do this is to be seen, as to a large extent he still refuses to take full responsibility for his actions to all parties involved. So I need to learn to let go, gradually with love.

For those of us who are honest individuals we expect the same back from others. In reality I know this is a risk, yet without trust there is nothing. We all want to be loved yet sometimes, I have to challenge, at what price? I had tried to avoid selling my soul to Satan for a kiss and a cuddle and for a man to make me feel cherished and loved, yet that is what it seems I did, without intention.

In the greater scheme of things though, I refuse to become bitter, I refuse not to believe in the intricacies and honesty of true love. I refuse to let any experience like this taint who I am at my core, because I am retrieving what and who I am about. I am going through a process of serious reflection, contemplation and self-analysis. I am learning to love and respect me again, yet this time, on a more intimate level. I am also looking more closely at my part in this scenario trying to identify what I failed to notice, what I could have noticed, the obvious clues I may have missed. Yet I also take away the good times we had and other positives I experienced with him.

I am a phenomenal woman, and I’d better continue to believe it. And you know what? I have my dreams and aspirations which burn more brightly and which are driving me to become the success I will be. I have my children and a wonderfully small, trusted and select group of good friends around me. We all draw strength from different sources and mine was my faith. Yes, I have been hurt deeply but you know? just like Dr Maya Angelou said:

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave
I am the dream and the hope of the slave
I rise, I rise, I rise, I rise