Perfect

If you follow me on Twitter or if you're one of my Facebook friends, you know how much I love this song. I've included the clean version here because some followers of this blog may or may not be offended by the uncut version. Both of my personalities like this clean version, but on the other hand, we both feel the uncut version.

I was watching a Tivo'd episode of Oprah recently and she said something that I have always said to people, but just not as eloquently as she. She said that we "teach what we most need to learn." My sister and I have conversations to that effect all the time. I do it all the time right here on this blog. It's easy for me to tell you what to do to feel good about yourselves. It's easy to drill into your heads that your are perfect just the way you are. It's easy because I know, logically, how this thing called life is supposed to be done. What's not easy is doing it. The phrase "easier said than done" applies here.

You know how sometimes when you're talking to your friend about a problem she may have and the solution seems so obvious to you that you can't understand why she can't see it herself? I mean, it's right there in front of her face. Why can't she see it? She sees it. However, it's far less painful to pretend she has no clue than it is to resolve the issue. I don't know about you, but I do that all the time.

Here's the thing: I know me. I'm aware of all my issues. One of the things I know is that my cursing so much is a defense mechanism. It says to people, "That is the wrong woman to mess with. Don't try to take advantage of her or otherwise get on her bad side because things will not go well for you." I know that I developed this defense mechanism as a result of not feeling protected as a child. I had so many horrible things happen to me and I would wonder why no one would come to my defense. No one brought food to my siblings and me when our mother disappeared for days at a time. No one objected when she sold me to a man for drug money. No one stopped the man in the stairwell from trying to rape me when I was six-years-old; I stopped him myself. I kicked and scratched...and I screamed curse words at him...until he let me up off the concrete floor. I knew what he wanted to do to me and I was damned sick of being a victim. At six. That's when I learned that cursing can make people leave you alone. Kicking and scratching don't hurt, either.

I didn't know why my mother didn't love me and the only reason I could think of why God didn't love me was that I was a bad girl. I was bad and that was why bad things always happened to me. That was why God let them happen.

I spent a large portion of my life trying to make up for being bad. I let people take advantage of me and treat me unkindly. I was fully aware of what they were doing, I just wanted to redeem myself in the eyes of God. I had to somehow get back into His good graces. People called me names, I said nothing. Some would physically attack me, I didn't retaliate. Others betrayed me, and though I was hurt, I let them get away with it. You see, I felt I deserved their mistreatment and hatred. Because I was a bad girl. I was a bad person.

Then, one day I got pissed. I tell you today that nothing cures despair like anger. Don't ever let anyone tell you that anger is counterproductive because it definitely is not. All emotions serve a purpose. This post is not about anger, so I will tell you about channeling it properly some other time. Right now I want to tell you about how getting angry repaired my broken spirit. At least that's what I thought at the time.

I thought, "Why the hell don't I deserve to be protected? What makes me so evil that the whole world can dump all over me without consequences?" I didn't remember doing anything that would warrant God's hatred, so I had had enough. I went from the extreme of being a doormat to the extreme of being in constant-anger mode. But again, we'll talk about that in a future post.

Even after I learned to calm myself and be a little more peaceful, I still had this one issue that wouldn't go away: I was fat. It was more than that, though. I would gain weight, be horrified by my reflection in the mirror, then lose weight. Lather, rinse, repeat as needed. I used to think that I had a love/hate relationship with food, as in: I love it, it loves me, and I hate that it loves me so damned much because it has a tendency to stick around long after I'm done savoring its deliciousness. I've realized, later than I would have hoped, that my love/hate relationship is with myself. I absolutely love to hate myself. I've become quite good at it, too. I call myself names, I physically attack myself (in the forms of overeating and other self-abuse), I betray my own sense of self-worth by doing things that make me feel horrible about myself. Does any of this sound familiar?

Why do I do this to myself?

Because somewhere, not so deep down inside myself, I still think I'm a bad girl. I still think I deserve to be mistreated only I've made it clear to others that they can't do it. So who does that leave to treat me like dirt?

Me.

Isn't that something? I've fought most of my life to be respected and here I am disrespecting myself. If you recognize yourself anywhere in this post, let's stop this abuse of ourselves. Let's take a stand against the one person we thought would always have our backs. Let's defend ourselves...against ourselves. Don't defeat yourself before you even begin by saying how hard this is going to be. I'm a firm believer that you can do whatever you think you can do. If you think it's going to be hard, it'll be hard; if you think it's going to be easy, it'll be easy. Let's come up with strategies and game plans as if we were facing our greatest enemy. Let's find ways to cut him off at every pass. Let's be on the offensive. Let's attack before the "enemy" gets a chance to.

I'm going to take my first step today. When I finish this post, I'm going to walk over to my dresser, pick up the bottle of diet pills that I pay $40/month for and I'm going to throw them in the trash. I'm going to continue  on the blood pressure pills I take to counteract the effects of said diet pills, but only for a month. And hopefully, once both medicines are out of my system, I can reclaim the libido that has been lost from taking the blood pressure meds. As you can see, I gave up a lot to my inner enemy; my health, my womanhood. And if that weren't enough, those pills turn you into a raging lunatic. Some of you have benefited from that lunacy on A Bitch Called Mom. I guess we'll have to see if I have any 'bitch' left in me once the diet pills are all gone.

I suspect there's plenty to spare.

"Change the voices in your head. Make them like you instead." ---P!nk

Here's to self-love, self-worth, and self-respect! Please send positive vibes, thoughts, and prayers my way and I will do the same for you.

Until next week,

Feed on love, subsist on peace.

Operation: For the Love of Me

Today I did something that I haven't done in at least ten years. I cut my hair. What's so unique and special about that is what came next. Cutting my hair prompted me to embark on a year-long journey to self-love; Operation: For the Love of Me. It made me think about all of the things that I do out of love for others. I cook because I love my family and I want them to have nutritious meals. I'm active in the PTA because I love my children and I want to ensure they have quality educations. I've been on a quest to find my signature fragrance because I love my husband and I want to smell good for him. I even write this blog because I love my fellow man and I want you to be happy. 

What, though, have I done out of love for me? Don't wait too long for the answer because I'm still thinking. Like many women, I've left myself for last and then, eventually, completely forgotten about myself. I don't remember the last time I laughed until I cried. No, wait. I was watching an episode of Scare Tactics that had tears streaming down my cheeks. Unfortunately, that was about three months ago. At least. So to remedy this, I have decided that for the next 365 days, I will do something to care for and cherish and honor me.

I've started with my hair. I have worn wigs and/or weaves for at least the past ten years. My favorite saying was, "There is no excuse for a bad hair day." If you happened to see me strolling around Lake Montebello, you might have seen my real hair. But only if I didn't happen to have a cute ponytail to clip onto my own. So...twice. After years of gluing, sewing, clipping, drawstring-ing, and braiding, my hair was unhealthy to say the least. It fell out a few times at the top and back, it thinned out considerably, and I had started getting those bald edges that you see when one braids her hair a lot. My hair was shoulder-length with split ends, about two inches long at the top, and as thin as a newborn baby's. So I cut it off.

Here is a picture of me before. 

Note the long, luxurious hair masking the thin, unhealthy hair. Pretty neat trick, wouldn't you say? Oh, and making it worse I might add.

Here's a picture of me today. 

Wait for it...

Just to drive the point home, here are a few more.

  

It's what I call on-my-way-to-healthy. You have no idea how hard it was for me to post these pictures. Nobody but my immediate family has seen my actual hair for years. I wouldn't leave the house unless I had some sort of apparatus on my head. If someone knocked on my door and my hair wasn't all weaved up, I would kill anyone who dared open the door without first giving me time to put on a wig. I didn't care who it was either, my kids' friends, the mailman, the cable guy, my in-laws. Nobody was allowed to see the real me. I wonder why that was? 

Was it because for all my positive talk on this blog, I still didn't think the real me was good enough? Let's explore that over the next year, shall we?

I've made a list of all the things I believe I need in order to be healthy. This is just the jumping off point, so I may see the need in the future to add more.

1. Drink eight glasses of water/day

2. Take Vitamin D pills (my doctor swears by them)

3. Exercise one hour/day

4. Eat more healthy foods than nutritionally-challenged foods

5. Wash my hair twice/week

6. Trim my hair every six weeks

7. Grant myself the time to soak in the tub at least three times/week. 

8. Meditate for 15 minutes/day

9. Write something everyday be it a page, poem, prayer, chant, or grocery list

10. Forgive one person/day

11. Forgive myself for one thing/day and write it down so I won't forget it.

12. Listen to my children's actual voices for 10 minutes/day. This may seem weird, but I realized the other day that the whole day had gone by and I hadn't actually spoken to my oldest son. We had sent several text messages, though. 

13. Hug my family everyday

14. Listen to my husband vent/rant about his job for 10 minutes/day

15. Tell more jokes. I don't think I'm funny, so this won't be an easy one. 

16. Spend less time around vampires. Yes, I said vampires. You know those people who suck all the energy and life right out of you? Vampires.

I'm inviting all of you to join me. Let's make this the biggest movement our generation has seen. OPERATION: FOR THE LOVE OF ME!!!!!!

And in the spirit of keeping my promise to myself, here's a joke:

A man and his wife were having some problems at home and were giving each other the silent treatment. The next week the man realized that he would need his wife to wake him at 5:00 a.m. for an early morning business flight to Chicago. Not wanting to be the first to break the silence, he finally wrote on a piece of paper, "Please wake me at 5:00 a.m." 
The next morning the man woke up, only to discover it was 9:00 a.m. and that he had missed his flight. Furious, he was about to go and see why his wife hadn't woken him when he noticed a piece of paper by the bed ... it said... "It's 5:00 a.m. Wake up."

Until next week,

Feed on love; subsist on peace.

Our Bodies, Ourselves

One day when my oldest son was about three years old, we went to visit his grandparents. They were really excited to see him, but he wasn't in the best of moods at the time. Maybe he was sleepy; maybe he was hungry. I don't remember. I do remember, though, that his grandmother wanted to give him a hug. Khalil wasn't having that. Usually, he would run to her and jump into her arms. They would plant kisses all over each other's faces and giggle, but not that day. Disappointed, my mother-in-law said to me, "Shawnie, make him give me a hug."

My response? "He doesn't have to hug you if he doesn't want to."

I could tell by her expression that her feelings were hurt. My response probably could have been a lot nicer. I should have taken her feelings into consideration. I wish I had. But the sentiment would have been the same.

From the time my son was born, I decided that I would let him know that it is okay to say no to adults. I wanted to empower him so that some ill-meaning person would be less likely to take advantage of him. Many times children who are sexually abused don't realize that they can say no. They think they have to do what the predator says because he/she is an adult. That's what I thought when I was a child being abused. I thought, "If I don't do what he says, I'll be in trouble." I thought, "My mother told me to do what the babysitter tells me to do." I thought, "This doesn't feel right, but I can't disobey my aunt."

Children have to know that sometimes, disobeying is the right thing to do. They can't know that unless we teach them. They won't know unless we teach them. Teach them that their bodies belong to them. Nobody has a right to touch them for any reason without their consent. Did I say nobody? Because I mean absolutely nobody: not mommy, not daddy, not teacher, not coach, not sister, not brother, not pastor. Nobody. My daughter was four years old when I had to verbally instruct her on the proper way to clean her private areas because she decided that she no longer wanted me to do it. She was able to decide because she knew it was her choice.

Teach them to trust their instincts. You'll hear me say this often: intuition is the voice of God. When you have a bad feeling about something, that's God whispering, and sometimes screaming, in your ear, "This is not right!" Don't ignore God's voice. He only speaks when there is something important to say.

Teach them to tattle. I know that we've been taught not to tattle-tale. We've been urged to stop snitching. I think that's ridiculous and if I offend anyone on this point, I don't really care. If a child thinks he'll be ostracized for "snitching" on someone who has hurt him, he won't tell anyone. And he will continue to be hurt. Can you imagine how you would feel if you discovered that your child was in pain and avoided telling you because he thought you'd be angry at him for tattling?

We try our best to protect our children, but we cannot always be there. So for the times when you're not around, arm them with  knowledge. Arm them with empowerment!

Until next week,

Feed on love, subsist on peace.