A recent Facebook post prompted me to write a little bit about appreciation in reference to the need to be “honored” for our sacrifices to one person or another.

The part of us called the ego is the only reason a need to feel appreciated for what we do is present. No one wants to feel like we are unappreciated so we seek out what other people are doing to acknowledge that they see what we are doing. I agree with the poster that a woman should understand and show appreciation for sacrifices but like another poster, I believe it is true that women expect different things from men than maybe men expect from women.

This is an issue my ex-husband and me had. He thought I didn't "appreciate" things the way he thought I should as I didn't respond the way he wanted me to. No matter what, I could never live up to whatever response he wanted me to have to what he was doing. I was never appreciative enough and I think that may be the issue with some men as well as women with what we do to show recognition of the sacrifices we make for one another.

Acknowledgment is an important factor in the realization of what one does for another person but it should be the least worried about. We stay ego-trippin' because we want our praise when we feel like we've done something worthy of such. When we don't get it, we feel slighted and that in itself starts the root of what should be only a small problem.

What we should be focusing on is learning how to balance the need to satisfy the ego while still nurturing our partner. That is not to say deny yourself. No one should EVER do that, but we all have to learn how to live a life of balance in everything we do. With romantic relationships being such a huge part of our lives, we should strive to know our own inner workings and use that to learn how to interact with our partner(s), life or otherwise.

My friend, Jerry, sent me a link to an article after a discussion we had on Facebook about being able to openly discuss racism and how we will eventually have to move toward embracing each other no matter the color of our skin. We talked about even though we will have to do such, we have to start somewhere on our individual ladders and combat racism on several levels before we can do so. In this article, On Inter-Racial Trust and Why It's So Hard To Go There, Mikhail Lyubansky,Ph. D., talks about why it is so hard to talk about race openly and honestly. Toward the end of the article, he states:

"...I want to share the most important thing I've learned about conflict, which is that it is much safer to move toward it than away (Dominic Barter). . This may have desired benefits in the short run but if there is conflict or tension, it is sure to bubble up again, usually "louder" than before because of the increased distance. The solution to any conflict is always dialog. Racial tension is no exception. If we are to racially heal, we have to talk to each other."

We hear this about conflict all the time when we talk about romantic relationships but no one is really saying this about relating to people in general. If we never hash out our problems in the open, no matter how violent or uproarious it may get, we never grow. An analogy I like to use which I got from a pastor whose name I can't recall right now is this:

When we're getting ready to breakthrough, it's going to be like a woman giving birth. It is as close to death as anyone can get, but somehow, we make it over the threshold to birth new life into this world even when we thought we couldn't do it. It's going to be extremely painful, you'll feel like giving up, you'll get tired, but that baby has got to come out either way.

Of course that is paraphrased, but you get the gist. I can testify to how that feels because I had both of my children with no assistance of pain medication. I wanted the experience of doing it naturally the way it was meant to be and it does feel like you won't be able to do it. You wonder how in the hell your body is going to push this baby out but you do it and afterward, the joy is overwhelming and you gain more and more confidence because you went ahead with something you felt caused major conflict within your body.

In saying that, we have got to look at it like that. In order to birth new things, we will have to sacrifice some-thing(s). It may be our belongings, but those can be replaced. Sometimes it may be our physical freedom, but our minds can always be free. It may even be our lives, but our spirits never die. In recent tweets, I compared growth to the life/death process which you can find below:

When someone/thing passes, I remember that with death comes life. If no thing ever dies, how can there be room for or that push to grow? The best comparison comes from River's End by Nora Roberts where the main character talks about the life/death process of the forest. In it, she talks about how things are changing in her life and how she connects so much with the nature in the forest because it mimics so much of what had happened to her lately. The living in the forest feed off of what has passed on to create a new future for the forest. So when we talk about death, remember that it is never in vain. It is simply a way of life and a rebirth or new-birth of things to come. We are here to yet make changes while we are still here. The Egyptians didn't even have a word for death; westing is what they called it as in the setting of the sun in the west so that it could give rise to the new day to come(my own interpretation). What will you give rise to in the new day?

Most things in nature can be analogized to this life/death process. We as humans should all be taking lessons from the natural order of things in nature and learning to incorporate them into our own lives so that we might live more peacefully realizing how we can compare these to our situations. The closer we are to removing the lenses from our eyes and learning how to truly see, the closer we also come to unavoidable conflict because those of us who already see or at least want to see also want others to see. We can choose to resolve our arguments sensibly or go to war. Either way, change will happen and we should all be working toward a positive outcome together. After all, racism, slavery, and most other forms of oppression haven't been solely about race. Oftentimes, it is all about capitalism, materialism and power; three things that have spawned all manner of crime, war, and hostility against humanity as a whole and even us against ourselves (singularly and communally).

I want to leave you with this quote by Anais Nin:

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.

Let us not die from refusing to do what needs to be done in order to become change. Let us instead move for it and all that it brings, even conflict, so that we may grow into our full potential as human beings. Life will always cost us something. The question is how much and for what cause(s) are you willing to pay?

Everyone knows about the recent Erykah Badu controversy regarding her video, Window Seat. My questions is what are we so afraid of? So she got naked in front of a bunch of unsuspecting strangers and, GASP!, children. What we fail to acknowledge is that nakedness is natural. Children love being naked and would run around as is if we let them. Let's look at what society has ingrained in us and not be conformed to it. This is the essence of what Ms. Erykah is saying in her video. I mean think about it. We only think that nakedness, sexuality, and everything that comes along with that is indecent because we were taught to think so. I'm a free thinker and refuse to believe and think what society has told me I should.

How many of you can say that? How many people do you know who can say that? We live in a world of mass confusion where the media, government, and even those people who claim they support and love us are all telling us what to think, how to be, what to eat, drink, do, and who to listen to. Cable TV is getting worse and worse all the time with the cursing, the nudity, the sexual acts, the violence and all that, but who are directing all of our attention to? A woman who has done nothing but speak truth from day one because she got naked in front of children. Most children are familiar and comfortable with nudity in the first place. We start learning about sex from an earlier age than ever these days. The only reason they would think being naked is "nasty" is because we have told them so. Adam & Eve in the Bible were so called "sinners" because they knew they were naked but really much of what we do is simply natural to us. What feels foreign is us trying to be some other way we were taught versus doing what simply comes to us. This is the way of today's world. We certainly couldn't have lived in ancient times with these same mindsets. We'd all have a mass heart attack looking at what went on! Do some research and learn to think on your own before tearing down what someone else is doing and overstand why they have done it.

I give mad kudos to Erykah for standing up in the name of non-conformity just like others before her have done. When will the rest of society get the message?

If you haven't seen the video and you're wondering what all the controversy is about, here it is:

I plant seeds of beauty, courage, knowledge, peace, revolution, and spirituality into our people. Culture is one of the most important aspects of society yet is upheld the least in the Black community. Across the nation we call America, we try to assimilate into mainstream culture as the norm without ever delving further into our glorious heritage. Everything is so heated in respect to race and I don’t want to fan the fire, but I am Black, of African ancestry, and so are the people I identify most closely with. The only history most of us know is exactly that--HIS STORY (i.e., slavery, prejudice, oppression, injustice, hardship, etc.).

We are in the information age, the Age of Aquarius. The advent of the internet has put the world and its knowledge at our fingertips, literally. We have no excuse not to excel, not to learn OUR STORY. Our story unobliterated, unadulterated, and unsaturated with half truths and whole lies. We must take this voyage NOW and learn of the great feats those before us accomplished thousands of years ago, struggles we overcame hundreds of years ago, and the trials we go through in present day. We should walk in remembrance of our-story and of our ancestors lifting our pride high for they paved the way and sowed these seeds of wisdom inside us all. It is up to us to unearth them and display them for all the world to see.

We must open our third eye seeing through the propaganda. Contrary to the saying, every man and woman should NOT be for themselves for we are each a part of the collective consciousness which forms us as a whole. The I in UNITY speaks for everyone including myself. When will we begin sowing the seeds I speak of into our own people? Our own communities? Our children? Ourselves? My people we must begin investing in US! Put our money and time back into our own communities so we can build the kind of empires we see every day. Imagine how different things would be for us if we owned the nail salons we frequent, the beauty supply stores, and the corner stores. What about the brands we keep afloat because we always lease that new car, buy the newest shoes, wear the most expensive perfume, drink the best liquor, and rock the latest apparel? M’bwebe Ishangi of Da Ghetto Tymz stated in a recent article that Blacks are 99% consumer and only 1% producer. How can this be when we also account for only 13% of the US population? We are physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially at the bottom and that is sad. The only place left to go is up, but how many of us know how and are willing to do what is necessary to get there?

Many people in the Pan-Afrikan circuit have stated that Black people cannot be racist and I am inclined to agree with them, but first we have to define what racism is and I don’t mean simply a dictionary definition. In general, racism is defined as hatred toward another race. When we talk about racism as it existed during the time of slavery, that definition only scrapes the surface. During slavery and after we have been subject to institutional racism; the kind of racism that oppresses certain “races” often for political, economic, and social gain. Black people have primarily not held that kind of power over any “race” and yet Whites have over most all other “races”.  The word race itself seems to have been created specifically for the purpose of classifying peoples into categories which Europeans(Whites) would then use as a gauge to trump up their own so called superiority over others who were not like them. This is when the enslavement of Africans came into play. Fast forward to present day and we have the current situation where everyone wants to eradicate racism and some even go so far as to say it doesn’t exist because we have a “Black” president now. It is indeed alive and ever-present in many Blacks lives around the globe. My point in explaining all this is that even with all we have come through and even with racism still being an issue we as Black people don’t really have an excuse not to rise above our current state. The many veils which cover so many of our eyes are being lifted every day but what are we going to do about it?

Although I have directed this primarily toward Black people, this is really information anyone can use because we are all stronger when we know the truth. Many “races” have been oppressed and still are. Many people including some White people have been oppressed and still are. Black people just seem to be the only “race” that isn’t getting it right and the odds always seem to be against us. We don’t have to stay where we are nor will we. The time is come for us to rise up and be restored as the people we once were. Take the steps needed to get to this place. I know I haven’t offered any solutions in this particular piece, but be on the lookout. I am full to the brim with passion and purpose and am doing a part just by writing this and I hope you realize that. Prepare yourselves! Our future is NOW!

I seek he who seeks me.
In the still of the night--love dreams awaken him from his slumber,
He beckons for me to come to him.
He pours into me pure intimacy,
Sincere affection,
In his gaze lies my trust-
His strength I hold in my hand.

I reciprocate honor, respect, loyalty, and admiration.
I pour into him, he’s stronger.

We escape into love’s hill carrying it’s beauty on our shoulders,
It’s revelations shone in our eyes, we reminisce of its sweet antiquities able to last past the past.
Sustaining the present and leaping beyond the future, this is bliss.

We fall prey to it’s abyss, it consumes us.
And we let it; For the gods must have conspired on some other plane of existence that we come together, how else can we explain a thing so deep as this?

We graze the stars with our fingertips, the heavens open up reaching out to us.
We join in the universe’s dance,
Meld together hand in hand, in devotion’s trance skipping hope stones on the lake of our destiny.

We ascend the horizon, daring doubt take a seat at our table of fantasies.
No thing could stop us.

This journey was chosen only for you and I,
Completely yours, I relinquish my everything to simply coexist in your same time and space.
And you do the same for me.
No thing could break us.

For you sought me when I sought you.
Dreams of your love awakening me from my slumber.
You beckoned for me to come to you.

This is kind of a personal story, but so many people can relate. I wanted to share it and a few insights in hopes that it might inspire and uplift someone.

Last night two of my younger brothers who are 13 and 15 came in and it was obvious that they were high. After they came in and went straight to the kitchen and sat down to eat, my grandmother began to have a talk with them.

“I know what you been doing. You come in here looking dumb. You might think I know, but I used to do it too.” she said.

So she proceeded to tell them about how she has memory problems now from smoking, they stress her out, she drinks, weighs almost 300 pounds, and sooner or later, her heart will fail and she’ll be gone. They just sat their looking as if they barely heard her. The fact that they came in high isn’t of consequence to me so much as what my grandmother said about her own habits and health. Just like that, our grandmother had practically spoken her own destiny and said it as if she was so cool with it just the way it is. And they said nothing. Not a single word. That is what bothered me the most.

Is this really what we want for ourselves when we get older is what us young ones should be asking. That our younger generation could be so unmoved by something like that is beyond me. That any generation could go on moving into worse, not better shape is beyond me. This is a call to anyone who will listen to make sure that you do everything you can to help steer our youth in the right direction, to uplift and show them they are so much more than what society will tell them, to be the change you want to see in the world, to be a person of character, integrity, and respect, and take on the role of the leader in your own lives so that our younger ones have excellent role models to look up to. We all share the responsibility of our future outcomes. It is up to us to oversee the things our youth are doing and even some of what our peers are doing so we can be a guiding light for one another. I believe this is what we are ultimately here for is for one another. To be of service to each other, to find soul mates in one another, to work for the whole of the greater good.

As you go about your day to day tasks, find a way, if you aren’t already, to be that light in someone’s life as God would have you to be and help in any way you can. This is the first step to creating the kind of world we ought to be living in. One overflowing with love, abundance, prosperity in all things, knowledge, wisdom, kindness, and righteousness. Make this your goal.

Bead for Life's slogan is "Eradicating Poverty One Bead at a Time". Established by Torkin Wakefield, Ginny Jordan, and Devin Hibbard in September of 2004, Bead for Life works to uplift Ugandan women out of poverty by providing a market for their paper bead jewelry. As per the website, the Bead for Life program has to date:



* Trained 660 beaders to make beads and earn regular income

* Seeded bead making as a Ugandan cottage industry

* Developed high quality bead products and jewelry bags

* Worked with volunteers to host over 5,000 BeadParties

* Assisted beaders in building 106 houses, the Cornerstone Community Building, and two wells

* Launched Vocational Education Program for Impoverished Youth

* Sponsored bi-annual leadership camps for vocational education students

* Produced original music CD, From the Heart of BeadforLife

* Been featured in top media including NBC, O magazine, African Woman and Family Circle

* Developed grant program to fund other organizations working in poverty eradication

* Graduated 150 members from BeadforLife program into self-sufficiency


Very impressive for a program in running for only five years. And you can be a part of the movement by hosting your very own bead party in your home, local community center, street festival, or whatever place you see fit. Here's how(per the website):

Hosting is easy!

BeadforLife will support you from beginning to end with no cost to you!

Step 1:
Decide when, where, and who to invite to your BeadParty. We’ve thought through all the details for you: BeadParty Resources

Step 2:
Register online and we’ll send you everything you need. In order to give each host plenty of time to receive their BeadParty package, we require approximately 3 weeks notice for Domestic parties and 4 weeks notice for International parties (including Canada). The first available date will be shown on the registration page.

You can register at the website by clicking here but I would encourage you to please check out the information listed there first. It's absolutely wonderful what this group of women have accomplished for themselves in so little time. I myself am glad that Torkin, Ginny, and Devin saw an opportunity for the women of Uganda and took it. I hope they keep up the wonderful work! Remember to check back as always for more on fun(and free) things you can do to help the world.
Together We Can Eradicate the World's Problems

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Hunger & Poverty
The Hunger Site
Care2
Chunky.com
Environmental
Ecology Fund
Red Jellyfish
Land Care Niagara
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Free Poverty
Free Rice
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Together We Can Eradicate the World's Problems