with love, HER

Below is a snippet by Christine Hassler that made me… well… just read & you’ll see…

…what happens if you start to outgrown the behaviors and beliefs you grew up with? What I see very frequently … is that ppl feel an obligation to carry on the behaviors and beliefs of their parents even if they are in conflict with what they truly want or believe. Out of love and duty, many people even take on the pain of a parent and spend their adulthood trying to ease that pain. …

Taking on other people’s baggage can also happen in friendships and romantic relationships when we attract “projects” and loose ourselves in the process of attempting to fix-up someone else. It’s hard to watch someone else suffer and to deal with this discomfort it is natural to become invested in healing that person. But we cannot truly heal anyone except ourselves.

My encouragement to you is to take a good look at the precious cargo space of your consciousness. Consider whether you carrying around something that doesn’t belong to you. Are you holding onto someone else’s pain or problems out of obligation? Are you living according to someone else’s belief systems rather than living in alignment with your truth?

Love is not over-responsibility. Love is being able to respond to people from a place of compassion rather than from a place of thinking you can resolve their problems or carry them around for them. If you examine the word compassion, you’ll find that the root “co” means “with” and “passion” means “suffering.” So compassion is about being with someone’s suffering, not ending it.

Your capacity to love expands exponentially when you are loving to yourself. The more you carry around other people’s baggage and live your life through the lens of someone else’s beliefs, the more you lose sight of yourself. Focus on your baggage and put everyone else’s down. As you do you will discover more space for your own dreams and a broader understanding of giving people the dignity of their own process. Be your own hero rather than trying to be someone else’s.

And the miraculous thing that happens once you do that is that you can truly come from a place of service rather than savior.

Our habits, our experiences… they neither form nor exist in a vacuum. Growing up in an area where the only veggie mart is full of cockroaches can result in you growing up on only processed food, and never “developing a taste for” vegetables. It can result in you never learning how to cook these things, and spend a considerable amount of time burning up your pots and pans…

Or, how about, if you are among the working poor, do you have time to walk to a grocery store? Do you even care enough to carry your groceries home? And, if you’re among the many people who’ve decided to accept processed food as the sole means of survival, what kind of message does that pass onto your kids? You might’ve chosen to accept that processed food is the way to do it, but your kids may simply never “develop a taste for” veggies. The issue quickly becomes cyclical.

…Sometimes, healthy living simply isn’t about the money.

Excerpted from Location, Location, Location: Money’s Not The Only Barrier To Healthy Living | A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss

Political Reminders

1. That picture with the politically-charged caption that you’re sharing on Facebook isn’t going to change hearts and minds.

2. Canada has universal healthcare, and it’s cold…and it’s tired of you threatening to move there if your candidate loses.

3. Pretty much everywhere else you threaten to move also has universal health care, which should tell you something.

4. Sending death threats to Viacom won’t bring them back.

5. Hitler is not running.

6. No, repealing the Bush-era tax cuts is not the same as invading Poland.

7. Guantanamo Bay is still open.

8. If you can tell when David Gergen is having a bad hair day, it’s time to turn off CNN.

9. Being a Christian has a lot more to do with how you live every day than how you vote every four years.

10. Don’t believe the people who tell you to fear. They are trying to control you.

- Rachel Evans

Spare the Rod Yo!

In recent events, Creflo Dollar spared the rod, choked the child and proceeded to use his shoe.  He then expressed that he did nothing wrong in his sermon to his congregation.  Creflo… Sir… Which brings me to: Children are not our property. It is not their job to confer upon us the worth and dignity denied to us by others. - Crunktastic (CFC)   I find this statement to be so profound.     A few years ago, in a conversation with a mentor, she mentioned that many young girls have babies in an effort to fill a void.  They think that the child(ren) will give them the love, care and honor that they don’t otherwise get.  After some thought, I totally agreed.    When I read the opening quote, I reflected on this conversation.    We have children to fill unoccupied spaces that we should LEARN to fill on our own. Initially, it might take some unlearning, re-learning & learning new methods, but it’s unfair to leave the task of filling such voids up to offspring.  What we feel we don’t or cannot get enough of from others, we attempt to get it, in some way, from our children. Of course this doesn’t apply to all or even most parents.  But to those for whom this does apply - when our children are unable to provide that which we seek from them (i.e. - friendship, sister/brotherhood, love, obedience, conversation, subordination, etc.) in a hierarchal manner, we demand it from them, and/or punish them for not providing these such.  ::clears throat::  Creflo! ::side eye::   We love them to pieces but once mimicking our tendencies (to show love, obey & people-please) becomes secondary to their own interests, how do we even begin to understand that what we think are threats against the parental vision for the child, may actually be the child coming into his/her own & growing - whether or not it syncs with parents’ ideas & understandings of growing & learning….   Children are brilliant!  Let’s take on the role of guiding them to their own greatness as oppose to pushing them to be the child(ren) we once were, should have been, could have been, or looks good front stage!   Have you or someone  you know chosen to give birth to receive love from another human being?  How is that working out?  Your thoughts are welcomed!     Later babes!