To you I owe

My BFF and I

It is a blessing to meet and share a part of my life with one of the most wonderful human beings I know. I am better to have met her and I thank God every day for finding me such a loving, tender and patient friend. To Sunshine, I owe my sobriety, the peace in my heart and the tranquility in my life. 
God placed Sunshine in my life when I needed her strength the most. She propped me up when I was doubled over by a recklessly led life. I was weak spiritually and physically from years of substance abuse. I cannot explain in words what it means for someone to love you unconditionally and totally believe in your recovery and wellness, even when you don't believe the same of yourself. 
Sunshine, I will forever be indebted to you and grateful with all of my heart. I am everything I am because you loved me, as I was- broken, dejected and in need of healing. And you still love me now as I am, whole, healed and determined to live my best life ever.
Thank you for being my friend. I love you with every beat of my heart.
This one's for you:

Pass The Test

Life will give you only the experiences necessary for your evolution. Is suffering necessary? Yes and No. If you had not suffered as you have, there would be no depth to you, no humility, no compassion. Eckhart Tolle
My friend and I were discussing the necessary evil of life suffering. Why do we go through all the negative experiences that we do? Why must we experience life's pain?  That's when I remembered Tolle's quote. 
She's going through a very hard time. Family issues that are threatening their family life. Having been to hell and back due to my alcohol addiction, I am very sympathetic to people undergoing personal strife. 
At the moment I was in it, I couldn't see the lessons in it. I was blind to the proverbial silver lining. I have been sober now approaching one year. I relapsed twice prior to this. I have no animosity toward the time that I spent in the grip of my addiction and it's ill fated consequences. 

“Right in the difficult we must have our joys,

 our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth

 of this background, they stand out, 

there for the first time we see 

how beautiful they are.”Rainer Maria Rilke

I now look back and see the lessons in all my life events - positive or negative. With this in mind I welcome life AS IS with an open heart and a ready to learn attitude. I want to grow from my life experiences not advance into regression. I crave humility, depth, compassion. Hard times teach us patience, love, fortitude, courage, resilience, grit, flexibility, toughness, buoyancy. Hard times teach us who we really are. Hard times, if we allow, curve an angel out of a block of stone.
It is during the good times that we must gather light because the dark times are inevitable. Into the darkness we must carry this light to illuminate our way, until life resumes a positive note.Difficult times just might be necessary, inasmuch as they don't have to leave us broken. They can leave us renewed, promoted, increased, remodeled, restored, better than we were going in. Pass the test!

 “I do not understand the mystery of grace -- only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”
― Anne Lamott

Commuting Between Languages

No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist

whom he or she doesn't understand,

or at someone who speaks a foreign language,

but rather at someone who tampers

with your own language. Jacques Derrida

Elif Shafak is a Turkish writer whom I was watching on Ted Talks. She summarized so well the conundrum of the multi linguist. Like me she's not an immigrant, refugee or exile. She talks about a commute between languages when she's writing and how that gap gets her  frustrated. However, this frustration gets her creativity going when she's writing. English is an acquired language for me and millions of others. She says, "When you are a latecomer to a language, what happens is you live there with a continuous and perpetual frustration. As latecomers we always want to say more, to say better things, crack better jokes, but we end up saying less. Because there is a gap between the mind and the tongue, and that gap is very intimidating. But if you manage not to be frightened by it, it's also stimulating."

 I wholeheartedly agree with her. I love everything about my third language English. I love how it sounds, how difficult it is, how varied, how so many words can represent the same thing. I love that I understand it so well and other foreigners have such a hard time with it. I enjoy very much the edge that I have over even native speakers or people who speak English as their only language. I am not frightened by the gap Elif talks of. Thanks to English being most Kenyan's third language.


Even with that grand statement that I just made, I have to confess that I think very carefully about what it is am saying. In the back of my mind English will always be an acquired language. I am careful to phrase sentences right, be grammatically correct. I do not want to offend the English language or the native English speaker at all. I feel like I've been trusted to know and speak this language well and I will not abuse my privilege. I take it so personal when native speakers speak English with absolutely no regard to the rules. I mean, how much effort does it take? I have to think in one or two different languages then translate, then string the words correctly before offering them to the listener. I do not like my words being out of place. I feel as if I've failed somehow, if I do. 

“Those who know nothing of

foreign languages know

nothing of their own.”       

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

That gap, that lag time, Elif talks about, that is where my creativity lays. That's where I sort out words and pick what I think are the best ones before I speak them. That gap is my play area and the best part is that it's all mine and cannot be dictated by anyone. So if you listen to a foreigner with a good command of English speaking and you wonder, "Why are they being so deliberate, not rushed when they speak?" It's because they are taking great care to offer the choicest words, to present the best so to speak. Not because they're bragging but there is a certain reverence for a foreign language once you've almost mastered it.
I am currently trying to learn Spanish as my fourth language. Boy, Oh Boy, is it kicking my butt! When I read it, am fluent. When asked a question however, I stammer and hesitate and get tongue tied. I so desperately want to be grammatically correct, I also want to sound as if Spanish and I are friends. I want to sound comfortable, not scared of it. So I do understand that gap she's talking about. When you are a late comer to a language or to anything really, you have to pay your dues. I have to keep reminding myself to be humble and patient and wait. 
Soon enough I will have a great command of Spanish as I do English.... but soon is no where around the corner.... and that's frustrating!
You know another thing speaking different languages does? You are able to move in and out of identities. As many identities as the languages you speak. So in one moment I can be an African, speaking Kikuyu and Swahili, then I commute on over to English where I can bring on my British identity or American...whichever I choose. Now that am speaking Spanish, I feel (not I am) very Latina. It's a thrilling ride and am sure my brain will thank me later, God willing, when am 90 years old and still have all my faculties. 

Seize the diem!!!

Empezando Tu Día Bien

What if we treated each day as a completely new day? As if we were re-born through the night and in the morning... we have a brand new chance to get it right.
Suppose you got to hit the reset button before you jumped out of bed? Maybe you could forget that insult from yesterday, that hurting from last year, that huge blunder you made last week, what you failed to do last night, blah, blah, blah. All that junk that goes around and around in our heads at a whirlwind pace if we're wound up or a sluggish, heavy, muddy mess when we're feeling blue.
Aah! Maybe we could do the same for each other. Forget what the other did, didn't do, say, didn't say. What does it matter TODAY? We should be like our pets who see the joy in every new day, every new moment.
Even the ancient Egyptians saw a new day as a sort of re-birth. Sunrise brought a completely novel day. I believe sunrise should bring me a new and fresh me. It should bring me a new start, a clean slate. Louise Hay said, "How you start your day is how you're going to live your day. And how you live your day is the way you live your life."

Waking up this morning, I smile,      
Twenty four brand new hours are before me.     
I vow to live fully in each moment     
and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.   

Thich Nhat Hanh

Why People Hurt Us

Here's how to stop them!

Existential Quandary

“The enemy is within the gates;
 it is with our own luxury,
our own folly, our own criminality
 that we have to contend.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

I hate to be a Debby downer, but I read in my economics book that the world produces more than enough food to go around. Somehow, in America people are dying of obesity - consumption of too much food. Contrastingly, in Sub-Saharan Africa and a few other countries in different continents, people are dying of starvation.

What in the world is going on?

Does anyone care? 

I know there are all these attempts to give Africans aid. The trouble lies in the politics associated with that food. Acceptance of said food is tied in to forcibly agreeing to do things the Africans wouldn't normally do or want to do. For example, convert to a certain religion or vote for a particular dictator in order to receive relief.
What about the children? My God, have you looked away from us? It breaks my heart. The evilness of man has trumped the goodness proffered.
It's so easy of me and a bit cowardly, to point fingers from the  comfort and safe distance of my American home. Should I leave my little piece of Heaven in Amelia Island and go on long uncomfortable journeys to places that could use some assistance? Can I possibly live in extreme climates, no heat or AC in the name of helping out my fellow humans? Or can I just send money to different organizations through my computer, from my cushy couch and call that helping?

those who find the courage to do at least one small thing each day to help the existence of another--plant, animal, river, or human being. They shall be joined by a multitude of the timid.
 those who lose their fear of death; theirs is the power to envision the future in a blade of grass.
 those who love and actively support the diversity of life; they shall be secure in their differences.
― Alice Walker

That's why I have decided to join the effort in my own little way. I will complete school pronto! and join Peace Corp. Learn how this helping others on a global scale functions. All while travelling the earth. My two dear passions. Eventually I'd like to join the efforts of a micro-lending organization.

I wonder what everyone else is doing?

“The world is only as fair as you can make it. Takes a lot of fight. A lot of fight. But if you stay in here, in your little cave, that's one less fighter on the side of fair.”  ― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens


Are we paying attention?