What is my Motivation??

Mar23
Pencil and paper

A new day is like a clean piece of paper!

To wake up in the morning is a blessing.  When I first wake-up, open my eyes, say my prayers, stretch and turn on the news, I am ready to make my mark on the world!! Raawwwwwrrr!!!! The new day is as a fresh sheet of paper waiting for more of my life to be written on it. My actions, activities, interactions, goals met,  goals set and even goals dismissed. It’s a chance to make a change, move a stumbling block, press forward towards a goal….they sky is the limit and the options are limitless on this fresh new day. Continue reading →

Free your Mind

Feb18

I’ve been so busy holding on to all things that I have bogged myself down. I can’t do much to help others until I allowevery-woman myself permission to feel what I was feeling and address these feelings. As many of us have been taught, we are every woman. We never let them see us sweat…..I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan. But one thing I couldn’t do, was deal with my feelings. Continue reading →

Be a Compliment Not a Complication

Feb17

shutterstock_108457547-350x233Listening  to the radio in my car I heard Steve Harvey share the best quote. Ok, well one of the best (you know me…tomorrow may be a better one that will be the best). He shared from another listener “Be a compliment not a complication. Surround yourself with people who will compliment your life, not complicate it.”  That made me think…..in my relationships under the brims of the many hats that I wear as a mother, sister, girlfriend, cousin, daughter, friend, co-worker (to name a few) which column would I be put in — a compliment or a complication?  What do I bring to the table to compliment these relationships or are my intelligence, outgoing personality, charm & wit really complicating shenanigans?

Continue reading →

What is Your Highway Story?

Feb10

Congestion……. another word for my commute along with the words long, frustrating and tedious.

grandma-signal-memePair the stop and go tedium of my commute with a very active imagination and you will find me peering over the dashboard giving every car a story. It’s my harmless way of entertaining myself to keep from intentionally crashing into the slow-for-no-reason town car in front of me. Here’s how it works, I look at a car that I’m inching through traffic with and create a story for the driver based on my observations. I call it Highway Story. Today we met Gwen….she is driving a ridiculously shiny (considering all of the salt and brine on the roads and every other car) black high-end SUV with her sunglasses propped up in her beautiful hair. Continue reading →

The joy the Holiday brings….

Dec26
2

Christmas is….Family, Friends, Hope, Joy, Memories, Peace and Love.

Christmas is….Family, Friends, Hope, Joy, Memories, Peace and Love.

…or the emotional chaos.

The holiday season is one of the few times that brings out the best & worst in people simultaneously. The news is full of negativity, there are protests, hunger, abuse….but for one season of time we long to have ‘peace on earth and goodwill towards men’. This is the one time of year that we would hope to be around the love of friends….but most of all the love of Family.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that I have a huge family that I really don’t know. They hail from both my Mother’s and Father’s sides of the family. I am even blessed to have an extended family my step-mom’s side that has embraced me with loving arms.  Of all the love, the family that I barely know used to bother me, would even create some emotional chaos. Watching he families on TV get together for holidays, sharing in the special events of one another’s lives, coming together in rough time….it made me see family the way I wanted it to be.  But that’s television…. Continue reading →

SOMEBODY SHAVE ME!!

Oct27

“mommy”….”Mooohhhhmmmmeeee”…..”MOHHHMMMMEEEEEE”!!!

were the increasingly loud whispers that (to my horror) were coming out of the mouth of my little angel…..in church. My almost 3 year old had seen enough, heard enough and was getting restless. Can’t say that I blame him and I really don’t expect his undivided attention to last for so long, but there were certain rules to Sunday Service that he and I had come to understand. Tapping my leg and ignoring my wide-eyed-lifted-eyebrow-teeth-bared-tight-lipped stare…was a violation of our agreement.

He could quietly color in his Sunday Book, draw on his tablet, reconfigure his Power Rangers…. shoot he could build a house if he was quite. For his quietness (even though I didn’t believe in food in the sanctuary, I would reward him with an occasional fruit snack or two. Continue reading →

A Lesson from Dirty Dancing

Oct18

I close my eyes  and  I can clearly hear Bill Medly’s sultry voice as the song begins singing “Now I’ve had the time of my life and I’ve never felt this way before’…..I LOVE this movie! Now you have the song stuck in your head too so don’t act like you don’t know  Dirty Dancing is an awesome movie!  For me it holds fond memories and it showed so many things.

This random outburst of my love for a movie (that may reveal my age) came from a fond memory.  When I was a kid (no son, I didn’t use an abacus) Friday Night was movie night! We soooo look forward to at the end of the week! My Dad come home from work and after his shower, reading his papers (the Norristown Times Herald AND the Philadelphia Inquirer) and getting something to eat, he would take us out to get  all of our favorite snacks (to share). Me = Dunkin’ Donuts, Lee = Pepperoni and Steph = a jar of olives. We would stop at the video store on Marshall Street where the owner knew our names (long before Blockbuster) and picked out our weekend entertainment. I see us getting our ‘floor blankets’ stretching them out on the living room floor with the VCR remote plugged in (nope, it wasn’t wireless yet), our snacks and our pillows. HEAVEN!!! I look back and think how simple life was but how much we appreciated what may seem like a small thing. Continue reading →

Sold out for a First Lady Hat and Parking Space

Sep22

People that know me will be nodding their heads to what I am about to say – in the past I was NOT a fan of Iyanla Vanzant. There…. I said it out-loud. Nope, I did not like the award 20130216193114!Iyanla,_Fix_My_Life_Title_Cardwinning, Oprah validated, Sistah Friend, Yesterday I Cried, In the Valley author.  I can almost hear you saying – “WHAT? Iyanla is awesome, Diva you are out of touch….not like Iyanla….there is something really wrong with you…! Where is the sisterly love and support in that?” My feelings were based on her philosophy of the Universe and not God formulated my opinion of her. It was that simple. Judge if you want, my thoughts, my views, my opinion. Daddy used to say they (opinions) are like bellybuttons (he used a different anatomic part but I’m going to keep it clean) everybody has one.

However, as ‘life’ happened to Iyanla – I’ve seen a change, I hear her acknowledging God, I see a more genuine spirit of love in her and as a ‘fruit inspector’ I am seeing more in her fruit than in her eloquence of speech and her signature endearing term that she calls everyone  – Beloved.

Now with that out of the way, let’s move on to what is under this former First Lady Brim.  1In an episode of “Iyanla: Fix My Life,” Iyanla travels to Louisiana to help a couple in crisis. The husband, a pastor, admits to cheating on his wife with about 20 women over the course of his 10-year marriage. Many of his mistresses are members of his congregation… and one of these women gave birth to his child. His wife, Natashia, wrote to Iyanla asking for help in deciding whether to stay or to go. Continue reading →