GENERATIONAL CURSES

I don't know how I feel, something has been on my mind for a few days now. I wonder if we will ever come right as a people, whether we will ever be strong and wise enough to raise our children in a way that does not repeat patterns of the past. What is it about a woman that makes her so weak when she's in love that she is not able to think straight? Is it even love to begin with? Because the love I know protects and nurtures those around you, love does not force you to choose where the choice would obviously be impossible to make.

A young girl came to me the other day for assistance. She recently had a baby and her mother also has a baby just over a year old. Now this young lady received a bursary to study at an FET college but the bursary only covers books and tuition and that means she has to cover transport costs herself. from what I gather, this young lady does not get along with the mother's boyfriend and as a result, she has been cut off. Her mother will not help her care for her baby, she wont give her transport money so that she goes to school and now its gone as far as the mother telling her that she should fend for herself and not eat anything that she bought with her money. All this because she does not get along with the mother's boyfriend.

When she told me her story, my heart was sore, it still is. I haven't been able to understand how I would one day choose to side with a man over my daughter. I cant imagine being so desperate for a relationship to work that I take everything a man says and make it the truth. Right to say that my judgement is based on one side of the story but I cant imagine what a child can do that is so bad that you deem it right to deny her food. When you give birth to a child do you not know that you are responsible for them till such a time when they are able to stand on their own. How then do you just wake up one day and decide that, you have had enough, that the man you now have is so important to you that nothing else matters, not even your children.

I feel helpless, there is only so much I can do and I believe that it is not my place to get involved with family politics or even confront the mother about all is. My question though is this, how do I help her? I don't think I can just turn a blind eye to her story and go on like I don't know what is happening. I am praying, God will guide me, I don't believe in things just happening, this story must have come to my attention for a reason.

Her story makes me think, this is how the cycle of abuse, poverty and low self esteem continues amongst our people. When you deny a child the right to go to school because they have a baby, when you teach young ones that having a baby at an early age means that you have no future to speak of, when you teach young girls that whatever a man says goes and should not be disputed. That it is okay to hold on with everything that you have to a man, even if it means losing everything that you have or that you had built before him. This is how we raise a generation of bitter women, women who grow up to hate all that a man stands for, young women who live their life seeking the approval they never received from their parents, even if it means jumping from one relationship to the next, abusing alcohol or drugs, anything they can get their hands on that will numb the pain.

Breaking the cycle needs to start with the way in which we run our households, the way in which we protect our children and the values that we instil in them. A woman needs to be strong in order to raise strong children and by strong I don't mean teaching our children to take in whatever is thrown at them and still keep a straight face. I don't mean strong in the sense that we have been taught, strong is not staying in an unhealthy marriage, strong is not being abused but going to work everyday and smiling like nothing is happening. I mean, women need to know their worth, they need to stand up for what is right, they need to learn to put themselves first, to pursue individual happiness first because it is only when they are happy and complete by themselves that they are able to raise children who are happy and complete as well.

If we keep making the same decisions that our mothers and grandmothers made, we will always have in our societies, our communities -young women and men who feel failed by their parents, by society. The cycle continues and we continue with our lives as if we don't see it happen. It breaks my heart and more than that, I hope it tears at me to the point that it pushes me to action.

NEW BEGINNINGS

The other day a friend of mine sent me a pic of her new hairdo, well I don’t know if a bald head qualifies as being classified as a hairdo. She told me that it represented new beginnings and also showed her support towards women with cancer. I may be getting ahead of myself but I think that it was somewhat meant for me.

Me and her have never really gotten into details about my illness but she’s one of the few who have made their support known from the time that I found out about the cancer. Anyways this blog is not about that. It is about new beginnings and the courage to give ourselves a clean slate.

For some the decision to shave off all your hair may seem insignificant but I think it is a big deal. I for one have never had the guts to shave off all my hair, not even when my mother passed away and it was expected of me culturally to have it shaved off as a sign of mourning. I didn’t need to have a bald head to show that I was hurting or that I was in mourning, I reasoned with myself and my elders but the truth is, I would have died if I had to follow through on that.

How would I look? I don’t exactly have the best looking head around. I just couldn’t imagine myself walking around with no hair and God forbid the cancer ever got to that stage where I start losing my hair; I would probably stop at some Cosmetics store for a wig before I went to hospital. So for me, whenever I see a woman walk around bald, it just means that person has guts.

I don’t know whether it was an easy decision to make for her but I admire her courage. In that simple conversation when she sent me the picture, I was reminded of a few lessons we all need to keep in mind as we go on about the business of life. I want to share with you what I remembered when I looked at my beautiful friend and her bald head.

1.       Courage. The ability to do what feels right for us despite how others may interpret it. Courage is being prepared to do you, even if the rest of the world will not agree with it, it is choosing to stand out and not be sucked in by confirming to societal norms.

2.       Selflessness. Doing for others what is not expected of us when we not even going to gain anything from it. It is knowing that doing for others is not something only the rich and privileged do, that with what we have, wherever we are, we are able to touch the lives of others. That no matter how small or insignificant the gesture seems, to someone else it may be the world.

And lastly, what I took from this picture and the conversation with my friend was that, a new beginning is not tied to a specific time of the month, like the first of a new month. No matter how far along in the wrong direction we had travelled, anytime, any day, any moment we had the power to change direction. To not only acknowledge our flaws and dwell in them but to learn from them and use them to give ourselves a clean slate, a new break, a clean page……….instead of feeling stuck and wishing things were different, we could decide to start today to live the life we always wanted. Every second, every breath……is a chance to start over. A new beginning is always within reach.

WE WANT GOD TO PROMOTE US BUT FAIL TO BE FAITHFUL WITH THE SMALL TASKS

Its been well over a week and this title has been nagging me and playing in my head. I wanted to write about it but words failed me. I didn't know how to expand those words into a full on blog, so I aimed to ignore it even though it refused to go away.

Then this morning a friend and I were chatting on whatsapp when she said that she needed to call me and talk to me about something. I immediately thought about men trouble as it seems that is what ladies mostly speak about when they are troubled. But I was wrong, hers was more a situation of being caught between a rock and a hard place. The decision to leave one job for another is not always clear cut and straightforward. We spoke in length about her dilemma and suddenly it came to me, "we want God to promote us but fail to be faithful with the small tasks'" This is what I told her too and thank God she understood in what context I meant it and therefore did not take any offence.

We pray and ask God to lead us somewhere, in the path that leads us to our dreams. We all have goals and aspirations, things we want to attain and reach. What most of us fail to understand however is that, the attainment of our dreams is seldom handed over to us on a silver platter. Not only do we need to work hard to get what we want but there are sometimes pit stops along the way before we can get there. Now these pit stops can be arranged and disguised as a number of things, it could be your dream is to be an Chartered Account and once you complete your studies you are unable to work within that field. Your pit stop may be to work as an intern, and then maybe a junior before you get the job that you finally want.

But the problem with most of us is that we want overnight success, we want whatever we want and we want it now. We are not willing to wait, we are not willing to built a house from scratch, we want to get there and find a complete building, roof, ceiling, under floor heating and all. We think that it is enough to just dream and pray and then wait for God to deliver. We think that is what faith is but faith actually entails that we do our part, that we bring diligence along to our prayers. It is understanding that things will not always be as we want them to be or happen when we plan or want them to happen. It is acknowledging that God uses pit stops to prepare us better for the real position that He wants us to occupy, it is trusting God with the little that He gives you so that He may increase it.

Be prepared to start somewhere, be faithful with where you are now and what God has placed in your hands so that He may promote you and lift you to a higher position.