SUPERWOMAN

We listen to these songs that tell us what superwomen we are, we read books and magazines that say that the modern woman can have it all, go to school, work, raise children and be a superb wifey to her man. We seek to be those women who still smile despite their worlds falling apart and applaud ourselves for making it through the day without breaking down when everything around us is collapsing.

But there is a downside to playing superwoman, even if you are one, the stress and burden of everything that you have been sweeping under the rug will eventually catch up with you. I believe that is what happened to me just last week. When I went from fine on Monday during working hours to being admitted the same night and spending a week in hospital. Somewhat after numerous signs that your body has been sending you, I think it eventually just pauses on you to force you to stop and rest, to stop and take a breather and realise that the world will not fall apart if you take a few minutes, hours or days for yourself.

Sadly we don't know how to stop, when to stop. Even as I was lying in hospital, all I could think of was my child and whether she was being taken care of, my partner and whether he was eating right and not developing a roaming eye. Jokes aside, you worry about everything from the dishes to the laundry to what they are eating and if they are coping without you. So what began as a means for your body to get you to relax ends up making you more ill, blood pressure mounting, increased days in hospital and the possibility of exhausting your medical aid.

The past week must have been very hard for my loved ones, Wame who sat there helplessly watching me breathe with the aid of an oxygen mask, my family and friends barely recognising my bubbly and stubborn self in the state that I was in. My princess, as unaware as she seemed, it killed me what it was doing to her seeing that mommy wasn't well, that she wasn't home when she slept at night or woke up in the morning to go to school. More than anything, I think this scared me and made me question myself so much and not only that, it was a reminder that even when we feel like we have so much to live for.........life could still be taken away from us at any moment.

We owe it to ourselves to slow down and not worry so much about taking care of others that we forget to care for ourselves. Its not just about the future plans that we make but the moments that we have now, and how we choose to embrace and enjoy them. Its about making provision for tomorrow but being content with who we are today, where we are and what we have and finding joy in the present.

I LOVE YOU WAME

Blessings come in different forms and ways and God uses different people in our life to bring about His blessings to us. This morning I am grateful and overwhelmed by the gift of love, the blessing of a family and the warmth that one gets from being in the right place with the right person.

Over 2 years ago I met my best friend. Someone who progressed from being a stranger at a mutual friend's birthday party to a boyfriend to a partner and now my family. Its so amazing how you meet someone and you have no idea how drastically they will change your life, for the better. Its amazing how they come into your life and you feel that something that you were not even aware was missing from your life has just been found.

Today I want to thank God for the gift that is Teboho Innocent Majara. A man who has taught my heart to believe again, a man who came into my life and didn't try to change anything but ended up changing everything. My friend and my partner, my cheerleader in everything that I do. There is no dream that I have shared with this man that he did not support. Even when he probably thought I was crazy he never said but instead he always believes in my dreams and in my goals and he always tells me that there is nothing I cannot achieve. He will stay up late at night, eyes red and full of sleep just to see me finish the latest creative work I have, he will get all excited with me when I share my latest crazy venture. He will drive up and down and leave whatever he needs to do to make sure that what I had to do was done on time and perfectly so.

Wame as I call him, Wame because he truly is all mine. He has never made me feel like I needed to compete for his attention. He never made me question his loyalty and love, it was always freely given without fail. He has been there through times any normal person would have ran in the opposite direction, he has never given up on me even during the times that I was not the prettiest human being to love (believe me I can be a handful at times). His love has always just wanted the best for me and never asked me to be anything that I am not.

Its been an incredible journey with him by my side, one that was not always rosy, not always the nicest to be on and I wouldn't be true if I said we never came across times when we wanted to call it quits, times when it didn't seem like all the hassle. Sometimes he works on my nerves, sometimes he is your typical Sotho man with the stubborn nature to go with it. Sometimes I just wanted to shake the hell out of him because he would upset me that much. But that's the beauty of being together, the hurdles that adds spice to it all, the ingredients that we need to grow and learn. We have learned so much, we have learned that it will not always be easy but God has blessed us with a gift so rare that it is worth fighting for.

The good times, the bad times, the fun times, the tears......they all ultimately got us here today and wen I look back, I know that however imperfect it may have been, it was just perfect for me. There is nothing I would change, nothing I would take back. Its exactly on this road that I have met my soulmate, my partner for life, my pillar of strength and the man who reminds me everyday that I am a queen and deserve nothing less than the best.

Today I want to tell Wame this: Life has a new meaning with you in it. Thank you for filling my life with such joy, thank you for being my hero, for being my strength, for being the one I run to when the world shuts me out. Thank you for being the amazing being that you are and thank you for the assurance that the rest of my life, will be the best of my life. I love you.

               

         

 

 

WRESTLING WITH ONESELF

There is something really peaceful about the mind and the heart singing along to the same tune. It really is a good space to be in when the choices you are given are in sync with the way in which you want your life to be. But what happens when the mind and the heart are in conflict? What do you do when logic tells you something completely different from what the feelings are saying?

That is a place I am familiar with, at one point, my life was exactly that. I knew what I wanted, I knew what was right, I even knew the decisions that I needed to take but my heart was not playing along. It really did seem that my heart had an agenda of its own. A lot of time it seems that the right thing to do is often the most difficult and if that didn't make things hard enough, there is a rather blurry line between how our decisions affect us and those we love. Even in situations where you are wrestling with yourself, the fight or the outcome of it, seldom affects you alone. That means that in the decisions and choices we make, there are other people to think about and consider.

Naturally we want to put those we love and their needs before our own. It seems noble to do that, anything else is seen as selfish and definitely not how anyone who is loving would act. The problem with that kind of thinking is that it is flawed. There is no way, we are able to truly be all we can be to our loved ones unless we seek and find our own happiness first, as individuals. As a mother I know how it seems totally unacceptable to put myself first but I have come to realise that, the only way I am a good mother, partner and caretaker for my family, is if I am happy and have my needs taken care of. It is not selfish, I need to be a whole person in order to be what those around me need.

I was talking to someone who was at a cross road, to stay in a relationship so the child can be raised by 2 parents in the same environment or to leave and first seek their own happiness. It is never an easy decision to make and the more I thought about it, the more it echoed in my head that, we need to be complete first before we attempt to complete others. Of course it is easier to say and write, it is easier to judge when watching from the side lines but I say this with experience, I can proudly write it because I have lived it.

This is what I told the person at a cross road: No one can ever make the decision for you, nor can anyone else feel for you that it is enough. It is a decision that you have to struggle through on your own, it is a decision that means wrestling with yourself, fighting but still being quiet enough to hear the voice within you and what it says. That voice was put there for a reason, to whisper to us the things that God is not able to tell us directly, that is the voice that will never mislead you or turn against you. The voice says different things to different people, even if their situations may look the same. You make a decision that works for you and only you, once you have taken care of you, once you are happy, then only can you turn to care for those around you.

The only reason why we wrestle with ourselves is because we have been taught to put ourselves last, to look at the overall picture before making a decision, to consider the reactions of others and society before considering what will make us happy. The kind of life and world you want to live in begins with you.......not your child, your partner, your family

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.

 

 

 

HOW FAR ARE YOU FROM WHO YOU WANT TO BE?

Do you still recall the picture that you had in mind while you were growing up? If you were anything like me then you had everything planned out really early in life, you knew what you wanted to study, which profession you wanted to follow, when you would have your first child and be married and live happily ever after.

You soon find out that life has different plans for you, that the plan seldom comes together as you had hoped. They say life is what happens when you busy making other plans, while you busy starring into the sky, thinking up what makes the perfect life, life is happening and as it happens, you wake up to find that your life is far from how you thought it would turn out. The first reaction would be that of defeat, when you finally have so much on your plate that you believe your dreams do not matter anymore, you don't have the time, the money, the resources......So you convince yourself let go of all you grew up wanting for yourself, you feel that its not important anymore.

You rationalise with yourself that things turned out exactly as they should have, you belittle the things that you believed in back then so that they seem insignificant and in that way, you are able to live with not pursuing them. Not only the dreams and aspirations that we had, we also imagined the type of people that we wanted to be, how we wanted to relate to others and how we wanted to be remembered. Somewhere along the line, so much happens to us, good and bad but these become the experiences that shape us. Others may bring out the best in us while some events and circumstances seem to turn us into people we ourselves do not even recognise.

When you look in the mirror today, do you see someone that you are proud of? Or don't you recognise the person that stares back at you in the mirror..........we cannot deny that when life hurts or breaks us, we don't always know how to approach it, the lesson that we are meant to learn is not always received and embraced and instead of becoming better people, we become one of those people who have become cold and distant as a result of our experiences.

Ask yourself, how far are you from being the person that you want to be and if like me you find that you have deviated from your ideal, your principles and what you want to be known for, change it. Do not dwell on the flaws, do not get stuck in the past, do not look at how far you have travelled in the wrong direction. It is never too late to turn back, to give yourself a clean slate and be someone who stands tall, someone who embodies all the sweet things that your dreams were made of in the beginning. You can still be the person that you dreamt of, one whose dreams were not limited by reality, one who believed in innocence and purity, one who believed that they could be anything they put their minds to.