I Am Still. I Am Open. I Am Listening.

Upon awakening this morning, I decided to roll over from my side-sleeping position to laying on  my back.  Normally, I would immediately begin to talk to God:  Good morning, thank you for another day and praying in a pondering-type fashion whatever came to my mind.  This morning was different.  I remembered Kathy Freston, the author of Quantum Wellness, saying that one of the pillars to wellness is getting still.  Taking time out of your busy day--just a minute--to quiet and get centered. This unction, if you will, meshed with the mantras Iyanla Vanzant led participants in Oprah's Friday Live Webcast to repeat after they asked for help with stuck places in their lives.  Lying in bed, I tried different ones that I recalled; but something fresh rose out of me:  I am still.  I am open.  I am listening.  When I breathed in deeply and exhaled, these words lifted me out of myself. Out of my agenda.

I am still.  Rather than launching into reflection or meditating on the highs and lows of my life, I decided to still myself.  To settle into the moment of just waking.  I am alive.  I am here.  It's a blessing.

I am open.  I'll admit that it's easy to bring an agenda to praying.  Lord, help me with this. Lord I need that.  But this time, I decided to let God lead.  That Wiser part of me.  I am open.  I am not expecting something to happen.  I am not seeking relief or release.  I am just open to whatever.  I have no expectations of this moment.  No preconceptions.  I will not judge, try to legislate or even hold myself or God to any ideal or construct.

I am listening.  I am attentive to what my body is doing.  My breathing.  I am allowing my mantra to go from my mind to soaking into every part of me.  Everytime I say these words aloud or hear them in my head, I feel them sinking deeper and deeper.  Not only do I hear what's bothering me--things I have used busyness to avoid--but I am not intimidated.  I am still.  I am open.  I... am... listening.

As I moved from a posture of stillness, openness and attentiveness to embodying it, I became aware of a thought I had tried to ignore.  Nonetheless, it was persisting.  I felt my inner light dim with the negativism of that thought.  I had never noticed that before.  I also became conscious of how allowing that thought was robbing me of the joy and gratitude I felt before the thought came.  I was intrigued.  Maybe I was more sensitive due to all the Life Class work I had been doing, still I was glad that I recognized the toxic nature of that thought. When I realized it didn't fit my core values or the person I am or what I wanted my takeaway to be, I felt my breathing in and out take on a purpose.  I took in a d-e-e-p breath. "I inhale Light," said the voice of my Enlightenment. I let the breath go.  "I exhale darkness."  I breathe in what's good for me.  I breathe out what's toxic. 

I saw it for what it was.  My ego.  My ego wanting to control what other people did.  My ego trying to villify them for not meeting my expectations.  "See," it said, trying to make someone else pay for my own insecurity.  That is what the ego does.  It seeks to avoid being responsible for itself by blaming something or someone else.  I am reminded that I am in control of what I allow to affect me.  And when I say I, I am talking about the real me.  The spiritual part of me.  The conscious me.  The loving me.  In stillness, my insecurity masquerading as ego usurping itself as a persistent thought was exposed, expelled and I felt the warmth, the joy and the love, that is me, restored.  

Straight Wives: Coming Out Of The Closet

When was that article? Was it 1998, 1999 or even the year 2000? Lemme try to piece this together. I was living at Hunters Meadow at the time. My husband excitedly told me that Essence Magazine was going to be calling to interview us. “Why?” I asked. “They are doing an article about men who use to be gay but are now married and happy.” Hummmm, I thought. On the surface, I was excited; but inside, I was a little apprehensive. It was true that by all extents and purposes one would call my marriage successful. After all, I was living in a $365,000 home, we owned our own business and worked from home, we had four cars. Yep, we were what a friend of ours called The Jeffersons.


A part of me didn’t really believe what my husband was saying, but it really happened. A writer from Essence magazine identified herself on the other end of the call and asked me a series of questions about my life. I can’t remember her exact questions but I do know that she didn’t ask anything that caused alarm. She basically asked leading questions, to which I responded with a yes or no. If I were to be completely honest, I didn’t feel quite right; it seemed too contrived.

Imagine my horror when the magazine came out and it was about men on the down low. Absolutely puzzled, I read more. It was telling women that perhaps we need to stop putting labels on love. That there are men out there who are good men. They are straight men. They really love their women. They just enjoy having sex with other men. It went on to explain how men are wired differently than women. Basically, sex is simply a drive for them and they can have sex with a man but it doesn't bond him.  That bond is saved for his woman. But here’s the coup de grace (ku-de-gra): at the end it talked about Tyrone from North Carolina and how he was having a successful marriage. I just about hit the roof! It read like he was proof that one could be on the down low and have a successful marriage. I confronted my husband and asked him what in the world this was. He acted as if he was surprised too. He said he had been misled.

This is one of the myriad of ways that Straight Wives live a life in the closet. On the surface, our lives are pristine. We are model citizens. We are God-fearing. We look the part of the model family. The house, the children, the friends. Our husbands might even behave very affectionately with us and appear to be taking immaculate care of us. But ohhhhhh behind closed doors. Detached. Distant. Cold.
It wasn’t until I was sent a link to the blog radio show where I appeared as a guest that I realized a part of me was still in the closet. I haven’t told my son was my first thought. Up until now, my son and I had not fully discussed his father. Certainly, when he was around 7 years old, he asked his dad if he was gay. Unbeknownst to us, he and his cousins had discussed this while we were away burying my father. The kids had already attended the funeral and we didn’t feel they needed the added stress of going to the burial. I remember his exact words. “So dad, are you gay or not?,” he asked him outright. His dad told him that he had been gay a long time ago but God had delivered him from that. That he loved his mother and he loved him.

That was my son’s truth and my truth in that moment. Little did I know that the days, weeks, months and years following would reveal the exact opposite. Now this truth was staring me in my face. The truth that was shared on the radio show. The truth I had shielded my son from for all these years. It was now staring me in my face. Before I share the link to the radio show, I have to tell him.

You may think I was wrong to not tell him for all these years. Maybe, maybe not. Under normal circumstances, parents don’t disclose what goes on in their bedroom with their children. It has nothing to do with heterosexuality or homosexuality. We answer their questions, hopefully age-appropriately, and we add more as their maturity and understanding warrants it. I remember riding in the car with our son, now middle school age, and I casually said something about his dad’s gay past. My son’s reaction surprised me.  He was so alarmed as if he was hearing it for the very first time.  I asked him if he remembered the conversation we had when he was younger but he was so stunned it was to no avail. After that, I knew that this was a subject I’d have to put on the shelf. 

I don’t regret my decision. I wanted for my son the privilege of discovering his own is-ness, his own orientation, and to settle into his own personhood. I wanted him to come into his own sense of self apart from me and apart from his dad. As I consider this, I realize too I needed more time. I needed to go through a cleansing process, a healing process -- from lost to found -- before I was ready to share this part of my journey.

Though the details aren't pretty, I hope that your takeway is grace. Grace to forgive.  Grace to release.  Grace to live.  Grace to do it all again and again until you to take back your own Life and are standing in your own Light. Just because something happened to you, doesn’t mean it defines you. You choose.  When you realize that, no closet can hold you.

To listen to the radio show, go to the site at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/search/straight-wives-talk-show/ and select the date of October 16, 2011.

Stop Regretting A Decision You’ve Made

I swear I thought I just read this statement; yet riffling through the online pages of Martha Beck’s Oprah Magazine article, “Who’s Sorry Now: Six Ways to Regret-Proof Your Life,” I can’t find it.  Please, not yet another senior moment!  I dunno maybe it was the need to get to the bottom line as I woefully saw that her article was 6 pages long.  [Note to self:  make sure your articles don’t intimidate the readers by being too doggone long!]

 I believe that unforgiveness is what keeps you in a state of regret.  Not so much what other people think, but what you think about it.  Maybe it’s because it hurt the people you loved, sabotaged some potential good or crushed some possibility in your life.  Or contrariwise, you feel like the victim.  You feel, as I did, that someone took advantage of you.  You felt humiliated.  You felt like the laughing stock or the brunt of someone's pathetic joke.  Well, let today be the day you take yourself off the hook.

Though Martha says regret can be good or bad, I would have to say that it’s time to stop regretting and count it as life experience.  “If you had known better, you would have done better.”  It’s true.  If I had known what I know now, I wouldn’t have made some of the decision I made.  So, it’s futile to punish yourself for what you didn’t know. 

But what if you did know.  “I did it anyway,” you might agonize.  To this, I say let's examine what the word know means.  To know something is to comprehend it fully.  I ask you, how can you comprehend something fully without experience or an unexplainable knowing from a Wiser part of yourself?"  For whatever reason, it was something that you, I repeat YOU, had to know.  Now, you can beat yourself up for that or you can embrace it for what it was.   In the words of Dr. Robin Smith, author of Lies At the Altar, a compelling book about marital vows and our lack of readiness to make such promises, “How we grow—emotionally, spiritually, relationally, financially—is to take a risk.”

This brings to mind a spiritual belief I have as a person of faith.  I believe my steps are ordered by a Higher Consciousness (whom I adoringly call God) who has a plan for my life.  Hence, I can’t make a wrong decision.  I know that’s hard for some people to swallow, but think about it.  If God is all-knowing--He knows our thoughts even afar off, we belong to Him and nothing about us escapes his watchful eye--then even our mistakes are approved.  In fact, there is purpose in them.  November 2006, I wrote the article “Perfectionism: A Life Without Flaw.”  It starts out with this statement.  “I am where I am because I made the perfect decision to get me here.”  Now, that’s a dope (brilliant) line if I have to say so myself.  Most important, it dispels the belief that you are a victim. 

Lest, I should do as my fellow writer Martha Beck and write a 6-pager, I will bring this to a close.  Besides, I need to get my butt in gear and get about my day-to-day.  I believe that regret only has the power that you give it.  You can use that power to whip yourself and deem other people’s recollection as a scarlet letter you’ll have to wear with shame for the rest of your life or you can use your power of reinvention.  The Bible calls it redemption.   In other words, “when life throws you a lemon, make lemonade.”  I don’t know coined that phrase, but we quote it as if Moses had it written on one of his tablets. 

It is necessary that you morph your regret into hope.  Search through the rubble and find something useful.  Let it inspire you to be better for it.  More human.  Less judgemental.  To be a catalyst for change, take that regret and make something out of it that serves humanity in some way.  There's a greater good out there that's counting on your arrival.

Related articles

• How to Tune In to the Voice Within Martha Beck explains how to ignore the racket and understand how you really feel. By Martha Beck Read more: http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Finding-Your-Inner-Voice-Developing-Intuition-Martha-Beck (naiskita.wordpress.com)

What Do I Believe?

It was in the 1990’s.  It was a hot summer day.  I was walking from my car to the Burroughs Wellcome building that was now part of Glaxo Wellcome, Inc.  It was a stone walkway littered with duck feathers and duck poop.  I had made this walk day after day for several months to a job I had grown to hate.  But there was something different about today’s walk.  As I walked, trying to dodge the poop for the umpteenth time, I heard a voice.  It wasn’t like that big God voice.  Rather, it was a knowing that pulsated from someone deep within me and it rang in my consciousness.  “One day, you will be making this walk for the last time.”  That’s what I heard.  It didn’t come from my discontent with a horrible job.  It came from a Wiser place inside of me that knew before I did that I would be leaving and told me so.

This doesn’t happen often, but it has happened at pivotal times in my life.  It’s like something inside stands up in me despite how I am feeling or the load I am carrying and declares something bigger than that moment.  Oprah often says that God’s dream for you is always bigger than the one you have for yourself.  As I reflect on my life, that has been true time and time again.  I hear something rising up in me again.  It is a voice within my voice and it’s speaking to my very existence.  Another leaving is on the horizon.

I believe that I am a writer.  I AM a writer.  When Oprah, in Lesson 3 of her Life Class spoke about being a writer, it sounded like she was talking directly to the purpose within me.  I have a voice that is amplified when I write.  I need to write.  It’s bigger than me.  It’s bigger than being a New York Times Bestseller.  It’s bigger than becoming a household name.  My gift is to edify.  Everything I do, everything I say, my very approach to life, my very heart beats freedom.  Freedom from every bondage.  Freedom from every box that constricts who we really are.  Freedom from every lie that distorts our true value.  Freedom from ego, from anger, from fear that says you can’t be, you can’t have, you can’t do.  Freedom to be the image of God that exists in all humanity.    

I know that most folks reminisce about the Randolph Sisters.  I’m humbled and extremely reverent when someone I don’t know was paying attention remembers when we use to sing together as a girl group or when we played for a church choir or when I led praise and worship at Freedom Temple Church.  Those were days that I remember with fondness.  I am grateful that so many people were encouraged, touched and changed by our music and the presence of God that flowed through it.  But one has to know when a season is over and let go.  If I were moving in ego, I would be lamenting that those days are over.  I would limit God to one mode, one movement, one expression.  I would long for the attention and even the celebrity that it brought me in my community and my church affiliation.  Writing, on the other hand, is not born of that.  I don’t do it for the paycheck or for the attention.  I don’t do it for the validation.  Writing is my heart song.

What I hear in that knowing place is that I must write.  It is not an option; it is a calling.  First of all, writing liberates my spirit.  It helps me to get centered and to gain perspective.  One could say that I need to write for myself just as much as others need to read what I write.  It’s therapeutic.  It’s illuminating.  There are times that I write my own answer, liberate my own heart, get direction for my own life as I write. 

Many people don’t know that I lost myself.  I went from a outspoken youth to a scared shadow of myself.  I was too codependent to speak out my feelings and perceptions freely.  I was so afraid of being wrong that I’d often accept someone else’s truth as more important than my own.  If someone objected or had a stronger opinion, my sense of self diminished and I became disoriented and lose my way.  I’m sooooo glad that the God of all grace wouldn’t let me stay in that state.  He brought me answers through books and allowed me to express my own thoughts through journaling.   He made room for me.

I know it’ll surprise some people that it wasn’t my upbringing or my religious beliefs that freed me.  It wasn’t saying the sinners prayer at the age of 7 years old.  It wasn't being in deliverance worship services or having hands laid on me.  Because I experienced so much dysfunction in a “Christian” atmosphere, the church, for me, inflicted more suffering than freedom from suffering.  More bondage.   More confusion.   I lamented that I wasn’t good enough.  I spent countless hours on the altar, repenting for being me.  Repenting that I wasn’t like those around me who told me I should be like them.  In hindsight, my suffering wasn’t due to God’s opinion but more the opinions of the church community who couldn’t accept me as me.  Lest I should throw out the baby with the bathwater, I must clarify that the organized church is a place where I can still find refuge and draw strength.  But the saving of my lost soul didn’t happen in a church.  It happened while I was alone:  reading Love Is A Choice, Finding My Way Home, Adult Children of Alcoholics, Codependent No More, Feel The Fear and Do It Anyway.   It happened as I talked with God about the principles that rang true for me.  It was reinforced when I’d hear Oprah and Iyanla and other fellow seekers singing my heart song.  I realized that I wasn’t tainted or marred.  There was someone else in the world who saw things as I did and I no longer felt like an alien.  Slowly and surely, I began to see my own North Star.  And I began to follow that star home.  Home to my authentic soul.  Home to God’s Image inside me as me. 

I don’t know where writing will lead or the doors it will open.  All I know is that I sense a shift coming.  I have something valuable to offer to others.  I am convinced of it.  My Wise Self is saying the same words that Peter said to the lame man in Acts 3:6: “Silver and gold have I none; but such that I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.”  Someone out there has been crippled by life and is waiting to receive strength in their ankles.  I don’t have a nationally syndicated talk show like Oprah.  I don’t have a string of New York Best Sellers like Iyanla.  But I do have that “such that I have.”  And my purpose is to share it.

Heavenly Touch Salon & Spa: One of Raleigh’s Best Kept Secrets

Y’all I’ve found a treasure!  Her name?  Renee Watts of Heavenly Touch Salon and Spa! 

Interestingly, this was a woman I had never ever met face-to-face.  She was a Facebook friend who had relocated from New Jersey to North Carolina.  Her specialty was natural hair and she was trying to get established.  It’s a known fact that we natural sisters are a tight-knit group, so I welcomed Renee into my online natural sister circle with open arms. 

 

I did my second big chop, I’d say a month ago.  I was frustrated with the work required to continue to maintain my natural hair.  It had grown from a Big Chop with less than a ½ inch of hair to shoulder length.  Seemed the longer my hair grew, the more prone to knotting, matting and breakage no matter what I had tried.  Type 4 sistahs, you know what I'm talking about.  We're the kinky, tightly coiled curly pattern subject to shrinkage.  Well, when I was just about to get a chemical put in my hair to make it more manageable, God sent me an angel.  She talked me down, giving me some great pointers about product and proper care of my longer hair.  Her tips enhanced my curl pattern and made my natural hair more manageable.  I promised her that if and when I ever decided to have my hair professionally cared for I’d come to her. 

Here I am almost a year later and I felt compelled to find Renee.  The urge was so strong that I searched her Facebook page for contact information.  I found her phone number on one of her websites, booked an appointment and drove to 142 Wind Chime Court in Raleigh to see her--same day. 

Her warmth and welcoming attitude struck me as I walked back to her hair station.  I explained that I had attempted to cut my hair and it was a mess.  Frustration will make you do some strange things!  Thank God no one could tell how gapped and uneven it was.  Thank God for shrinkage!  What I liked was how she and her fellow stylist, Ms. Theresa, worked together. You see, I had fallen in love with Jill Scott’s new short hair cut (the one she dons on the "Still In Love" video with Anthony Hamilton) and I wanted to rock it natural style.  Not only did I get a boss classy hair cut but the color and styling to compliment it. 

For those in the natural hair community who are looking for an absolutely gifted stylist who knows how to create beautiful natural styles while maintaining healthy hair--without breaking the bank--Renee is the one.  Her work is meticulous!   

If you’d like to get in touch with Renee, go to Natural Hair By Renee' or Heavenly Touch Salon and Spa on Facebook.  Tell her I sent you.