I have a visual bucket list or as I like to call it Purple Crayon Inspiration over on Pinterest.
Truth be told, I havent looked at it in a while. But today’s Daily Prompt: Kick it made me review it again.
And guess what…I kicked it last year!!! WHOO HOO!!!
I’m still here.
While I didn’t believe for one second that the world was gonna end yesterday, I chose not to make jokes about it. I believe that yesterday, for some people…for far too many people, their world did end. Loved ones died, parents were burying children far too young to be put into the ground and someone, somewhere found out that it is in fact cancer. This is the world we live in. It sucks ass more times than we feel comfortable admitting.
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly. – Richard Bach
Many times this year, I thought my world had ended.
Lesson learned: I. AM. A. SURVIVOR.
I’ve learned that I am more than I think I am. I can go further than I think I can. I endure. I rise above. I move on. I try again. I learn. I grow. I evolve.
Caterpillars don’t just enter the chrysalis and sprout wings, you know. Before they become butterflies, they essentially become bug soup, dissolving completely before being reborn as something new and beautiful. – Lissa Rankin
The caterpillar’s world has to end for the butterfly’s world to begin. The butterfly knows patience. The butterfly trusts that everything is happening as it is supposed to. The butterfly arrives right on time.
Patience. A year of patience. I wanted to fast forward the healing of my broken heart. I wanted to skip the hard gym days and go straight to the me who is now 18lbs lighter. I wished my promotion would just hurry up and be official. Needless to say, nothing happened before its time. The lessons were in the details. If I’d skipped the “hard” parts, I would have missed the experience of the journey.
I’m sure I will have more lessons in patience. Letting go of the outcome and trusting that everything is happening as it should, is going to be a recurring theme because I’m still pretty selfish and I want everything now. I’m still learning that the best part of delayed gratification is the delay.
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds. – Bob Marley
Failure is slavery. I can be controlling. This can be problematic when it comes to real life. One cannot control everything. Therefore when things fall apart, when the world as I know it ends, I tend to trash talk myself. Learning to reframe failure into just an experience to learn from has been freeing. It means that there is no right or wrong path…there is just a path. I live and I learn and I grow.
What is to give light must endure burning. – Viktor Frankl
It is said that the cracks in a broken heart allows light to shine through. My heart must look like a disco ball by now. That’s the thing about human beings and all the relationships we find ourselves in….someone is going to break our heart. Mother. Sister. Brother. Husband. Friend. That’s the risk of “relating”…of loving. This has been a time of releasing those who hurt me. It’s been hard. Some of the hurts I’m still not over but by acknowledging it…releasing it, I am now free to connect with those who can fill those holes.
The way you treat yourself sets the standard for others. – Sonya Friedman
We teach people how to love us. This is one of my favourite posts, because this is the standard I set for myself this year.
When, I moved into my apartment last year, one of my first guests said, “You know, maybe your mum had to leave this world, so you could finally find your place in it. So you could grow up.”
At the time, I was like…wait what?! But my world as I knew it, ended on August 07th, 2010…a little before 2:00 p.m. and all this time, I’ve been trying to work my way out of the cocoon.
I’ve done a lot of growing up in 2012. I have a long way yet to go. I am grateful for all the love in my life, for the people who love the work-in-progress that I am.
Light, Love, Passion….and coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.…and that’s a wrap!
Fort Granby in May!
This is my mother and I at Fort Granby, back in May 2010.
The sibs and I wanted to surprise her for her birthday with a weekend trip to Tobago…and boy was she surprised. I made sure to take her to my favourite place in Tobago, Fort Granby.
I love surpises…ok I love the good kind of surprises. I love birthdays. I love planning the surprise as much as I love seeing the look on the person’s face when they are. And this was by far one of the very best.
Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago
When you were elected PM, unlike many woman in this country I didn’t feel a sense of achievement for womankind or empowerment in any way. I chose to adopt a wait and see attitude. Since, I believe, that “actions speak louder than words”.
I had expectations of you. I hoped you would erase the memories I had of when you languished under the leadership of Basdeo Panday. What I expected of you, our recently minted SC Prime Minister, was a leader who exuded a strength that allowed you to keep your femininity intact yet remain forceful.
I expected you to be the embodiment of all that is empowerment not only for our women and young girls but also for our men and young boys. I expected you to show us all, that yes you are a woman, and you are capable of successfully running this country in a way that has never been seen before. I expected you to be a role model and to inspire young women here in Trinidad & Tobago and even those regionally, to strive for more, to want to achieve their highest good.
In the almost three years since assuming this hallowed mantle of leader of this sweet twin-island Republic, I call home I continue to wait for your shining moment. I am afraid that the hope so many women saw in the election of this country’s first woman prime minister may be in vain. What many thought would be “an iron fist in a velvet glove” now seems to be a manicured wave in well-coiffed photo-Ops.
My dear, PM when you are not firing errant ministers, you are brushing off as “political mischief” any criticisms directed at your government. Always with the fall back, “I was advised…” you seem incapable of accepting responsibility for anything. I thought the Section 34 Fiasco was the behemoth of all missteps this year. But I was wrong. The worst issue of 2012 for me, has to be the way you handled Dr Wayne Kublalsingh’s hunger strike.
You have been portrayed by many as “mother of the nation” in fact much of your candidacy hinged on your maternal instincts. What kind of example were you setting as a “mother” when you refused to meet with a man demonstrating his right to express his view? What kind of example were you setting when you stood by and endorsed the despicable behaviour of your government ministers as they belittled and attacked Dr Kublalsingh and his family? Or is this perhaps one of those “do as I say, but not as I do” lessons? Seems pretty Orwellian to me.
How is the arrogance you displayed when you ignored Dr Kublalsingh’s call for accountability and transparency by your government any different from the much maligned arrogance of Patrick Manning – our former prime minister? Is it perhaps because you are a woman, so it is not seen as arrogance?
Growe and Montgomery (2000) defined leaders as people “who provide vision and meaning for an institution and embody the ideals toward which the organization strives” (p.1).
You are guilty of the same things you promised to cast out of our political history as you rode your wave to power, instead of vision and good governance, we get miss-speak, misunderstandings and mischief.
Kamla, leaders do not command excellence, they build it. They should be willing to admit mistakes and learn from them…an expectation of leaders both male and female. It may be too late for you to sway me, but it is not too late for you to redeem yourself in the eyes of the public. This is my hope for 2013. You have at least two years left to change the course of your legacy. I wonder…are you up to that task?
All eyes are on you.
First photo taken of my mother and I right after midnight Mass on New Year’s Day 2010. Eight short months later, my mother returned to God.
Thank you.
In the eyes of a child, their mother is god. You were my first experience with love…with unconditional love. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for loving me so that I can rest in peace in the knowledge that in your eyes…I was enough.
Thank you for introducing me to God and ensuring that I learned the importance of a spiritual practice and experienced a truly deeper experience with unconditional love. It was because of your faith and your love, that I was able to grow and love and exist in the knowledge that there is something…someone greater than I am.
It is that faith, that you nurtured, I hold on to everyday since you’ve been gone. It is this faith that keeps my heart open to share my light with the world and not be bitter and closed off and angry because you’re not here. Yes I still have moments when I see ladies who are much older than you, still here, still alive…they get to have time that you didn’t. It upsets me sometimes. No, it upsets me every time. But, I hold on to the fact that in the time you did have, you lived and you loved. You loved hard. Time very well spent in my eyes.
I miss you everyday. I love you. You are in my heart and prayers.
V.
