Category: On Life

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First Episode of UIO Is Out

The first episode of UIO is out. Your Confidence Inside Out is an exciting interview with Cheryl Grace, most recently named one of the top 50 Women in Business in 2017 by Black Enterprise.

Aside from being a successful business woman, Cheryl is also a longstanding friend who happens to be one of the most confident women I know. Shown here with two other longstanding friends, Cheryl and I were celebrating my 50th birthday in sunny Florida. Was it really that long ago? Even longer since we first meet years ago as young PR directors and had a holiday together in Florida on the tail of a business meeting.

When we were young

In the podcast, which is available in the iTunes store for free, Cheryl offers invaluable information to today’s girls via enthralling personal stories and hot tips on the subject of self-confidence and self-esteem.

When asked why girls need self-confidence in the first place, Cheryl fluently points out that it is necessary to face the day, just as gloves and scarves are to face inclement weather.

To listen to the podcast, click here  and subscribe to my RSS feed or listen on Soundcloud or head over to iTunes. And do watch this space for the second episode, coming April 28.  Your Body Inside Out is a talk with Judit Ressinka, personal trainer and nutritionist. It’s going to be a good one, too.

Aside from iTunes, the podcast will eventually be available on Google Play, Stitcher and Tunein.

What a way to start UIO. Stay tuned!

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Real Talk About The Human Condition

The excitement is building for the launch of UIO: You Inside Out, my new podcast for teenage girls. Not only have I had the chance to interview some friends I have known for years, also I have had the opportunity to meet some new fantastic women to talk about real issues that have to do with being a teenage girl.

For years now I have been talking and writing about what is often referred to as the human condition and to be honest it has never occurred to me to that the phrase sounds a bit like the dreaded lurgy or something. No wonder folks don’t want to talk about anything human when it comes to them personally.

And if adults shy away from doing so, I suspect teenage girls will run. So this week, in Prelude Two of UIO, I get a little salty. if you will, not explicit or anything like that,  but I am so over sugar coating issues that are just human. Check out the audio here.

And in the meantime, do watch this space for some real talk about what it means to be a teenage girl today. The first episode is UIO: Your Confidence, a talk with Cheryl Grace, most recently named one of the 50 Most Powerful Women In Business by Black Enterprise.  And following closely is  UIO: Your Body, a talk with Judit Ressinka, my personal trainer of about three years. It’s all real talk.

 

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ABOUT UIO’S CHRISTIAN ROOTS

Upon launching the new webpage and survey for my new podcast for teenage girls, UIO: You Inside Out, I’ve  talked a lot about what it is and why I’m broadcasting a podcast in the first place.

In hindsight, however, I haven’t said much about the podcast’s origins. Of course, I mentioned the idea for its name, having occurred to me during a run. But what is its anchor, its foundation–unequivocally my Christian faith.

Though I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t a Christian, for about eighteen months now, I have been reading the Bible In One Year (BIOY), a really cool app through my church, Holy Trinity Brompton. Not only the handbook, if you will of Christianity, the Bible is a fascinating read unto itself. I can highly recommend it.

Having said that, UIO is not exclusively a Christian project and in the first of the podcast’s preludes, leading up to the big launch, I tell you why. Available on my webpage and also on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus, the short piece gets to the heart of UIO.

In the meantime, calling all teenage girls to fill out the UIO Survey, also on my webpage and on social media. It’s all about you. For comments, questions, email me at info@myname.com Looking forward to hearing from you.

 

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Holding Hands Today For A Better Tomorrow

I didn’t sleep at all Election night, though I went to bed about 4 a.m. GMT still praying for a miracle for Hillary Clinton. And at 5.22 when I couldn’t help searching out my I-pad in the dark and checking the BBC’s website, I still had this hope. But around 7 a.m. when my I-phone’s alarm stirred me,  though I was wide awake, I turned the television on just in time to see the Clinton hopefuls sent away from the Javits Centre. It was then that I asked Paul if he didn’t mind if we didn’t watch the news any longer.

I re-drew the blinds and crawled back into bed and set my alarm for about 9 a.m. and attempted to go to sleep. But all I could do was listen to my heart pounding, feel my stomach hurting, and then the tears pushing through. I must have lay in my bed for some thirty to forty minutes weeping desperately and passionately. And even when Paul came in to console me, I couldn’t stop the pain, the emptiness, a longing for something, something that evaded me.

So when the time seemed reasonable, I called a local friend, who is not American, but has lived there and continues to love and cherish the country as her own. A compassionate, reasonable person, I knew I could seek refuge in her, a place to openly and honestly talk about how I felt. I thank her dearly for being there for me, for answering my call. And for another friend who called later to see how I was faring. 

But it was only when I hung up from her and texted two long-standing American friends that this expat began to piece together the emotional quagmire I found myself in. Not only was I feeling a bit confused, dumbfounded, I was feeling the heartache of loss, something that sits deep within the gut and churns. And in this state, I longed for something that had passed, something that no longer existed.

This loss reminded me of a personal time when I saw the values around me change, when I experienced things that I thought could never happen in my world. This loss reminded me of when the unreasonable becomes reasonable, when the abnormal becomes normal. When the very values that life, community has been built on become devalued, when the world crumbles.

In that moment, I crawled out of bed, put the alarm off and headed for the shower. Now all I could seem to think about was my 13-year-old niece. Four years is a long time, I mumbled to myself. She’ll be 17 when this is all over and done with – a big part of her life will have been shaped.

And as the tears returned and I wept for Jana and for young women all over the US, young men, too, I asked God what could I do to hold her hand, if only metaphorically, and though I didn’t get an answer immediately, I had a sense that it had something to do with keeping the faith.

When I sat to read my scripture for the day—I have been doing so for more than a year now through my church, The Bible in One Year, I read these words from Psalm 21: I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from?…

And then I reviewed what Nicky Gumbel, our vicar, had to say about the psalm. “Regret looks back. Fear looks around. Worry looks in. Faith looks up.”

At that moment, I reflected upon the state of worry I had been in all night and into the morning and though it still resides within me on some level, I decided then that it would have no permanent place in my gut.

I would have to look upwards and onwards, if I was going to be of any use to anyone. On this note, I encourage anyone who shares my grief to do the same thing. We must look to the future but in doing so remember that what we do today defines it definitively—the future, that is.

On that note, I leave you with words from an email from Hillary Clinton to supporters:  “Our responsibility as citizens is to keep doing our part to build that better, stronger, fairer America we seek. And I know you will.”

Yes, Hillary I will, and not just for me, and for you and what you stand for, but for Jana and her generation, for Chandler and Chas, and theirs, too, and for everyone, with a view to re-shape, restore morals and values that will serve us steadily now and forevermore.

 

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TAKE A WORLD VIEW: VOTE for Peace and Quiet

Who can keep quiet on this election day, certainly not the candidates. And I certainly cannot.  But speaking out encouragingly and peacefully to friends and family about getting out to vote is not be the only thing you can do to participate in America’s political process.  Though it is important, your vote is equally as important. So above all else get out and vote today if you haven’t already.

So many folks have asked me if I still have the right to vote and if so how does it work. The short answer is I’m an expat, not a dissident–I believe in democracy, even when it doesn’t do exactly what I want it to do personally. Of course, I still have the right to vote; I didn’t give up my citizenship and yes, I vote at every given opportunity, in local elections, too, via an absentee ballot.

My vote is resting now in the local county of my resident, waiting to be counted. Get yours in today, so it can be counted, too. And if you’re still undecided, check out my blog about this serious matter. Now, go and vote!

 

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Paying Tribute to Gloria Naylor: My Muse

A friend sent me a Facebook message asking if I had heard of the death of award winning author Gloria Naylor on September 28, one day before my birthday. I had not. Feeling a bit out of the loop, I went online and met all the condolences head on, reflecting for a good while.

After I came out of my stupor of sadness, I began to remember Gloria Naylor fondly from receiving Bailey’s Café as a birthday gift in 1992 from my BFF to discussing Mama Day, in particular, at my first book club in Albany, Georgia, to meditating and conjuring her up as my muse during a writing exercise meant to improve my own writing skills. Bear with – it really happened.

Anyhow, though I never met her, over the years, I have been privileged (in and out of interviews) to answer several questions asked of writers: what are you reading, what are you writing and who is our favourite author? In other words, which writer has most influenced/most inspired you? The answer to the first two questions naturally varies but the third one has always been the same—Gloria Naylor.

On that note, however, outside of North America, some interviewers and questioners had to ask Gloria who? But upon mentioning The Women of Brewster Place, which was made into a movie, the author’s repute became unmistakable.  An amazing author, Naylor has a way of getting into the reader’s bloodstream, if you ask me, heightening the senses in an indisputable way, even of those who thought she was a bit too deep.

Just a few folks from my book club of yester years said as much but even they couldn’t refute the heart racing, eye popping, ear permeating read of Mama Day, which combines the supernatural and the natural in a genuine yet gripping way.

As one writer asked in a workshop I was in years ago, how does she (an accomplished writer) do it, make you smell the scene, even taste it. Hopefully, she had the chance to ask Naylor, but if she didn’t, all she has to do is study an excerpt from one of her novels. Check out this one from a chapter towards the end of Mama Day:

“When I reached the dogwoods on the west side of the road, the throbbing was beginning to turn into an iron vise in the middle of my chest. I put one foot on the paved road and glassy needles splintered throughout my brain. The house was wavering in front of my eyes. The road felt like water under my buckling knees. It was impossible to cross over, make it up those porch steps, and into our room. I did it. But I was too cramped to even unbend my body on the bed beside you.

 “The worst thing about the blinding pain that finally hit me was the sudden fear that it might be the end. That’s why I gripped your shoulder so tightly. But I want to tell you something about my real death that day. I didn’t feel anything after my heart burst. As my bleeding hand slid gently down your arm, there was total peace.”

Extraordinary, every single word of it, don’t you think. Makes me want to re-read the novel, not only for old times sake, but for the future, too. I could use some inspiration nowadays. Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed. Bear with.

In the meantime, I join many others, her family, friends, fans and followers in celebrating the life of a literary great—Gloria Naylor, who will undoubtedly live on in the hearts and minds of millions. May her work continue to inspire young and old writers alike. Actually, let’s make that older, much more appropriate for me.

 

 

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Vote: It’s A Serious Matter

It is no secret that I don’t think Donald Trump is the right person to be elected as President of the United States for a number of reasons, but the main one is that he is not qualified. He doesn’t have an ounce of legislative experience. But despite this and all the rest that he doesn’t have, he’s a serious contender.

My heart still splits when I drive up behind a car with a Trump for President Sticker on it (in the US) or when someone supports him on social media as the only real choice. Unbelievable!

A few weeks ago, a dinner guest of mine, who knew someone who claimed to know him, said he is a nice man really. He is just being a politician, that’s all. Really, I said, not to mention what else I said.

Still, I was prepared to keep my opinion private until now. Why now? First, as a writer, it is my business to speak out responsibly. And next, some Americans, particularly African Americans, are questioning whether to vote at all or not. Really? Yes, really!

At least two C-list celebrities, an little known rapper and Mariah Carey’s ex, have said that they will not be voting—there is no one to vote for they insist. Really!

Then I came across two normally reasonable writers who not only suggested that they might not be voting but also offered what they thought was good reason. One wrote that voting is not our voice in a democracy; the other wrote that there is no lesser of an evil to vote for, not voting for Hillary Clinton does not mean voting for Donald Trump. He will not vote for evil. And both these writers denounced the American political structure and then went on to expound on why W.E.B Dubois didn’t vote in 1956.

He said, “I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no ‘two evils’ exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.”

With all due respect to democracy, and Dubois, this is not 1956. This is 2016, and certainly remnants of the problems America had in those days might some times feel more like the problems relived than they do remnants, but here is the thing,  voting is a serious matter, especially this November.

Why? In short, it is voting that puts a candidate into office and also that keeps one out. Let’s be real. This is not reality TV; this unusual bid for the White House is a serious matter and has to be taken as such.

Recently, I read an email from Georgia Representative John Lewis (no relation), in which he wrote: “Silence in the face of injustice is another form of injustice.” Hence, this blog!

And that’s when it occurred to me that people who don’t vote are remaining effectively silent on the matter. And there can’t be any justice in that. Not to mention it is the right to vote that puts us at the table to vote in the first place.

Why would we waste that? As such:

  • Like or Lump Hilary Clinton, she is not to be compared to Donald Trump. Whatever she has said and/or done in the past, Hilary is a bona fide candidate with experience as a Senator in her own right, and she has served as Secretary of State, and has demonstrated that she can at the very least work with others and on behalf of others.
  • The President of the US is a world leader and must, I reiterate must, be able to work cooperatively with leaders around the world.
  • The office of President is not a platform for espousing hatred and dividing its citizen. It is the office we look to for hope and unity.
  • Furthermore, the job of President is a real job, requiring real experience, at least knowledge and understanding in policymaking for the sake of its citizens, all of them, not just a handful.
  • Finally, electing the President of the US is not a game, albeit there is a lot at stake. But to debate whether to vote or not as if it is game, is unreasonable, particularly when the stakes are so high. It is a serious matter. Vote!

For more reading on the matter, check out this article.

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Returning to the Peace of Discovery

Around this time last year while on a Nordic tour, I beamed photos and features from my smart devices to social media, not only excited to discover new worlds but also pleased to share with supporters, friends and family, too.

Thinking back, I recall a sort of peacefulness about that holiday, about how I felt wandering around that part of the world, a place that is often portrayed as insular. So when friends and family alike cautioned that I should take care, I rather thought they were being overly cautious. In my travel experiences, even if a destination’s reputation has been called into question, particularly over xenophobia, I tend to give it the benefit of the doubt, unless there is clear and present danger.

But post the Brexit vote, the racial unrest in the US, the insane politics there too,  and the terrorism in France, this year’s holiday on Spain’s south coast felt uneasy. Not that there were any incidents there, none that can compare to the conditions mentioned, but nowadays all destinations seem questionable as a result of chaos in the world.

As an American expat living in Britain, I am acutely aware that the metaphorical band aid that once covered the deep wound of xenophobia has come unstuck. Of course, Brexit is about a lot things and some insist that prejudice is not one of them, even in the face of increased hate misconduct here. In the aftermath of the vote in London, there was a steady stream of graffiti against some European nationals and choice words to others from places as far away as Africa and Jamaica.

For everyone, however, one thing has become clear and that is that the world is overrun with an intense fear, which salts the xenophobic wound, now weeping of hate for some and a disturbing uneasiness for others.

In the latter camp, I find even the coolest of places uncomfortably hot. Sadly, worry has a way of wandering with me, wherever I go, often to the upset of physical and mental health. But that’s another blog. Watch this space.

Meanwhile, let’s get back to Malaga, Marbella, Estepona, Ronda, etc. my trail on the Costa del Sol. Admittedly, it was not an escapist holiday, not the fault of the pretty, bustling region, but it was a reasonably enjoyable one.

Per the guidebooks and reviews on and off social media, it is a fun place for sun seekers, though it was windier than anticipated and it rained on the day we left. Never mind, London ceased being rainy for our return. The folks are friendlier than in the average place and even welcoming to those who don’t speak a lick of Spanish. And the food of Andalusia isn’t bad at all, depending on where you go. One place worth mentioning is Las Brasas de Alberto in Estepona. If not for the Iberian Pork, then go for the house wine. You’ll be glad you did.

Also, sadly for me, there wasn’t much emphasis on food intolerances such as gluten, though organic everything was abundant. Never mind, I needed the comfort food to manage the slower pace of life and to try to catch a bit of the carefree reigning spirit there, which was much needed while navigating the narrow streets of Ronda in our little rental car.

Gee whiz, glad that is over, the bumpy ride that is. As for the holiday, it’s over too, but the desire to discover new worlds remains deep within. May acceptance and assurance as a way of life return with a force, one that sweeps the world, bringing many peaceful holidays for years to come. Now that’s cool.

 

 

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Gems of Wisdom Handed Down

If you do everything now, you will have nothing to look forward to.

You can’t buy class.

 It’s better to buy one good thing that will last instead of several cheap things that will fall apart.

These are things that one friend’s momma, grandma and great grandma used to say. Such priceless words of wisdom often come in handy when we are in a pinch. But sometimes they’re just words we live by or not. In any case, some of the things that our ancestors say to us stay in the alcoves of our minds from generation to generation and in a round about way keeps them, even after they are gone, alive and fresh in our hearts and minds.

Read more in the Huffington Post: Elders Leave Traces Behind. Now for that cup of coffee to access more of those gems! Why don’t you grab one too and share your favourite gems of wisdom right here  or on the Huff Post.

 

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Heeding from the Book of Elder Words

With ill-advised politicians playing on the national stage about now, we are starving for some wise words, and action, too. I know I am.

If only we had the likes of Solomon about now. Aside from his 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11), there hasn’t been a man credited with more wisdom. From his prudence in the dispute between the two mothers over the live baby (cut the child in half. Honestly, but it turned out well. Read for yourself: 1 Kings 3:16-28) to the Proverbs that are accredited to him, his words continue to epitomise fairness the world over.

But unless we reach for the Bible regularly or have the recall of Malachi (that’s my father) we don’t always have these words in mind when we need them. Sometimes we just need wise words to pop into our head, like before we leave someone in a lurch or throw a temper tantrum, on a world stage, for example. What can we do? Short of remembering all the wise words contained in the Bible, a hard task even if you are reading the Bible In One Year, via Holy Trinity Brompton’s app (I should know), refer to the Book of Elder Words.

Yeah, that’s the one. It lives in your head and your heart, too, and comprises words from the elderly that come to mind almost always in the time of trouble. More to come on this very thing later in another, more in-depth blog, but for now in the midst of national confusion, I thought I would share with the politicians and anyone who cares to listen a few of my favourites from this wise old book.

In a pinch, in the time of trouble, in need of advice, I have heeded some of these words, if only silently and graciously, sometimes hearing them echo throughout the day and the night, mind you.

Many of them are, of course, from my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, teachers and so on. But regardless of their origin, the thing about elder words is that, in whatever language them come in, they are handed down from generation to elusively and seem to put us on the same playing field when wielded, even though playing is the last thing we ought to be doing right about now.

Ah, ha! That’s one from the book. Alas, more wise words

  1. When you know better, you ought to do better.

  2. You are too old for that… You complete the sentence.

  3. You started this mess, now you need to finish it.

  4. Winning is not everything.

  5. By now you should know that lies always catch up with you!

  6. Don’t you learn anything from your mistakes?

  7. Well, at least you have your dignity.

Umm, really! I don’t know about that last one. What about you? What are some of your favourites from the Book of Elder Words? Do tell!