Author: She was set free

My Shadow’s The Only One That Walks Beside Me

She was set free8 Comments

I went to Wal-Mart last week and found this  for Z’s room (see previous post for reference)

IMG_1291 (Edited)

Yes, I know the hair is covered which kinda defeats the purpose, but my options were limited and it was better than nothing. Next I went to the dollar store intent on buying gold paint to redo her dresser handles and match the painting (which is massive) and ended up calling my mom for advice. This was where I made my mistake. All I needed was advice on if the kind of paint they had there would stick to the metal handles or if I needed to go elsewhere, since I’m not a crafty person I wanted to get it right. That’s it. But nope, as my 31 years should have taught me long ago it’s not that simple with my mom.

I guess I just still feel like no matter who you are/what you’ve done, you should always be able to have a relationship with YOUR OWN MOTHER! At least that’s what I’m trying to teach my children. So anyways, I guess deep down in me, I keep trying. Trying no matter how many times I’ve been hurt by this woman, to keep reaching out. Opening up, and just end up getting slapped in the face.

So I’m in the dollar store and I call her for paint advice. She really doesn’t know but just tells me to get what they have and that it should work and to by some of the cheap brushes they have there too. I have some at home but I just let her say her thing and give her motherly advice even though I say twice I already have brushes. I briefly explain why I’m doing this for Z, and it doesn’t really faze my mom, which bothers my on it’s own, but I know by know not to expect much from her in that area. She’s kind of a you made you bed now sleep in it woman. I go on to give other small updates regarding my life. How I registered Little E for soccer, she asks why didn’t I sign Z up for dance, I explain it doesn’t start until the fall. I talked about how I was looking for a second job, both to keep busy as well as meet new people and bring in extra income. She poo-pooed the place I was interviewing at. I explained how I had just come from the Dr’s that morning and filled my seizure med’s and had also asked for a prescription for anti-depression medications, because I just didn’t think I could make it until spring anymore, and basically rounded out the call with “and that’s what’s new” to which she responded with “Actually C none of that is really new. It’s all very round about and the same old stuff for you”

So I was just like, ok bye. And all I could think about is how my family always complains that I never share things with them. Can they not see that when I do share, I get responses like this? So I sent her the following text. IMG_1286

IMG_1287

And so I find myself here.

On my blog.

At the request of my oh so loving mom. With literally nowhere else to turn. I’ve made no friends here in 8 months. K and I no longer talk and I long for those meaningful conversations with someone who at least pretends to care.

I have nothing. And it’s more difficult than it should be for anyone pretending to live at a level where they have to maintain sanity for the sake of their kids, but when does even that seem stupid and pointless?

And for those wondering, I haven’t spoken to my wonderful mother since, nor do I have any plans to in the foreseeable future. 🤷🏻‍♀️

-Green Day / Boulevard Of Broken Dreams-

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I Wish I Could Be Every Little Thing You Wanted All The Time

She was set free11 Comments

Last night Z nearly broke my heart.

I was washing her hair, which could be considered a full time job, although we do it on average once a week if I’ve had enough coffee and sleep, when she made the comment that she doesn’t like her hair and wished it was like all her friends hair, which is in her words ‘smooth’.

Z has the most fantastic Afro, which I’ll admit at first I didn’t at first know the first thing about dealing with for obvious reasons, the main being I never had hair like that so why bother learning right? But over the years as her hair grew I realized it was getting more curly and thick and I would need more insight on how to care for her crowning glory to do it full justice, I started researching what the better quality products would be to use. I learned all about a wash n go and wet plopping and deep conditioning which to be honest were all very helpful for my hair as well since I also have curly hair, although not to the extent of Z’s 3c/4a curls. I learned not to use drug store brands that contain sulphates and other harmful chemicals that will further dry her hair out. I learned how to trim her hair myself to maintain it and get rid of dry, split ends on my own without spending a fortune on a hairdresser. I will admit though that I still cannot plait her hair, but I have learned twist outs and how to lay her edges so I’ll just take that as a win for now. One step at a time. 🤷🏻‍♀️

But when she was upset last night because her hair wasn’t ‘smooth’ like all her friends at school my heart fell into my gut. I can only be so much of a roll model for her in this area. I wear my hair as big, full and curly as possible, because I honestly feel the bigger the better, and I truly think natural hair is better. I’ve straightened my hair maybe once a year since finding out all this information about hair for Z. Little E wears his hair pretty close cut because he just has no interest in keeping a style and prefers it practically shaved, and even when he does grow it out, it’s not as curly as Z’s, it’s more of a thick bigger curl. Her dad maintains a bald head although they don’t see him often (as my regular readers know 3 visits when we went back at Christmas and before that it was February last year). So I guess my point with all these “examples ” is that she has no natural hair role models as far as her hair texture. I’ve shown her on places like instagram woman with beautiful hair like hers and how they wear it even bigger than hers. For reference, her fro averages between 6-10 inches but I don’t fluff it out on the bigger side often. She prefers to style it pushed back with a headband or with a few clips or two pigtail afropuffs. Which is for the best because those are the only ones I can pull off half decently.

Anyways this is a very roundabout way of saying I hurt for her. I want her to be proud of every part of her, but this is a way I can’t directly be a role model for her. Yes, I can wear my hair naturally and I do, but her hair is distinctively different, not only from mine, but from the streets of Kelowna and even where we were before and heck even in a Kenya because of the mix, and others notice. I think it’s fantastic and beautiful and many others do as well. We constantly receive compliments while out about how nice her hair is of which I reminded her last night. I told her that her hair is original and beautiful and she should never want to change who or how she is. I was detangling it and showed her how long it was while wet and stretched out and she was so impressed, since it reaches to her elbows. So after the bath, I did one long braid for her down her back and she was much happier and kept mentioning how long and smooth it looked. Albeit it only lasted about 15 minutes until it was completely dry and shrunk up to her neck but it made her happy in that moment.

I’m just wondering how to move forward from here. I’m WELL aware that my kids should have strong black role models in their life, but if there aren’t any around… I can’t just produce them out of thin air.

My in laws are not an option, her dad is out of the question. The black community in Kelowna is to be honest practically nonexistent (trust me, I’ve looked). But I know that it will be something they need to become the fullest version of themselves they can be.

I guess that’s the most frustrating aspect of this experience. Knowing I can be the best mom I can possibly be. I can make all the healthy lunches and arrange all the play dates and study up on all the hair care and do all the sex talks, to name a few examples, but facts are facts, and facts in my situation is that my kids are half black, there’s no denying that, and I would never want to. And that culture is not something I can provide them, and they desperately need it.

It makes me feel so inadequate.

Knowing no matter what, I’ll never be enough. And I can’t do it on my own.

And what’s worse it that the right people are not offering to help.

***update***

Just stopped at Walmart and saw this ironic and timely display showing Robert Munschs books on display

All had been picked through except the braids book (which Z owns). It’s a book about a girl with hair like Z’s and how she doesn’t like to have it braided since it takes a while and hurts. Etc. But anyways it’s literally just shows how no one in Kelowna has that culture in their life nor is trying to pass it on to future generations here and I’m on my own with my kids. 😑

*Z with morning bed head for reference*

-Dishwalla / Every Little Thing –

Leaving To Find My Soul Told Her I Had To Go And I Know It Ain’t Pretty When Our Hearts Get Broke

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The fact that I am alive is proof enough that I am a God.

No one can confirm for sure how the world started.  Not when or how or at what point, which leaves it wide open for interpretation on exactly how or why we got to this place in history or the present place in the universe.

Did we come with a purpose? I believe so. Once being to discover the fact that just being here makes our journey complete. We fundamentally have made it by making ourselves. We came. We saw. We each individually have essentially conquered the obstacles of creation by mutually not only choosing to co-exist but at the same time to create the same reality we all choose to collectively perceive and view as real or life if you will.  That fact, in and of itself makes us all God, or a portion of ‘God’ or a ‘soul’ on the outside, all jointly looking in on this world we have created and living out through human existence.

Many over the course of this dynamic perception have  tried to explain this phenomenon. Some use science to get closer to the answer. Some simply trust in the unknown God/deity they choose to represent the beginning. Other pure and simple refuse to acknowledge that question at all, which leads them not searching for an answer. In fact the large majority of today’s population have been satisfied with just living that they have no desire to wonder how their life came into being in the first place. They have become complacent. The are satisfied with a big bang, or a creation, but when it comes down to it, humans are afraid to dig deeper. Since when you try to truly uncover further into the origins of not only the world, but yourself, it will leave you looking starkly at one thing and one thing only.

No matter which theory you align yourself with, we all started at the same place. All at the same time. When I say ‘we’ I don’t mean on the surface level of the life ‘we’ live as you read this. I dive deep into us as a humanity and a universal perception.

The creation of this reality had to start in A moment. Where we all collectively branched out on our own journeys to create at will. Maybe we went from one to a million in an instant big bang style. Maybe ‘we’ collectively planned our futures and our memories and agreed we would just agreed to have thoughts and memories that extended so far back to create a reality and at the count of three wake up one morning go on our way. Maybe ‘we’ split in two and then four and then eight etc, like a baby in the womb. Maybe, we did all of the above, and agreed to each carry a different version of the conception deep in our thoughts hidden in so many lifetimes. This would help us to never return to the loneliness of being one together, since we knew we would never allow our views to change once spread so vast and becoming so hardened.

But once spread out and functioning as a world as we are now, what if two or more individual humans began to think as one again on such a level that they shared this kind of information? What would it do to the origins of the entire perception of the world? It could destroy it. It could destroy the original ‘creation’ that came from thinking independently. The separation and joy and individuality that came from the creation, that allowance to have different thought processes and different opinions that would have never occurred had we all remained as one, would be wiped out. We would return to that being of oneness.

So the fact that from the source and the beginning there are differences should bring the most joy as well as enlightenment. Joy to know the source of this world had knowledge to discover it must become different in order to expand and create eventual life. And enlightenment to acknowledge that you are a byproduct of that source.

This empowering knowledge lends to the discovery that along the way our thoughts at one point in the past were connected. Before we became so focused on the perception of this tangible reality, we were all connected and intermingled not as humans, but as souls, or thoughts. So if we did it before, lived as one in a bodyless haven, why should we limit ourselves to the possibility of creating this reality or perception we see every day, and focus instead on uncreating or returning to that for our souls.

I’m not suggesting it will happen overnight, as many indiscretions have been made against each other or each soul or thought process throughout this creation process since our infinite decision long ago to part ways. It will take many conscious repairs to mend bonds that were broken along the way, but can be made easier with the knowledge that we are all the source and the beginning, and therefore we all originally had intentions of creating a reality. Did we know exactly how it would turn out? No because we gave each other the freedom to create and be individuals. But with the brokenness, we may not feel like it on the surface, but our souls are longing for healing.

We are all longing to come back home to ourselves as one. Where we all began.

 

-Macklemore / These Days-

 

Show Me The Meaning Of Being Lonely Is This The Feeling I Need To Walk With?

She was set free8 Comments

So I’ve been living here in Kelowna for 7 months. Plenty of time to get nice and settled and make  massive amounts of new friends and join plenty of clubs, classes,  activities what have you.

As much as I feel at home in my house, and actually enjoy the town as a whole, basically because of the views, I’m not really thrilled with the choice I made to move, since it’s been leading me to some weird… stuff.

It’s a catch 22 at the moment. My kids are overall so much happier, and because of that, I am confident that I made the right decision in relocating. Their school is superb and they have made good friends. The daycare is crap, but there really aren’t too many other options for someone in my position to change that right now so it will have to do. I find the school incorporates so many more activities into the children’s day which is something I just don’t have the energy to do. They’ve had people in to teach them about inline skating, parkour, indigenous people, petting zoo tours, gone ice skating, hiking in the mountains, tobogganing, and have swimming planned for the upcoming weeks. That’s for both Little E and Z’s classes, getting to do all those things within the last few months of school. I feel like it helps lift the burden off of me feeling like I need to get out often with the kids to give them those experiences when they are having them at school and enjoying them with friends.

My family here in town has been good too. We’ve gotten together a few times for dinner or going out for walks and visits. My uncle even took the kids for supper last Saturday then to an arcade just to give me a break for a few hours.

It was weird. I didn’t know what to do with myself while they were gone since to be honest normally I would go to sleep but I had to stay up wait for them to get dropped off back home. So of course all I could do was think about how lame my life had become when it’s completely obsessed with taking care of my children. So here I am. Home alone at night for the first time since we moved here 7 months ago, and I had nothing to do. It was pathetic.

I had no friends to call.

No hobbies to turn to.

Nothing off the top of my head that would be fun for me to do.

So I made myself supper and then spent close to an hour trying to find something to watch on prime video since I had recently cancelled Netflix to save money. Then once I finally decided on a show, ended up just scrolling through Instagram while the show played until the kids came home around 9.

It was the most pathetic night off ever. Don’t worry you can judge me, I know it was bad.

And all the thoughts I was trying to avoid all night was how lame and lazy it was. How lame I was. How I’d been living here 7 months and hadn’t made any friends that I could call and chat with. How I’d been here this long and I am still so alone. Which of course moved into how I should stop having conversations with myself because I refuse to think I’m crazy. Since my kids already have one parent with mental health issues, they don’t need a second locked up in the psych ward. So keep it together C. Don’t become like E.

But to be honest…

How does a person know if they are not crazy? (This is where my alone thoughts take me lately… this and where did the universe start, which isn’t any more helpful) Sure I function in my day-to-day life perfectly fine. I get my kids up and out the door to school on time. I perform all my duties at work without any issue. I’m 100% aware of what’s going on around me…. I think. But that’s the issue. What if I’m missing out on something, and I’m not aware of it. How would I know?

I think about that a lot. Do people with mental health issues know they have them? Or to put it simply and very politically incorrectly, do crazy people know they are crazy?

Especially someone in my position. I don’t have any friends to talk to, or to tell me I”m acting differently lately, so how would I know?

Because to be frank, I feel crazy sometimes. I feel like there is stuff going on in my mind that I cannot stop or understand or explain, and that I did not put there. But how do I know if that’s normal or not normal? How can I explain if this is how it’s supposed to be, and something everyone is probably experiencing, or if I’m the one-off? Because some of the thoughts are so far out there, it’s not something you can bring up in casual conversation with someone new you meet at the coffee shop (not that that ever happens anyways). But I want to have deep conversation about deep things that I have going through my mind and thoughts, but to be honest, I’m worried and scared that if I shared them with your average joe, they’d give me the side eye and maybe call me in to have a welfare check done on my kids. I’d never harm my kids. Trust me. I’m doing everything I can to be the best mother I can. But it’s something deeper and more powerful than that that I’m trying to overcome and I don’t know how. I don’t think anyone knows how. SO who is there to talk to if it’s an issue no one has dealt with before?

Yes it’s most likely all the spare time that is leading me to this pattern of thought, but is it  good or bad? Am I discovering something that’s never been discovered before? Or am I going crazy and I just have no one around to tell me.

I guess no one will know. Since its indescribable. And if I can’t describe my problem, no one can understand it, let alone solve it. Not even me.

You see my problem.

Definitely too much alone time to come up with this problem in the first place.

But it makes you think.

-Backstreet Boys / Show Me The Meaning Of Being Lonely-

I Guess There’s Certain Dreams That You Gotta Keep ‘Cause They Only Know What You Let ‘Em See / They Don’t Care Like I Do Nowhere Like I Do

She was set free7 Comments

Google can suck my non-existent dick after they’ve shoved it up their ass.

How’s that for sexual content?

A little while ago I monetized my site with Google Adsense. I figured it’s here, you’re here, Google ad’s are there. Why not connect them all on my site for an opportunity to make a few extra dollars a month? Logical right.

So I spent pretty much a whole Saturday afternoon trying to figure out how to change the coding here on my wordpress site to allow the ads to display semi-decently, something I’m sure would’ve taken someone with experience 3 minutes. But I’m not experienced so I struggled with it and after a few hours persevered.  Then I waited while Google took over a week to approve my site (meanwhile it says it will take only a day or so to do it). I finally emailed once to see what was up, and magically it was approved later that Friday go figure. I watched over that first weekend as nothing happened on Friday, no change on Saturday, but when I woke up on Sunday to check my stats, I saw the most beautiful thing.

You my readers throughout the world had viewed ads enough times to earn me $2.94.

And I cried. Honest to goodness tears of joy. Not even three dollars but it was the most valuable 3 dollars I had ever earned.

I set this site up almost 2 years ago. On a computer that I bought with my own money. I created the name and content with my own brilliance and suffering. The blogs are FILLED with my own spelling and grammar errors, but more importantly my life. I have NO BOSS in this endeavor. It wasn’t a job that paid me. It was my outlet and in some cases my savior.  This brought me joy and relief and satisfaction because it was all mine from start to $2.94 finish. And now, in that $2.94 I saw potential for freedom from much more.

Then a few days after I got an email  from Google stating they would not be allowing ad’s on my site until I complied with their terms. The item in question? Sexual content. The post they were referring to? My sex talk with Little E.

Seriously Google?

You think an educational talk that a mother is sharing with her child is dangerous and offensive sexual content?

I FIND THAT OFFENSIVE!!!

That you think you can sensor me and my parenting. Was I sharing pornographic videos to my child to teach him about the birds and the bees? NO. Did I link those videos here? Even more no! So, for you (Google) to yank my ads and therefore my money making abilities here, because I choose to be a good involved parent, is so much of what’s wrong with the world. You want children to be ignorant? You want parents to be afraid of speaking about these things to their own offspring? Well that’s not me.

I will not pull my post for you. I will not amend it in any way to bend to your sexual content codes. I will continue to teach my son and soon my daughter when she’s old enough (so you can expect another raunchy extreme x-rated sex filled according to Google post then) because I am a good parent, and my kids will be advised, aware, conscious, caring, loving SEXUAL humans.

So keep your money Google.

It wasn’t as valuable as my children’s lives anyways.

-Khalid Ft. Kane Brown/Saturday Nights-