Keep It Sybil

I know it has been a long time since I last updated.  I am going to do better.  I've been working on a memoir so I have had to dig deep and write things I may not have even admitted to myself. There are good and bad in everyone and this I know for a fact.  The thing is,  most of us won't examine ourselves deep enough to make the discovery.  Thankfully,  once I reached my mid- twenties,  I learned the value of self- examination.  Making the journey is never fun but gaining the truth gives me a feeling of triumphant. A few good truths about myself-I am trustworthy,  I am honest,  I am caring.  A few bad truths about myself - I am black/ white no in between,  I am a procrastinator, I am transparent.  I know you may be saying that transparency is a good thing but I did only agree to that in a very small amount of instances. It's so unfortunate that there are people who prey upon those of us who lay everything on the table. ...

We have all, at some point, been guilty of just looking at someone and judging them.  There is an adage that doesn't seem to apply much nowadays, about not judging a book by its cover. That simply means things aren't always the way they look.  The fact that this no longer applies is a dangerous thing.   Especially for women. We scroll all of our social media platforms with the purpose of judging.  Now let me say that a judgement doesn't only mean negativity put can also be positive.   As we scroll we are making up on our heads that this person is beautiful,  that person is a mess,  you covet a lifestyle or are jealous of what you are judging on a picture.  Once we have made the judgement we mostly either feel proud of ourselves or badly for ourselves.  Herein lies the danger. If we have scrolled and scrolled and then tell ourselves how much better we are than a majority of those people we judged then we have set ourselves up....

I have a mission in life.  It was given to me by my God and I have begun to accept that I can no longer run from it.  Accepting that thing is hard.  Being true to who I am supposed to be is a painful journey; well at least mentally,  emotionally and spiritually. I haven't by any stretch of the imagination led a particularly interesting life. Just like many other people,  I have done some good and I have done some bad. I haven't always been proud of my actions. In fact, I used to have a terrible temper and if I felt I or a family member was being wronged I could flip very quickly. When my dad was angry he was in control but his usually light colored eyes would turn dark and you would feel a chill.  I like imagine that I would evoke that same appearance when angered. Alas, it's probably not true given the fact that I am barely able to raise my voice through yelling. I say that I am more calm in my 40's than my 20's. Don't test me though. That being said,...

December 2010 I was in a place in life where I was down but not out.  In that moment I was emotionally depressed and physically not at my best   I had never been in this place.  I knew i had to get out.  Run don't walk.  That's what I told myself.  Because I am an avid reader I had read plenty of times that if you don't like something in your life then only you can change it.   Yep, that was a saying that I needed to figure out so I could make a change.  That meant more reading for me and then a lot of writing. In the following year I was able to make me and different choices that would impact my life. At the age of 35 I had finally figured it out.  Wrong! Sure I figured out that I needed to make different choices but then I unknowingly became complacent.  That isn't what I wanted.  It just so happened that I was settling in to a few roles that was unfamiliar to me.   I threw myself in to those roles completel...

I was born in the 70's; 1975 to be exact. Once I got of age where I could read inferences and people it was the early 80's.  From 1980-1983 my family and I  lived on the tiny Japanese island of Okinawa. Well,  racism wasn't a part of my consciousness.  That would change soon enough though. Once returning to the states, we lived another 3 years in a small California town,  Atwater.  Living here, I became more aware of race. It was a military town so it had a mixture of races and races mixed. I had Hispanic, white, black and Asian friends; this was common place. At the age of 11 my world blew up. My dad retired from the Air Force and our family moved one last time,  to the South.  Because I have always been an avid reader,  I was in tune with my heritage and my blackness.  Being a lighter- skinned black girl, knowing my heritage wasn't enough.  The isms within my own race would become very prominent. There were a group of girls tha...