The Shields We Keep

I am learning about how emotions or moods, language and body impact the human soul and how to truly assist someone transition to their best self by looking at these areas and how they influence each other. For example the language you speak to yourself what impact does it have on your body and world view?

So it got me thinking about how well do we actually listen to our bodies and what they are telling us about our thoughts. I have to say that it my realisations boggled my mind and I wondered how many people actually think about the impact their thoughts have on their bodies (hence health). How many of us put up shields in our minds that actually manifest in the physical?

Somewhere in the is a Sumo wrestler just dying to come out…….

All my life I have always been chubby. I do not recall a moment when I was a skinny child. Ok I think I lie, I think perhaps there was a time if I look at the photos of me at that age but frankly I do not relate to that person; she looked too vulnerable and therein lies the rub of the matter. I have never been skinny and growing up I had body issues however in my late teens seeing how life was passing me by I developed a defensive confidence (take me as I am or else) and I was passive aggressive. I think I scared people, hell I think I still scare some people. I attempted to lose weight but I could never stick it out. The one time that I actually did a program (weight watchers) and I was almost at my goal weight I quit. In retrospect I remember how unlike me I felt. I could not identify with that person whose thighs actually didn’t rub together (madness I know). I felt that if my brothers pushed me around, I would be seen as weak if I cried or got hurt or if someone wanted to take physical control of me they could because cause well I was small. Also being the shortest in the family I always thought of myself as being of the smurf variety, you know the type you can even stash in your pockets (yes, I know very dramatic imagination). Needless to say in a year I had gained all the weight I had lost. Over the years I would experiment with diets and a variety of pills. My current mood about diet supplements is one of boredom (they are not worth the impact on your health) and I really am trying to leave a healthier lifestyle however and I still can’t imagine myself as a skinny Thembile but I see a healthy Thembile.

Putting down the shield

My revelation was on how in my mind growing up I needed protection and since my body was under attack (see my post “A moment Authenticated”) I felt my body as was not enough to protect me. Everything I looked at and that influenced me was larger than me and not being able to influence my growth I changed my body, shape and all. The desire to be physically stronger although subconscious manifested itself in a heftier me. In social situations although I was the life of the party there was always a part fearful of making a wrong move. When I started dating in my early twenties I was confronted with that fact that my physical form was really no threat to anyone (-_-) and being the genius that I am I picked up martial arts and became a Jet-Li wanna-be. That mental heaviness I carried throughout my life to date. It is only as I shake my mental heaviness that I feel how heavy I am and feel physically. Now my body does not match my mind and I just want to shake it off but as with any lasting change patience is a crucial thing. So all I keep saying to myself is patience little tiger, patience.

Shields are things we use to not live to our fullest potential. Sometimes we are aware of them and sometimes we are not. Sometimes they are thoughts we create because of a particular experience and sometime it is what people in our lives tell us and we take them as the truth or facts about who we truly are. So what are the things that are currently racketing through your mind and what is your body saying about them?

Love and blessings
Thembi

Moments of Gratitude

There are times when you sit and think back on all the things you have been through and all you can do or say is ‘Thank you’ Lord. Not because things are perfect, right or going your way but because you know that you are not where you used to be and despite it all you are better. Today and tonight is one of those moments.

I am grateful for the life I have. I am grateful for the love I have. I am grateful that through it all God has been with me unconditionally when nobody else was. I know what he did for me yesterday, he will do for me tomorrow. I am grateful for my sanity and my centredness.

Most of all I am grateful for my girl. The things I have been through just to see one of her smiles I would go through a thousand times over and over again. If God created me for no other purpose than being her mother,that would be a life well lived.

Love and blessings

Woman of Destiny

Woman of destiny rise up
Rise up to the purpose that God has called in you

Woman of destiny I know you are challenged.
The World does not love beautiful things, because beautiful is what you are
I tell you this; there is none like you on this whole earth.
Your father broke the mould when he made you.
That is why you could never find another Esther, Ruth, Mary once they were made.
God made them in the throes of passion, just like you

So woman of destiny rise and claim the kingdom God placed in your heart
Beautiful sister of God, your Father has nothing but abundance in store for you
Don’t let world insecurities make you small.
People will change their opinions of you as easily as the price of bread changes.
Don’t let that be your currency.

Monuments to ‘There’

What is your life a monument to? That is the very question I have been asking myself of late. I do not think anyone intentional goes out to erect a monument to the negative events in their lives but somehow without really intending to; we do. You may ask ‘how?’ I have learnt lately that what you focus on inevitably becomes your life and like it or not that becomes your monument. That is what you wake up and pay homage to everyday.

 

Now isn’t that a silly waste of time? Why nurture what has not nurtured you? One thing I told myself after the challenging year I have had was that I would not let the situation with the father of my child define me or my daughter. I know without a doubt that I am doing the best that I can. My daughter wants for nothing that I can provide. I give her love, she is clothed, she is fed, she protected. That is my greatest achievement. Her father’s absence is nothing I can control. His failures are nothing I can change. Most importantly it is what he has to deal with, not me.

My greatest fear in this situation was that I would let the bitterness and anger I felt over what he did affect my life beyond what he has done. In my journey to prevent I realised that for me to completely let go, I would HAVE to forgive him and boy has that been difficult. I am not there yet but I am not where I started.  I refuse to lay even one angry or bitter stone immortalise his destructive action.  I can honestly say that where I was just a few months ago is not where I am today. Sometimes living in the ‘there’ is as dangerous as living in the ‘then’. I think most of my life I have always lived in the ‘there’ moments. When confronted with a challenging situation I always believed perseverance was the answer and unfortunately what I had not learnt was that in persevering be clear what you are persevering about and I think for the first in my life when confronted with the actions of ‘He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named’ (Lol), I chose the ‘here’ moment because clearly our whole interaction had been based on the ‘there’  and what I believed was a good foundation; for him had been a hiatus.

If I could have a Rand for every situation where instead on focusing what was happening then and less on what could happen in future I would be a very wealthy woman. I didn’t and the wisdom gained from there has been invaluable. The ‘then’ is as important as the ‘there’ moments in our lives. The ‘then’ will give you a highlight of what is to come in the ‘there’. Value those insights.

So back to ‘here”. I am blessed, I am loved, and I am inspired. ‘Here’ God has given me the love of a daughter, a mind so clear about where it’s going that only good can come from it, friendships that inspire to be the kind of woman that I have always dreamed of and most importantly a relationship with a God that is my salvation every day. Hope is a beautiful thing. After all when all is said and done three things remain – hope, faith and love and God has blessed me with all three and that is where my monuments is being built.

A Moment Authenticated, Birthing Vulnerability

I have to admit that being vulnerable scares the hell out of me. It is not something I do comfortably nor with class. I am the drag-me-kicking-and-screaming control freak. A few days ago through a group I have been working with I came across a talk by Dr Brene Brown (‘The Power of Vulnerability – http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability)The woman has made it her life’s work to study shame, vulnerability, how it comes about, why people have it and how they can move away from it. One of the things that came out from her talk was how almost everyone had feelings of shame about something. She tells us that shame thrives on three things; namely, secrecy, silence and judgment.

How many of us have gone us through an experience and have been left feeling ashamed and all we could think of ‘I hope no one finds out it happened’. Shame is that painfully intense feeling that we are unworthy or unlovable. What is in your life that makes you feel less than or not enough. Why do we feel utter mortification when we think of other people finding out about what is happening, Shame doesn’t only come about when we experience something  but it also happens when we feel guilty about something and that leads us to hide, keep silent and judge ourselves. I know I probably have a plethora of things I feel guilty and shameful about. Some things in retrospect I realise now were really out of my hands and some were not.

The thing about shame is that it continues to exist when it’s unspoken and unless we tell it where to go it owns us. Shame cannot survive being spoken about so rather face up to it. One of my favourite poets Bafentse Ntlokoa says ‘tell shame to unhand you and to no longer dirty the pockets of your soul with apologies of who you are.

 

The Full Circle

I have one memory from my childhood that is constant for every event in my life. That very same moment which occurred when I was about 6 or 7 years old finally made sense and came full circle for me the day my mother died. My mother was a very temperamental individual and catching a hiding from her was nothing abnormal and believe me no one was safe; young and old. I remember on one of the days my mom screaming and chasing her boyfriend around the neighbour’s yard. I don’t remember what she was screaming but I remember how funny the guy looked while trying to dodge avocado missiles.

 

What my younger self found funny and hilarious and felt the need to relay to relatives would soon learn to regret having that memory. What had been innocently retold would lead to a relative using it to lock me up in my great grandmother bathroom and being touched inappropriately. It would be used to extort money; which my great gran had entrusted to me; out of fear that my mother would be told about what was happening in the bathroom and she would also be told that I was telling people about her chasing down her boyfriend which I was told was ‘adult business’ and should my mother find out I was discussing such I would catch a hiding of a lifetime. I was 7; the prospect of my mother laying a switch on my backside was very scary indeed. So I kept quiet, lay down on the cement floor and handed over my grans pension money and sometimes stole from my mother so that gran wouldn’t notice that her money was short. That’s a lot of responsibility for a 8 year old to carry around and I changed. I was the quiet, serious child that kept to herself and did what she was told because well the less visible I was the less noticed I would be.

 

Over the years I would burn those memories from my memory until my late teens when I was forced to confront the experience. I am not sure what led to it maybe it was my mother getting sick or me breaking up with my very 1^st boyfriend but something did it and there I was; out of control and in the midst of an anxiety attack. The counsellor at my university begged me to speak to my mother about what had happened and I don’t know part in fear and worry I decided against it. My mother was sick, what if I made her sicker or worse what if she killed her relative, how could I live with that? So I contented myself with letting go and telling myself I forgave that person without them even realising it because well those events anyways were never acknowledged to date.

 

That moment when I was 7 years old came full circle in 2005 as I stood leaning on the fridge in my mother’s kitchen still shock. My father was standing next to me and my mother lying on the floor in my bedroom looking so calm and serene but knowing she would never say a word or even give me one of her quirky smiles. My father at that moment I suppose thinking I knew said words that would jar me out of my grief and flood me with a thousand questions. My father said to me ‘ your mom deserves her rest, she has fought hard for a long time to bring you guys up’ and in my mind I’m like I think grief is getting to my father, I’m 23 I still need my mother what is he on about. I think he saw the confusion on my face because his next statement was ‘you didn’t know your mother was sick, I thought she would have told you at least… your mom was HIV positive, she contracted it when you were about 6 or 7 years and she worked hard to stay healthy so that you guys could grow. I was staring at him like a landed guppy. My father told me how my mother discovered she was HIV positive and how she contracted the disease. In that moment everything finally made sense.

That very same moment when I was young and my mother was chasing down her boyfriend; the one that also changed my life; it was because she had found out he had given her HIV but she kept her secret from us kids until the end. Can you imagine what she felt like all those years? In that moment I finally understood why she was always so tough on me. Why she drummed into me to be independent and to take care of my brother. I understand her even more now as a mother and the fear you carry about the well-being of your child. I wish I could have been there for her and understood her fears but I have been through enough of my own experiences to say to her ‘I love you, you did what you felt was best and that is more than enough for me’.

 

Birthing Vulnerability

There is a silliness about secrets that defies logic because once they come out and you survive you feel utterly silly for the strain you put yourself through. We hold on so long to our secrets that we have no choice but to become them and often that is accompanied by fear of exposure. I don’t know how anyone can live a full life under this cloud. I’ve lived it and now I find the shroud too heavy for me so I have turned the sun fully into all the corners of my being. I know that not everyone will be receptive of my journey or my story and that is ok.

A story teller friend of mine once told me an amazing story he had come up with and somehow that tale has stuck with because it so poignantly describes the decision one often has to make in deciding who you are. The story goes like this (Mr Storyteller please forgive my creative additions).

 

One day father and son went out on a hunt for the boy’s rite of passage.  While out on the hunt father and son got into an argument over, well, how to go about the hunt. The son felt like the father didn’t trust him and well wasn’t this supposed to be his hunt? Father and son decided to part ways and hunt separately. The son after going round and round in the forest trying to find his way home and lost stumbled across a big, abandoned gate and walked in. Inside the gate he found an old man sitting despondently and as he walked in the old man asked the young man whether he was his son and the boy replied ‘no I am not, I have lost my father and I don’t know how to get home’. The old man seemed even more sad but then his face lit up and asked the boy ‘do you want to be my son? I am a king and I have this whole kingdom and my only son went off to war but I think he is dead. This can be all yours when I die. I will teach you everything I know and you will be a great King when I die.’ The young man getting worried asked ‘wont everyone know that I am not your Son?’ The king told him that if the reports that they had been receiving from the war are true than anyone who may recognise the Prince is dead and if I tell them you are The Prince no one will question me. I am a king.

 

So the young man knowing that chances of him finding his way home alone were small and still holding some anger towards his father said yes to the Old Kings proposal. The King announces the Princes return to his kingdom and the realm celebrated. The Prince was welcomed and there was life again in the kingdom. As the young man was settling into his new role as Prince of the realm, some people that had a small memory of the Prince started looking at the young man with doubts “What if this is an impostor and the real Prince is dead?” To deal with the rumours the Elders in the realm held a secret meeting and decided to test the young man because a Prince is not like other young men we will know for sure if he gets through this test. Unbeknown to the gathered Elders two little birds sat in the trees listening as they spoke. Now the birds had a very soft spot for the Old King who always fed them especially when there was nothing for them to eat in the forest and they had seen how sad he was when his son went to war and how happy he was once again. So the birds decided to tell the Old King about the ploy being hatched by the elders. The King listened and thanked his feathery friends. The Old King prepared the young man for the test he was going to undergo and he warned him what to expect and should he fail he must know they will both be killed.  All the young warriors in the realm were told to gather by the river. When the young warriors arrived, including the Prince they were told they would be taking part in feats of bravery that every young man in the kingdom was expected to take part.  The young warriors took part in all manner of play including sword-play and the Prince was the best amongst them. At the end of the day the best of the young men were told to choose horses from a herd that was gathered by the river. As the warriors chose their horses the young Prince selected the best in the realm and then proceeded to kill every single one of them till the grass he was standing on was covered in blood. On seeing what the young Prince had done the Elders said ‘surely this is the son of the king because only the son of a King would hold little value in the finest horseflesh in all the land. Surely this is our Prince returned from the war? Some after the slaughter of horses by the river were convinced that this was indeed their Prince and they fully embraced the young man.  Some were however still very sceptical and set out to test the young man once more and once again unbeknown to them the Old King’s feathery friends were listening in on the discussion and went off to warn the Old King, and once again he prepared the young man for test that the Elders were setting out.  Once more the young warriors were asked to gather by the realms sacred place where the most beautiful virgins in the land were on display for the young man. The young warriors were told to pick their best and they could do whatever they wanted with them.  Some picked one and others picked more than one. The young Prince picked not only the best in the realm but he also had the most number and in front of everyone pulled out his sword and cut all the throats of his virgins until he was covered in blood from head to toe. None of the virgins he had selected were spared. Everyone looked in shock at the scene before them and when the Elders heard the tale they were convinced that indeed this was their young Prince returned from the war because surely only the son of a king would show such little regard for human life.

 

The young man and Old King eventually settled into their new life and the Old King taught the young man everything he knew about running a kingdom. A few years went by and one day as the young man who was now a Prince was sitting in the very same garden he stumbled upon when he first arrived in the realm. A figure appeared. It was the hunter, his father. The father was so happy to see his son that he embraced him, crying. The young man still hurt by his father’s actions and was therefore cold in his embrace but the father too caught up in his joy didn’t care and instead just berated him the young man asking where he had disappeared to and how he has been searching for him since the day he disappeared but he could not find him and how sorry he was about their argument. Once the re-union was completed the father said they had to return home, it was to leave. The young man told his father all that had happened to him and how now he was a Prince and therefore could not leave but maybe once he became King maybe he would follow.  The father was very angry because he has not been home all these years since they left home for the hunt. He had been looking for his son but the son was busy living his new life. The father told the son that no matter what he was returning with him home where his mother was waiting for them. Meanwhile the Old King had been listening to the conversation between father and son and at that point in time he made himself visible and asked to speak to his son the Prince. The Old King told the young man that the kingdom as promised was his and asked that should the son return with his father the Prince must kill him because surely everyone on the kingdom will want him dead when the truth comes out, unless the Prince decides to stay with the Old King and not return with his father. Should he decide to not return with his father the young man would have to kill his father because they cannot risk him telling anyone about the arrangement.

What would you do? Who would you choose? Often this is the choice that we all face in deciding who we are. I remember my storyteller friend asking me who I would choose to kill in that moment. I said I would kill the father. I mean he has never accepted the son, was always critical but the king on the other hand has been supportive of the young man. I asked him who he would choose and he said he would kill the old king and become the new king. In this story the father represents the self, the past and present and the old king represents the future and the new self. For the new self to come to fruition the father must be accepted and the king must die for the Prince to finally become King.

This story continues to fascinate me because it has so many representations especially when you describe the transition of an individual from one point to another for instance from shame and guilt to vulnerability and authenticity. It represents the lies and secrets one often holds and does everything imaginable to protect them. The young man had to commit inconceivable horrors to keep his secret and to constantly convince people that he was who he said he was. The young man had to keep up a front, pretence until one day the past and the truth in the form of his father came calling. I have always believed that vulnerability was weakness, however I am learning that vulnerability requires one to act from a position of strength because in that moment you have nothing and everything on the table, floor and whatever emotional surface you can think of. For the young man to finally become what he was destined to be – a ruler in his own right – he had to accept the past and cut away any lies that existed and embrace what he was being groomed to become; a ruler, a king. I choose to rule.

 

I AM.

 

 

 

Ponderings

I sit here wondering about the depths of my brokenness
I ponder how deep the bitterness grows
I wonder as I peel back layer by layer
Why I never knew how broken hearted I am.
I wonder how all this time I smiled and said ‘I’m okay, I’m good’

Right here, right now
I don’t feel ok
I feel this great hunger gnawing at my gut and I wonder,
What is this emptiness that clouds my soul
Where do these tears flowing through my heart come from
As they mix and mix with the hunger gnawing at my gut
I cry mournfully because I never quiet realised that you left me with a broken heart focused as I was at being strong…..

So now I sit wondering how I will overcome the bitterness, anger and hurt.
My heart cries: ‘I didn’t deserve this!’
And my responds ‘who did’
That’s life isn’t it?
So I sit quietly waiting for that moment when my sunshine will break-through
And my heart can say ‘all is well’

My Body

Limbs, curves and dips
That is the sum of things well made
It rumbles, sways and twirls
Oh you should see it when
It dances

Total perfection it is not
But oh you should see it when it dances
You gotta love how it manages to stay up straight especially when the D’s start throwing their weight around.
I won’t even mention the war they are raging with gravity.

Limbs, curves and dips
That is the sum of things well-made
I wish I could say the thighs are made of steel but then that would be a lie.
Oh and that silly competition they always have to see who can irritate the other more chaffs my temper to no end.

Limbs, curves and dips
That is the sum of all things I love
It rumbles, sways and twirls
Oh you should see it when it dances
As light as light can be
Limbs, curves and dips
That is the sum of things well made

Dreams Forgotten

I walk a path
A path long forgotten
I walk searching for a dream long lost
A dream that used to speak of such a sharp destiny that those walking beside me could never look in my eyes
I search a dream that beat like a thousand drums on a mountain top
I slip I fall, grasping
Searching in the darkness
Where is my dream?

That dream was mine
It spoke of all the generations that came before me
It told me that you are woman
Fierce
It told me that you are warrior
Fearless
It told me that you are Queen
Graceful

Echos echos echos
My dream screams in eternity
I’m here
Come to me
Let it all go, find me

I walk back and hope exhales
You here
Sunshine melts my crown
I walk into a path
I’m here
I’m here

Meet Me Out in the Sunshine

Meet me out in the sunshine where cobwebs of the past don’t exist

Meet me….where dreams are still possible

Meet me out…where hearts are still whole and happiness is still possible

 

I want you to meet me in the sunshine because I want a new day to start

Where you could smile and be happy about the future no matter how impossible

Meet me out in the sunshine where my love sits

Meet me in the sunshine where our love still has a chance to grow. 

 

Why hang to what didn’t work

Shadows and darkness have no place in sunshine.

Call me a dreamer but I believe we can make it work

My father always said I was a strange child because I believed in rainbows and unicorns

 

Meet me out in the sunshine where I’m still holding your hand and hoping you will hold mine back and praying you will give us this chance 

 

Defining a new path

So why did I start this blog and why call it ‘Raising a Woman of Destiny”?

I believe that women are the answer and problem to everything. Say what you like but when a woman has standards and can hold on to them believe me a revolution is about to happen in there.  I have always been fascinated with how girls are raised and taught because I know for a fact the women that raised me had a definite impact on who I am today.

As a woman,  I find myself concerned about the state of womanhood but also very excited about being a woman in this day and age because things are changing some for the worst and more the better. I want to focus on the better.

 

My Story

I am a 32 year old zulu woman, born and raised in Durban. I am a single woman and a single mother to a newly minted 4 month old girl. Now you may ask why I seperate the two titles, aren’t they one and the same? For me they are not because up until March 26, 2013 I was a single woman and thereafter I became a pregnant single woman. The ‘single mother’ title is newly acquired and a definite work in progress.

I became a single mother as early as 10 weeks into my pregnancy. The last time I saw my daughters father was on my 31st  birthday when I moved out of the home we had been sharing.  The situation was an unhealthy one and one in which if I continued to stay I genuinely believe i would have become a victim of emotional or physical abuse. When a person tells you what they feel and do not want; listen! Do not interpret or analyse because at that exact moment in time that is who they are and if you know you are not about that – walk away. In the midst of telling me the only reason he pursued a relationship with me was because he was lonely, I was told that he did not want the child because the child he wanted he had with the woman he had been married  and since he had no plans to marry again …..and if I chose to keep it I must understand that I would have to raise her on my own. I walked away and so far I am raising her on my own.

 

Motherhood

The one thing that hit me when my daughter was born was how quickly I became conscious of who she is as an independent person, being, woman. I saw her as someone with her own dreams and her very own destiny and this scared the hell out of me. i had a fervent wish to keep her as close to me as I could. There were times I wished pregnancy was longer than 9 months (crazy  I know).  I remember many times during my pregnancy trying to keep at bay the hurt and bitterness I felt at what he had done and vowing to not let him see her because well if he could hurt me like this and I am struggling to understand ‘why he would do this to me?’ what would he do to this fragile life I was nurturing inside my body. What hit me when I held that very pink, chubby, foreign yet very familiar body close to me I knew I had no business building walls around her. I could not afford to make my life experience her life experience. My past her future. Something had to change.

 

Raising a Woman of Destiny

I firmly believe that every person has a unique destiny in store for them and you just have to be willing to experience life with no boundaries for it to happen. I will also admit that up until lately I have been an absolute control freak and I know nothing about going with the flow and being open and trusting but than I look at my daughter and I see this woman whose very smile is like pure sunshine and I wonder why I am not living life like she is.

Like all mothers I want the best for my daughter and so far that has involved me doing things that I have been very uncomfortable with but I knew were right. One of my favourite sayings is that if you are not strectching than you are not growing. So now I am embracing a new path.

 A few days after my daughter was born I made the uncomfortable decision to inform her father that well….. she was in the world. I agonised and agonised over it because I kept on picturing him being his usual self and asking me ‘what I wanted him to do about if she was born, didn’t he make himself clear when he said he did not want any part in her life?’ . That thought left me physically sick so I decided to preserve my piece of mind and not let that nightmare come true and instead of placing a call to him I sent him a text message after months of silence between us.  I got a very unique response “congratulations, umuntu muni and have you given her a name yet?” (I felt like matcheting his head in) and my equally unique response was “its a girl, Lathitha Gabangaye”. Him “What does Gabangaye mean”. Me “,My pride and joy”… the end. So it was not completely the gloom and doom I foresaw but it was nothing compared to the excitement i felt just looking at her. I knew that going forward I had to be clear about what I was expecting from this situation because the disappointment and frustration I felt I had to understand and be able to work through it for my own as well as my daughters sake. I had to let go what I expected the father of my child to act like and rather accept what he was. I had to understand who I was, what affects me and what that meant for my daughter. What I realised was that I could not take my fears and make them hers. As young as she was I had to trust her to be strong enough, wise enough to deal with her own father as I had to deal with mine, I had to take her and put her in that wide open space where anything and everything can come at her and trust that the love and acceptance I give her will be enough for her to come out of whatever experience as a wholesome, happy being. So I said to my Universe We Are Here and We Welcome You.