Permission

It is in the wee hours of the morning in which revelation comes to me about all sorts of things.

As I take in the stillness of the hour, I listen to my heart, my mind and sometimes the ego.  We have heard it said by the master teachers, ego represents Edging God Out.   This notion has got my cogs circulating.  How do I preserve my self-awareness while helping others feel safe and welcomed around me?

Anyone who knows me even a little bit knows that I am a straight shooter.  If you don’t want to hear my interpretation of the truth, don’t ask me. I will admit that sometimes I edge God out when I “keep it real” Do I rove the earth attempting to hurt people?  No, of course not!

I feel bad if I hurt someone’s feelings.  The problem is most people who are offended by something I have said to them do not have the wherewithal to voice that their feelings are hurt by my often candid method of communication. The result of such is usually one or two things: 1. I may be correct in my assessment about their issues 2.  I don’t always find  the results of their conveyance of feelings favorable.  Often human beings come across as angry when fear and hurt are the actual culprits.

What is problematic is that most people are unaware of our own triggers.  We are not always able to admit fear or pain.  I fondly consider Iyanla Vanzant halting people mid conversation, “Say you do or don’t something or the other.  Don’t say we or they. Own it!” Okay Ms. Iyanla, “I” don’t admit it.  Being clinically trained, allows me to see beyond the surface of words and actions. It’s when the ego needs to be correct that “I” mess up.  When I mess up, I feel bad.  Feeling bad is then accompanied by feeling guilty for something I may have said or what was perceived incorrectly.  If I am not careful, guilt’s cousin shame comes on the scene. Shame tells my ego that I am inherently flawed and there is something wrong with me.

If any of you are like me, you have had the same experiences. It is problematic when issues surface and a person personalizes something that is not about them at all.  I realize that taking responsibility for my actions gives me the permission to be human coupled with the fact that guilt is a wasted emotion.

What is the resolve between being forthright and being rude?  I often feel confused by the perception that younger adults have about “being grown” What does that mean exactly?  Does it connote that one should be able to do and say anything that they please with no regard for another?  That sounds more like a rebellious teen than an adult to me.

I am from the old school, but I don’t believe in beating kids with belts and cursing at them etc.  I do believe in firmness and loving guidance.  I believe that we have given this generation permission to be ungrateful and entitled.  The respect that we had for elders back in the day is nearly nonexistent 

When I was a youngster, instruction was revered.  I was recently told that a group of young people that I work with would tell me, “You are not my mother.”  Why state something that is obvious?  I know that. My children are 31, 28 (Rest with the Lord my baby boy) and 26.  Where is the line drawn between insolence and respect for wisdom?

I do not expect, nor will I ever tolerate someone young enough to be my child to be disrespectful in my presence without challenge. Often young people have unruly behavior and don’t want anyone to check them about it.  Sometimes that has included me.  I have found that I have had to reel myself in when an elder has spoken to me.  The point is they are still an elder.

Today I realize that I must give myself permission to repent for being haughty at times. Let’s face it; the ego needs to be right.  I am among the opinionated of the world.  I do thank God that I am not above repentance if I stray from the narrow path of respect and nobility.

I give myself permission to be exactly who I am without disregarding others.  I give myself permission to speak my peace, and people have permission not to listen.  But don’t let “being grown” be the reason.  Allow your humanity and the right to be heard and loved be the reason.

I praise God for humility.  I ask that I am able to consider that the heart space closes with harshness and opens with love. Often finding balance in permission can be daunting.  But thank God that he looks at the heart and not perceptions.  If he did not, I’d be in a world of trouble.

Stay Strong and give yourself permission to make a mistake and rebound from it.

~Zuhura

 

What You Won't Do For Love

             

   The telephone chimed.  I scurried to reach my bedroom before it stopped ringing.  On the other end of the line was the familiar lyrical voice of my daughter.  Though she is nearly twenty-seven years of age, she sounds more like a character from Pixar’s Toy Story than a grown woman.

 “Mommy, did you know that the man that sings What You Won’t Do for Love is white?”  I could barely stifle the roar of laughter welling up from my belly! “Yes dear, Bobby Caldwell is white.” Her excited tone lingered through the rest of the conversation.  “He has so much soul.”  She giggled.  I deliberated, “Hmmm, a lot of soul. “  Too bad some people are devoid of soul.  My meaning of the word was a bit dissimilar to the denotation that labels Rhythm and Blues artists.

I speak specifically to women.  However, I apply this question to the male counterparts as well.  How many people have encountered someone that did not present themselves to have a conscience?  I took a break from spreading the sheet on my pillow top mattress, sat down, and further ruminated on the words that Bobby Caldwell crooned thirty-five years ago, “In my world, only you make me do for love what I would not do.”  How many darned times have I done things for love that I ordinarily would not have done? Geez!

I ask, how many dinners were purchased and/or prepared?  How many times was laundry done, houses cleaned and other people’s kids transported?  The outcome resulted in being dissed and dismissed by the person you loved, with the words, “I am over it! Too bad you aren't” 

I speak not only of so-called romantic relationships, I speak of relationships with people who have grinned in your face, ate in your kitchen and listened to your secrets.  What exactly would most of us do for love, what we would not do if we truly loved ourselves?  Are we truly socialized to love ourselves without being selfish and hedonistic? Or are we so codependent and needy that we become blind to who some people really are? Remember the group Guy? It's just a fantasy.  Image in a magazine!

What does a person do for love when they don’t know how to create boundaries that could potentially strangle the life out of them? I am curious to know, just how many of us have allowed ourselves to be so enamored by another individual that we lost focus our own being?  The interesting twist in that story is that the person that we enveloped our lives with ended up disappointing and injuring our souls to the core.

                What does one do for love that they ordinarily would not do?   I invite the enlightenment.

Changing the Face of the Season

I managed, by the grace of God to get through one of the most difficult months of the year for me, November.  Yesterday marked the eighth year since I said goodbye to my youngest son.  I recall that day being the darkest I have ever experienced.  I don’t recall what my emotions were during his four hour long home going service, but I do recall the final moment as they lowered my baby into the ground and I stood there paralyzed with grief. My first inclination was to jump in behind the dark cooper colored box that held one of the most precious people in my life.

Thank God for December!  Now can we get past this commercialized mess we have come to call the holiday season already?  We go into debt for one day, to buy toys for kids that they will either break, or lose by December 30^th!  Afterward we don’t speak to the people that we grin at and tell lies to until next year.  Yes, I said it!  I am a bit ticked, as people seem to neglect what this season is about. 

I think about all of the parents who are grieving because they no longer have their babies, and Christmas is not this grand thing that the television commercials portray.  I think of a friend of mine who lost her son last year, just before Christmas.  I texted her on Thanksgiving Day to ask how she was doing.  She’d spent the day in bed.  It seems that some people, even some who understand the pain of losing a child don’t get her depression.  I get it.  This woman buried her baby two days after Christmas!  Her situation got the cogs in my little brain working.

I have to change the face of the next holiday season!   I am going to make sure that I can remember my baby by defining what he was about.  He was a sweet and easy child to rear.  That indicates compassion.  He was intelligent beyond his years, which indicates business savvy, and he was wiser than older people I know.  I have to change not only the face of the holidays for myself, but for others who have suffered horrible loses during the holiday season.

According to USA Today and Psychology Today, it is a myth the suicides increase during the holiday season.  Okay, who is arguing?  What I know firsthand is that holidays, birthdays and anniversaries are particularly difficult when one has lost a child to homicide or suicide.  This is not to suggest that it is not hard losing loved ones to illness, but a child being murdered represents a different type of loss.  Believe me, I almost lost two  sons in one day!!

I will continue my research of people who have lost their children and the affects over a period of years.  I consistently experience certain silent critiques because I am brave enough to explore and reveal my pain though it has been years since El’s transition.  Why are we so phony in this society?  Another question for another day.  I digress, I must change how people are able to handle the holidays by showing them the compassion, intelligence and wisdom that my baby boy had. 

There is a lot of work to be done, and a lot of love to share with those who feel as hopeless as I have felt for years after my son’s demise.  At times grief lingers because I have a remaining son that suffers.  There remains a far-reaching residual effect that murder has had on families.  For this reason, I must make sure that my son’s dreams are fulfilled in a positive way.

To hell with what naysayers think about me…Everything I do from this point is about helping someone who cannot get up by themselves to heal. That is what El would want.   Son, I am on it!

Zuhura Speaks: Collateral Damage

Zuhura Speaks: Collateral Damage:                 According to the USAF Intelligence Targeting Guide Pamphlet, the term Collateral Damage refers to damage affecting unint...

Collateral Damage

                According to the USAF Intelligence Targeting Guide Pamphlet, the term Collateral Damage refers to damage affecting unintended targets during a raid or military strike.  It is interesting that people can be hurt in “friendly fire”. 

                Hmmmm, friendly fire….What exactly does that mean?  I reflect on a conversation with a close associate of mine.  He seemed to feel that I should be over the last relationship that I encountered.  Is this idea an absolute fact?  Should I be over it?  I guess I should be over my son’s death also, seeing that it will be eight years this Tuesday since his transcendence.

                Quite frankly, I am not interested in what he or anyone else thinks about what I should or should not feel.  I am way past the point that I give a hot flip about someone expecting me to be what they wish me to be.  My truth surrounds the myriad of feelings associated with the existential realities pervading my mind.

                Today was my only biological daughter’s Bridal Shower.   (Other youngsters call me Momma V) The occasion was saturated with exuberant laughter.   As I examined the décor for the perfection that I knew my Diva Daughter would expect, there was a hollow call in my soul.  My last child soon be the wife of someone, and lead her own life without me.  It’s normal for young people to expand their wings and fly away.  That is the logical me speaking.  The emotional me, is not so absolute.

                Earlier this morning my dear friend told me of the sad passing of a friend of hers from a painful bout with cancer.  How ironic that I’d met this person a couple of years back. The memory of our encounter made me think of the night I unassumingly ended up at her house.  She was closely associated with the ex-wife of the man I was dating at the time.  Needless, to say, I was bombarded with inquiries and comments about the relationship.

                The relationship did not last.  It was one of those situations where I became the unintended target of collateral damage.  November is generally a month that I remember the pain that losing my son caused.  Ironically, it was the on the anniversary of my son’s transition that this man first kissed me.  I would imagine that this is the reason that the flood of emotion washed over my soul after I heard of this lady’s transition. There were also other issues impairing my ability to clearly rationalize my feelings.

                I think of all of the collateral damage I have suffered in my lifetime.  I had become an unassuming target of a man that does not possess the ability to love or care about a woman of my caliber.  Am I suggesting that he’d never loved other amazing people?  No, clearly, I have no right to judge anything not associated with me.  Though the signs that he did could not love, or return the exuberance of the love I felt were clearly there, I ignored them.

                Hadn’t he felt something for me? Hadn’t we possessed a keys to one another’s houses and driven each other’s’ cars?  Hadn’t I attended events with families and friends?    Yet, if I were to enumerate all of the times that I felt dismissed and disconnected by something that he’d done to exclude me or ignore my inquiries of why he could never utter those three words,   I would be counting until next spring.  I felt left out of the world that validated our relationship. 

One illustration of his distance was experienced when I cleaned this man’s entire house in preparation for his children to visit him for the holiday season.  When it came to making it clear to them that I was someone he cared deeply about, it did not occur.  Not only did he not include me in a family outing with them, his daughter was rude and disrespectful to me. When I shared my feelings about her behavior, he scolded me!

Another incident occurred when one of his college friends made an incredibly insensitive remark that hurt my feelings, “You have found someone that you want to spend the rest of your life with, and he hasn’t!”   Though I wanted to choke this woman at the time, she was entirely correct.  I chose to ignore the signs, as I was determined to show him how much he was adored by me. Codependent or not, I am not into labels, but suffice it to say that I honestly did not see his disconnection as faulty, and I should have.  But what does should do for anyone?

My unwillingness to smell the proverbial pot of coffee that was brewing caused me a great deal of pain.  I had given my heart to this man for over three years. He abruptly ended our relationship. Perhaps I should have gotten the message when the man visited his ex-wife’s house and stayed there a week, turning off his mobile phone when I called.  The only time he spoke to me during his travels, was when he walked to the store to get a paper.   And I was the one who initiated the call!

                I became the target of attacks on social media pages and on my personal email.  The collateral damage was to my heart, as he took every ounce of goodness that I gave him.  He tolerated who I am, instead of celebrating who I am becoming.  At the end of my delusion, the only explanation I got was, “I tried, and I can’t do a relationship.”  Wow, is that all I get?

                This week is an emotional one.   As I aforementioned, November brings with it a lot of sensitivities. The worse day of my life happened in November!!  My dear Grandmother’s birthday is this week.  My close associate lost his daughter to a cold-hearted murderer who was sentenced to prison this week.  Thanksgiving is coming, and I have to admit, I do not feel that grateful!

                There is a moral to these dark set of circumstances, hang in there with me.  Next year I am planning to launch a project that will help families who have lost their loved ones near the holiday season.  I won’t exclude anyone else, but they will be my target group.  

I know the loneliness s and despondency associated with the holidays.  I hope to utilize the pain I feel/felt as a catalyst to help someone else heal from the vestiges of the collateral damage. We live in a world of thoughtless and careless people.  If I reach out to one person and/or family, some other unintended target may escape the identical harm that I and my family have experienced.

 

 

 

 

A Grandmother's Love

The recurrence Daylight Savings time has interrupted my pattern of sleep.  I sit here reveling in the fact, “There is nothing sweeter than the love of  my Grandsons!  This was evidenced by a phone call that I received at nearly ten o clock last night.  It was my youngest Grandson, Obama.  Yes, he is named after the first Black President!

grandson - Obama

                My heart dances when I recall the bond that I had with my Grandmother.  I affectionately called her Momma.  I have so many wonderful memories installed in my psyche and in my heart by this extraordinary woman. 

                November eighteenth will mark her birthday, the day before my son’s transition.  I know that they will be dancing together that day.  I try to wrap my mind around the fact that they are both not here with me in the sphere.  However, they live indelibly inside of me!

                The corners of my mouth turn up as I think of the evening, at eleven years of age that I asked the Lord to at least allow me to grow up and see my children.   The idea that the world was a wicked place, and the world would soon end,  had been drummed into my thinking so much so that I did not believe I’d grow up.  But here I am, a Grandmother.

                I am grateful and I offer thanks to the Creator for exceeding my expectations of maturation.  I have had the enormous pleasure not only of being called Mommy, but now I am known as Nama.  My heart leaps each time I hear the singsong manner in which my three Grandbabies call to me.

grandson - TRay

Larrie Noble, III, (TRay) is my eldest Grandson.  He is the exact visual replica of my dear son Elliott.  However, he acts like his Dad.  I chuckle each time my son Larrie laments that TRay is “Just like me.” I can only state in text language, ROTF….I am rolling on the floor because my eldest son was born so that I would pray, and he is definitely reaping in theory!

grandson - El

Then there is Elliott, (Little El) as he is called.  He does not favor any of our side of the family, barring his Grandfather’s exact birthmark, and my Grandma’s goofy smile.  He is just as his Uncle El was; basically quiet, with a calmer temperament than his two brothers have. 

                What can I say about Obama? (Mr. President)  He must be Richard Pryor reincarnated.  My Grandsons are the absolute joy of my heart!  I am hopeful that they will have the same wonderful memories of me that I have of my Grandmother Annie Lee Riley Ainsworth. 

                There was no safer place that I had, than in her loving arms.  Thank you Momma.  I pray that I can be a fraction of the inspiration to my Grandchildren that you were to me.  Dance with El Momma.  I will see you both soon enough!

Don't Let It Be About Me

Larrie R. Noble Jr. and Elliott Jemar Noble (8.19.1985-11.19.2005)



I’d just arrived at the office.  Much to my surprise, I lifted the receiver of the telephone to call my second ex-husband.  I hadn’t spoken to him for two years, and that was merely because he’d called to tell me Happy Birthday.   As I dialed the number, I pondered the quote that I thought was ludicrous the night of my son’s murder November 19, 2005. He lamented, “God don’t let this be about me.” How the heck could something like a drive by shooter rolling up to my childrens’ vehicle fatally wounding one, and maiming the other be about him.

It had strictly been the worst night of my life.  Though the eminent pain of losing a child remains with me, it isn’t as grim as it has been in the past.  To be certain, I am reminded in some form daily, of my baby boy’s demise.  There is a deep pain that resonates with me each time I hear of another youthful flame extinguished by means of gunfire.

I grieve for my son every day.  I have been ridiculed for what some consider prolonged and complicated grief.  The truth is, I don’t grief for Eliiott, as much as I did initially and subsequent to his transition to heaven.  I grief more for the child that remains, his brother Larrie.  I grief because I feel his pain.  I could never imagine what it must have been like for him to experience the remnants of his brother’s brain splattered on him. He lost his left eye and so much of his soul.  It hurts to see the results of his anguish.

At thirty years of age, he’s still my baby.  His struggles make it difficult for me to face him at times.  I reflect on the what my ex affirmed.  Hmmm, has any of it been about me?  Did I blame him for insisting that his baby brother go with him that fateful day?  Did I blame myself for moving my children into a ‘hood’ that would ultimately contribute to them becoming involved in a life that I did not envision for them?  Afterall, a parent can only influence their children so much.

There I sat as the phone chimed.  I prepared to leave a message.  I was surprised when the familiar inane sound of his voice answered. “Hello.” I called his name, but I won’t do that here.  He imitated me with an animated cartoon voice.  I laughed.  Just as I was about to clarify the reason for my call, a female voice chimed in.  It appeared to be a ploy to stake her claim.  She did not have to worry about marking her territory.  I was not the moth drawn back to the fire.

After I hung up, I ruminated once again, “Was my son’s death about me?”  If it was not about me, then who was it about?  Was it about the baby sister that he’d left behind, months after her high school graduation?  Was it about the divorce after twenty-five long and tedious years of faux partnership?  There were so many questions of who to hold responsible. The truth is, it is the fault of the sinful and moraless person who felt the need to pull a trigger and change my family’s life eternally.

There have been so many times in which regret has rocked the very foundation of my life. After eight years, I realize that my life can not be about my son’s death.  Prior to him leaving me, my sweet baby boy, my life was engulfed by my work as a Social Worker and Activist.  I’d lived through losing my nephew, his first cousin.  I’d survived the loss of my anchor, my Grandmother, but it is still not about me.

Elliott Jemar Noble lived and completed his task is this life after only twenty years.  It’s my turn, though I have outlasted his existence, to make his demise and the demise of so many young folks in my community matter.   Last Sunday I heard my Pastor lament that we all need to become outraged about the murders in our streets.   As the motto of our street ministry Soldiers Against Violence Everywhere (S.A.V.E.) poignantly states, we have got to “Say Something!”

I am finally strong enough do just that!  I am using these blogs and completing my book and other avenues so that I can “Say Something.”   I know for sure, it ain’t all about me!

Yours Endearingly,

Zuhura