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Category Archives: Direct Love From Rae

If You Want to Quit….

February 11, 2013 By in Direct Love From Rae Tags: , , , , 15 Comments

I haven’t written anything since around the first part of the year.  Not because I don’t love writing, but well, because I seriously thought about quitting.

Hold on – stay with me…. this blog is about telling the truth right? So I’m going to tell it.

Yup, I thought about quitting the blog and leaving it up here as a testament and then moving on to something else – like writing an e-book and shit since everyone else is doing it.  Did you know I’ve basically written an entire book over the last year of tapping these keys on this blog? I also think that last sentence sent me into a tail spin a few weeks ago as well.   As a writer, as a creative, as an introvert (yes, I’m an introvert), we often retreat unto ourselves in order to be able to get things done.  Introverts need to be alone, or in my case just at home in peace with some alone time (doesn’t have to be spent fully alone).  Although it can be that thing the renews me, it’s also the time I have the most doubts.  In another post, Choosing Right in 2013 and Beyond, I talked about still quiet moments.

Those are the times the difficult decisions are made.  It’s those moments when no one can see you (or me for that matter) and we have to make decisions that may affect our lives for a long time to come.   The quiet times are also the ones when I  sit still and deal with how I feel about something that’s happened, or someone or myself.  It’s not always easy.

I let some things someone said and did affect me for a series of weeks.  And well, to the strongest and the best of us -  it happens.  The funny thing is it happens in waves.  One thing happens, then another – like there’s no break in it all.  That’s why I’m writing about it.  I want you to know, I think and have thought about quitting the blog – not all of us admit it.  Although I’m strong, I’m resilient,  I’m not immune to the things people say and do.

Then, I got trolled on twitter.  That’s when I finally realized that it’s only when you’re on the verge of something truly important, you get all of the naysayers, the doubters, the haters and the negative events.  It’s MEANT to be a distraction from what you’re (I’m) supposed to be doing.   If I stop writing and sharing, stop what I’m doing, there’s no one here to tell my story – there’s no one here to express the things  God means to do through me.  Why should I let anyone stop that?  That being said, I may have been slowed down, but it doesn’t mean I’m quitting.

Note: Slowing down doesn’t mean you’ve quit.

So, no – I’m not quitting.  I’m not going anywhere.  There’s value in what I do – even if it’s just for me.  Although I don’t have all of the answers, this blog and the things I present aren’t meant to have all the answers.  I write to record things.  I write to make sure I am sharing the things that have happened to me – so that maybe, just maybe you:  1) know you’re not alone 2) can learn from what’s happened to me 3) get a good laugh from time to time 4) know it’s ok to take a break from time to time 5) there’s value in being transparent and brave.

 

I am also in the process of deciding on changes to From Rae With Love.  I’ve been saying that for a year now and well, sometimes life gets in the way and other things take precedent but it will have been worth the wait when it finally gets done.

I say all of this to say, if you’re thinking about quitting something you’ve wanted to do all your life, dreamed about – because of your own doubt or someone else’s; because you’re faced with a lot of challenges; because it’s not currently popular;  if people are talking about you and your feelings are hurt?  Press on.  It’ll be worth it.   Give them more to talk about.  Make it worth their while.

If you’re thinking about quitting – don’t.

Get yourself together.  Slow down if you need to.  Let people walk away (just the ones that really want to go).  Walk away from those that are hurting you.  Surround yourself with people who you really love and adore.  Find new and important things you love and adore. Hide out like an ostrich for a while.  Drink bottles of wine.  Pray.  Clean.  Buy$200 worth of candles and incense and other home items and spend reckless amounts of money on decadent cheese and cheap wine and awesome brunches and crafts you don’t need and creating vision boards out of expensive paper and creating long ass run on sentences like this one.  Sleep in.  Talk aimless walks (not the kind where you don’t come back, just the kind where you don’t have a set destination). Retreat, plan, regroup, execute and then stunt on these muthas out here.  I’m just saying – that’s what it amounts to – or that’s what I did.  By the time you do all of that, you’ll find your mojo again and your way back.   Holla at me in the comments….

Love,

Rae

 

 

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Back to Basics : Learning to Find Your Way Home

August 28, 2012 By in Direct Love From Rae 4 Comments

This post is about being lost and what it means to find the way back home.

I have been lost more times in my life than I can count.  Maybe I should say I have felt lost.  Like I didn’t have a direction satisfactory to me.   I see people who are much older than me, many younger than me and it seems there is a sort of Kismet amongst the lost.

We tend to locate each other somehow.

At some point though, I realized I have this inner compass.  Call it the Spirit.  Call it instinct.  Call it intuition.  What I do know, is that it can only be a gift from God because it’s guided me through.  When I couldn’t figure it out I was fortunate enough to have friends who could at least call me in off the proverbial ledge of misguidedness.  They knew I was lost.  Many of them have covered me over the years.  And that’s nothing but God.  (You realize of course, God does work through people right?  I believe in outright miracles because I have seen them happen in my time.  Mostly though, God works through people.)

I’ve been in DC a little over twelve years now.  It’s become home.  It feels like home.  It smells like home.  I’m not fond of the wafts of sewage in the hotter months, but c’est la vie.  It was only today, looking out of my window, did I realize how I have grown to love the city.  The rain today, the way the sky looked, instantly took me back to Lagos and a few of the days there.  It wasn’t always that way.  When I first moved here, between Baltimore and DC, I had a hard way to go.   But it got better.  The relationship with the city has become an affair.  I may have been born in Detroit, raised between there and Birmingham, but DC fortified me into a bonified woman.  The city isn’t for the faint of heart.  It and all of the surrounding area can easily eat you alive and swallow you up and send you home in shame.  If you can make it here, everywhere else is a piece of cake.  Interestingly enough, I feel the same way about Birmingham and Detroit.  It’s all love, but it’s not easy.

I used to think the only place that was home was the little house in Detroit.  When I couldn’t go to that house anymore, my concept of home had to change quickly.  Home can mostly be where my things are, where I lay my head but it’s about so much more.

What I’ve learned,  it isn’t the location.  It’s the people.  It’s the friends and family.  It’s the family we create as we live.  It’s all the love that defines home.  Being the extraordinary genius child I am, I have created the most perfect family of the weirdest, most beautiful, kindest and talented individuals who love me and I love and adore them.  In this case, I was given the gift of choosing how to design my family.  And they are in extension to my parents and my close cousins.

I’ve also come to know there are just certain people who make your life feel like home.  I’ve been living for thirty seven  years and change and there are some people who just make you aware you’re living the right life.   Have you met anyone like that?  If not, I pray you do.

It’s the person you’re vying to spend time with, the person who after all of the dust clears and they’re there it makes you feel like everything will be ok.  It’s the person you want to see walk through the wings of the hospital doors when you’re sick.  Or to be there to comfort you when things are going wrong.  It’s someone you don’t mind spending long amounts of time with or waking up to.  It’s the person who occupies your thoughts the majority of the day.  The one who you can talk to and still not have enough.  It’s someone that as the days, months and years go by, being with them never gets old.  That if you need to know who you are, you can always go and talk with them and they remind you of your real, true self.

And guess what?  We don’t really get to choose who these people are….

But hopefully, when we do meet them we’re able to provide the same for them.  There will be those that come and go.  Prayerfully, we get to keep those we feel and love the most.

The best way to set our compass if we’re lost is to set it to those we love.  To put the beacon out.  Some days I feel like I’m a lost ship at sea and those I love are the lighthouse.  Other days, I am the lighthouse and they are the lost ships.  But as long as we are within a radius of each other, home is always just a visit or a call away.

Love,

Rae

My Statute of Limitations

August 26, 2012 By in Direct Love From Rae, Life's Lessons Series 5 Comments

Tonight I have so much I want to say, but I can’t.  It doesn’t mean I’m holding back.  I’m not.

But when I began to write, when I began this blog, I imposed a rule that my good friend, my brother and I had.  There were some stories we wouldn’t share in real time.  They were too fresh.  Too open.  Like having a wound, an injury where you’re “cut to the white meat,”as the old folks used to say.  The moments and the memories you want to keep to yourself.  You can’t really share them with anyone else.  Maybe because they think you’re crazy? But mostly because you just want to hold them close.  Hold them so they never really leave your arms.  Hold them because you want to protect the others on the opposite end of the story.

Mostly because I rarely write in real time.  As in I don’t think I should.  I could.  I have the capacity to do so.  I have amazing stories to tell – but such is my life.  I could say all that happens from day to day, but it doesn’t serve my life cause and path.   Maybe if my blog was anonymous? But there are people who live to figure out identities.  And rightfully, I wouldn’t have met some of the amazing people in my life now if I wrote this without a name or a face.

See there is a consequence to writing in real time.  There are real people involved.  People I love.  It’s not to say I never will.  I will probably have someone live blog/live tweet my wedding one day with real time photos of the preparation for the event. It’s just to say I have the desire to protect people I care for and although there is much to be said in real time, I cannot blog about things in real time.  Because I write, because I blog, I never want anyone to feel as if their story isn’t safe.  It is.  The love, the secrets, the stories, the time spent, the crying, the confessions… they are all safe.

Maybe one day, when my life mirrors the African-American DC version of The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond, I’ll blog about my children and my husband and his friends.  My friends and sisters.  My urban garden.  My real-time recipes.  Of course I want you to know I am fully aware my life doesn’t mirror Ree’s life but Lord knows, if I can end up on a farm and making it happen like she does…. y’all will have many stories to read.  Regardless, there are many stories to be told.  By the way, do you know who the Pioneer Woman is?  Get in to her!  I love and adore her!!

I could tell you about the dinners I cook. Someday I will.  I can tell you how much love I put into it.  Didn’t know I cooked?  I do.  And I LOVE to cook.  I make amazing meals.  Meals filled with love and care, with adoration and life.

But I won’t because that’s who I am.

But y’all know where this is going right?

Is there such a thing as a statute of limitations when it comes down to people and love?  < You of course knew I was going to bring all of this up right?

Can love expire?  Is there a time to admit it all and come clean?  Can there be a safe space to talk about it where it doesn’t hurt anyone? Is there a space and time when I can express all of it and it won’t turn a person away, he won’t run?  Is there a space to make sure all of it can be shared in real time?

I don’t have the answer.

But tonight, I have a series of songs playing in the playlist in my mind, with a series of thoughts.  I think about things that were shared, things that were spoken.  I think about all of the things that are felt but not said.  The things that go unsaid.  The things I know to be true but just can’t put to words.

The stories will come in time.  Some of them will never see the light of day.  They will only exist between God, me and the third party.  There will be other stories  I save for my memoir.

There are stories I still think about today, 15 years out, where I still think I cannot tell the entire story.  It’s like a good journalist, a good reporter never revealing his/her source.  I have to be content in knowing the story without ever telling it.  Having had the experience, but never sharing it with anyone.

But the point in writing is to share and that I do.  To teach or to evoke emotion and that happens every day.

The point is to protect who and what I love.  To be able to still connect with everyone who reads and still be real.
To be able to say there is a time to talk, there is a time to shut up, there is a time to love and protect.  A time to sit still, be still.  There is a time to question and a time to know.

In all things you do, do them for the sake of love.  It’s the only thing that will ever last.

Love,

Rae

11 Lessons for Love : Ways to Keep it Together (Assuming You Want To)…

August 21, 2012 By in Direct Love From Rae Leave a comment

I wanted to do a post about the things, about the glue that keeps relationships together.  About the things I have done right & the advice I have given that’s been right on point.  I have had my fair share of good love.  Git yo mind out da gutta! But whatever you were probably thinking, I’ve had that too. Whew! Good times!!

I speak with a lot of younger women & sisters about their relationships.  My friends have often had to listen to my trials and tribulations more than they wanted.  I love them for their support which is why I will listen tirelessly to a point when people start complaining about relationships breaking up and what to do, how to get through and how to restore & recover. So here are the lessons I’ve learned on what keeps it fresh, what keeps it poppin, what keeps a brother happy and returning to you over and over.  It goes without saying that honesty, respect, integrity and faithfulness, establishment of boundaries and all the other good stuff should be discussed.  And although it seems obvious all of these things should be included, by the looks of people’s twitter feeds it’s not so obvious.  I digress. Forgive me. 

May I also add that because a person hasn’t been married doesn’t mean they cannot be a force of positive support for your relationship or marriage.  The key factor is they need to be about YOU.  When talking to someone about your relationship the person should be a confidante and one of the people who will stay up late with you on late night watch when you have been pulled off the proverbial “ledge.”  They should have your best interest at heart – want to see you do well in life and overall – and not for their benefit.  Just for the simple fact that they love you.  Without further adieu…

Here we go:

  1. Men love food.  They like to eat.  They think about it a lot (just like sex). They love good food.  Mostly though, they are basic creatures.  I believe in cooking.  A sandwich (sammiches count).  Chicken and rice.  Steak.  Lasagna.  Curry shrimp. Vegan BLTs.  I don’t care.  Cook.  If you have to, order out – but never lie about where the food came from or who made it.
  2. Men love peace.  Stop being a naysayer, complainer and a whiner.  Stop bitching.  Get off his ass for a few nights.  Encourage him.  If he ain’t shit isn’t doing too well, encourage him.  Mostly – just stay off his arse.   You can only ride it so much before it gets old, they shut you out and stop listening.
  3. Do something inexpensive but unexpected.  Something he wants but hasn’t asked for.  A cheap watch.  A key ring.  A fitted.  Something.  Just do something small and nice for him.
  4. Remember his special dates. Birthday,  his son’s/daughter’s birthday, his mother’s birthday, the day he got promoted, founder’s day of the fraternity.  By the way, it actually requires you to pay attention and ask questions.
  5. Compliment him.  Have you told your man lately how sexy he is?  How you love his hair or the way he smells? His smile?  It could be the way he wrangles that garbage and takes it out for you every Tuesday morning.  Compliment him.
  6. Don’t criticize him in front of anyone.  Ever.
  7. Let him have control of the TV for his games – without an argument.  Slide off and let him have his time too.  He probably thinks the fact that you’re watching RHOA is futile so don’t judge his addiction to ESPN.
  8. Serve him.  Not in the way y’all are thinking (but I won’t knock that either). Make his plate for him.  This is some old fashioned, old school ish but it works and can change the temperature of a room in minutes.  See #1 about having food.
  9. Be thankful. All those little things he does to keep you from having to do them?  Yeah.  Thank him for doing those things.  Taking out the trash, cleaning the kitchen, getting your car fixed, helping your mother out, helping you move, giving you money for what you asked for, giving you money for what you didn’t ask for.  It’s not mandatory so be appreciative.
  10. Support his ideas.  Even.If.You.Think.This. Man.Is.Off.His.Rocker.
  11. Initiate.  This means what you think it means.  Kiss him.  Rub on him.  Start the fire and put it out.  Amen

What else could we add to the list?

Love,

Rae

A Sight for Sore Eyes – Thoughts on the Congruent Self

August 18, 2012 By in Direct Love From Rae, Love Tags: , , 2 Comments

This post is about seeing the people in your life.  In the here and now.  Real time.

It’s also about meeting people where they are.

I was watching a movie with a friend the other evening.  Actually, he was watching and I was running out of the room because it was a movie I couldn’t sit through.  That in itself is another blog post.  Rae note: I don’t watch scary movies, things that I find too disturbing or anything that might upset me too much.  Should I choose to embark on a new adventure with a film, it will be in safe daylight hours after having fully been brought up to speed as to what I can or should expect.  A girl has to be careful what she watches these days.

At any rate, some scenes in the movie made me think about how as people we really don’t SEE each other.  We lack the perspective to really pass through all of the bullshit sometimes and see people as they are, where they are, for what they are.

I think of all of the people who are hiding something from everyone around them or near them.  That one secret (or ten) they hold to themselves.  Or the secret that is shared with others with the same vice or just as much to lose.   And truthfully, you can only see and understand as much as a person will allow you to see and understand.

We hide so much of ourselves.  I used to. I used to hide who I was and my life from my parents.  But seeing as how I am “good & grown” as they like to say, I decided somewhere in the last ten years it wasn’t needed any more.  Who has time to be someone different?  It’s not to say I was doing anything they hadn’t probably done or gone through, but I was afraid of what they would think of me.  Mostly, this is what it comes down to – fear of what others think of us or the threat of losing someone we care about if they really know the truth about us.

I was watching Tony Robbins on OWN.  If you’re throwing shade at Tony Robbins, stop.  I drink his kool aid and I think he’s profound so there’s not much you can tell me.  Anywho, his WIFE said something that really moved me.  She said, “Tony is the most congruent person I know.”  She was speaking that he can talk it because he lives it.  Isn’t that who we all want to be?  Isn’t that what makes so many of us create these false personas and personalities?

I want to be the same person online that I am offline.  The same person to my parents, friends, spouse/partner, loved ones and the strangers that meet me.   When people meet me, I want them to know who they’re dealing with.  I want them to find the words I’m writing match the woman they know and meet.  That I don’t have to hide all of my imperfections.

I know we all talk about being transparent, living honestly and being “true to oneself.”  But how many of us are really making it happen?  How many of us have come to terms with who we are as a person?  Can we marry all of our selves?  I mean the self that loves God, the self that watches crazy things on TV, the self that loves to curse, the self that wants to protect and take care of children, the self that loves to cook and drink cheap wine, the self that can appreciate the beauty of a fine man.  I have many selves ..many pieces of me as Ledisi has so put it.

A few years ago, in the depths of failed dating relationships and no progress, I took a long hard look at myself.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t happy with the person I saw.  I had compromised myself in too many ways too many times.  It had taken a toll.  I had made too many allowances for people I shouldn’t have even allowed into my sphere.  When this happens, there are only a couple of choices:

  1. I carry on without any reservation and continue down the same path.
  2. I make changes towards being the person I want to become.

I chose No. 2.  And it’s a daily battle.  I’m sure anyone attempting to walk a halfway decent path will tell you it’s a battle.  Never for the faint of heart.  Not to be taken lightly.  But I can assure you it’s worth it.  I get to go to sleep at night in peace.  Knowing I’ve done what I could to be the best “me” I could be.

It would be a sight for sore eyes to be able to see people as they are.  Good. Bad. Ugly.  Beautiful.  Restless.  Fractured.  It would be a sight for sore eyes for people to be able to live as themselves without fear of being abandoned by those they love because of who they are.

Meet people where they are.  Choose to see them as they are.  Love them as they are.  Love yourself where you are.

Love,

Rae

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