Author: jacquelineobyikocha

A wordsmith with a vivid imagination, an eager mind and a burning desire to carve out tales. As I journey with my muse to that land of all possibilities and self discovery, I hope my personal evolution will serve as a beacon of inspiration for anyone who chooses to stop by.
Poetry/Poems · The Daily Post

I See Through You…

jacquelineobyikocha22 Comments

person, eyes, woman, face

The veil before my eyes are torn,
now, I truly see your colours in high definition.

The thing is that you never hid them,
‘cos you let them show.

The fault is all mine,
‘cos I spent ages repainting you,

with the hope that my dabs of love
would soften the horridness,

but no amount of glitter I place on you
can hide your ugly sides;

now, I withdraw my paintbox,
I’m done with you.

© Jacqueline

#whenitsdoneitsdone, #stopsugarcoating, #sometimeswehurtourselves, #iseethroughyou

The Daily Post – Torn

Lifestyle

So, how deep is your beauty?

jacquelineobyikocha30 Comments

Feminine Beauty, The definition of beautiful

What does beauty mean to you? Feminine beauty has been construed in many ways and from varied perceptions of the world. It has been depicted through images and concepts that penetrates and rests in our minds, but one simple definition of beauty which we seem to fail to focus on is that beauty is happiness that glows from within.

This line of thought came to me as I stood before my bathroom mirror for several more moments than usual, undertaking an intimate survey of my body. With critical eyes, I noted the tiny indelible laughter lines beside my lips, little spots left by an acne or two, liberal trails of cellulite, jelly-belly from childbearing; the inevitable southbound movement of ex-perky body parts and the countless greys peeking out here and there.

Nonetheless, I also took note of the fact that as detracting and as imperfect as those marks were, the times I’ve felt most beautiful such as I feel at this moment in time are not the times when my skin shone flawlessly, when my body is as tight and svelte as ever or when I was impeccably dressed to suit any standard.

I stood beautiful with my messy locs sticking in all directions. I love the beauty of my washed face, devoid of any makeup, the battle scar of my appendicectomy, the precious blemishes from skin stretched to accommodate the growth of each child borne of my womb, all the lines etched by time; I pulsate with life.

It’s these indescribable sensations of inner joy, respect and acceptance of every inch of who we are that ignites the flame of confidence and beauty that radiates. We are all unique individuals with experiences and memories that form the fabric of who we are and make us our own version of beauty.

As I stood before my mirror in all my personal glory subconsciously performing tweaks, I understood how powerful our perception of our body image and beauty inadvertently affects us. The results in front of our mirrors are not just as simple as they may seem but portray deeper perception of the viewers’ eyes.

Stretch marks, Beauty, Body Image

Image credit – pexels

We live in a world where body image matters. We live in a world where people find it comfortable to body shame others who fall short of their measuring tape especially when it pertains to the feminine beauty. We live in a world where many are consumed with portraying the right image that in a bid to ‘be that perception of beauty’ they become destructive of both the external and the internal and this makes me wonder; what is the depth of one’s beauty? Is it skin deep or surface shallow?

How critical are you to yourself? Do you feel that as you age you lose your beauty because your body has gone all national geographic heading for different directions and you are losing elasticity due to the force of nature’s gravity that no Wonderbra and Spanx can keep in check? Does the fact that you are ageing affect your confidence? What would you do to keep your perceived reflection of yourself the way you want it?

Ageing is not a permission to let ourselves fall to pieces, however, the older I get, the kinder I am to myself and less critical of those who choose to go the extra length to look after themselves and being happy doing it. I know that body image matters a great deal but in the larger scheme of all things beautiful, it should be about striking the right balance. I understand the attempt of women who refurbish their feminine bits through surgery, breast implants, and other procedures.

Our bodies are mere shelters of who we truly are, and no singular image, culture or concept can define our beauty ‘cos our beauty is made of precious moments of being alive and as is commonly said that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, I would assume that the first and most important set of beholding eyes should belong to the owner of the body beheld.

food · Health · Lifestyle

Feel Good Food For Everyday

jacquelineobyikocha4 Comments

Healthy Food, Fresh Foods, Fruits and Vegetables, Grocery, Cooking, Lifestyle, Organic, Raw Foods, Good Food

Food is absolutely fundamental to our lives. We eat every day, cooking different meals, sourcing new foods at grocery stores, trying recipes from around the world. Food brings us together around the table but it can also provide a moment of solitary bliss in the form of a quick one-pot meal alone at lunchtime.

The flavours we go for and the choices we make aren’t just about enjoyment though. What we eat affects every aspect of our lives from our health to our weight and from the money we spend to the times we can save. Food can give us momentary joy, later replaced by frustration standing on the bathroom scales, but it can also help us to get the healthiest body we can.

Understanding foods and the benefits they bring is key to having a healthy, balanced diet that takes in everything from a bit of chocolate here and there to a huge bowl of steamed veg whenever you like. These are the foods that make us feel good every day.

Steamed Vegetables

A completely unsurprising first entry: steamed vegetables are fantastic for your body and will always make you feel good. You can choose from a wide range of flavours so that you can easily eat something completely different every day.

A good rule to go by is to choose from a wide range of colours when you decide which vegetables to eat. Dark leafy greens tend to contain lots of iron, carrots with their vibrant orange contain vitamin A and pulses like peas and bean contain plenty of fibre and protein to keep you fuller for longer.

Steaming vegetables is a good way to cook them as you don’t lose any of the vitamins or minerals to the cooking water. It is also significantly better than frying or roasting because this method doesn’t need any fat.

Sauerkraut

Another way to enjoy vegetables is to pickle and ferment them, as in the case with sauerkraut. The fermenting agent is a bacteria that is particularly good for your gut, allowing you to take in more vitamins and minerals and making you feel generally more healthy.

As a probiotic, sauerkraut does seem to help people who need IBS relief as it improves the functionality of the gut. Though it’s often unclear what causes IBS in each individual, it does seem that an imbalance in your gut flora is a possible cause of the discomfort you experience. Sauerkraut and other foods like kimchi and miso help to restore the balance by introducing new ‘good bacteria’ which allows your gut to function properly again.

One final reason to eat sauerkraut is simple: it’s delicious.

Dark Chocolate

Though milk and white chocolate are often full of sugar and fat, dark chocolate is a bit more forgiving and a little bit each day can be good for you. Lots of people find that dark chocolate is an acquired taste and if you are used to eating the high fat and sugar stuff, anything about 70% cocoa is going to be a surprise with its depth and bitterness. However, if you do like it, there are lots of reasons to love it.

Dark chocolate can help to lower your blood pressure, improve your eyesight and even help to increase your metabolism. Plus as it is sweet once you get past the bitterness, it can be the perfect alternative to a calorific dessert your main meal. Dark chocolate has also been found to help with symptoms of depression, lower cholesterol and seems to help with cognition too.

So if you are feeling stressed, trying to study for an exam and wanting to lose weight, dark chocolate might just help you on your way.

Fruit

Though people with diabetes will need to watch out for eating too much high sugar fruit, for most people, eating fruit is a great way to pile in on lots of vitamins and minerals. Citrus fruits like oranges, lemons and limes are ideal for gaining vitamin C. This is important because vitamin C is shown to increase the absorption of iron, making citrus fruits the ideal companion for green leafy veggies. If you are feeling fatigued or you are trying to work out harder at the gym, up your citrus fruits to really make a difference.

Fruit, like veg, is also a good way to increase the amount of fibre you eat. This will help your digestive system stay regular as well as keep you fuller for longer. Lots of fruits are also good for helping to increase your liquid intake. Though drinking a glass of water is always a good idea, fruit is a simple way to introduce more liquid into your diet, keeping you well hydrated throughout the day.

Flax Seeds

There is a lot of research into the benefits of flax seeds including whether they might help to prevent cancers, lung disease and cardiovascular disease. While this research has not provided any conclusive evidence just yet, there is a wealth of optimism that the flax seed could be ideal for improving your health.

What it certainly does contain is plenty of fibre (a theme is developing with fibrous foods!) as well as omega 3, an essential fatty acid and lignans, which are what researchers are looking into as they may help to protect against cancer.

The foods we choose to eat are vital for our health and well being and finding the best foods can be difficult. As the science around what we should eat changes all the time, it can be confusing to follow the best advice as it changes so frequently.

One thing you can do is listen to your body. Think about how you feel after eating certain foods. Do you feel good and energised? Do you feel happy? Do you regret what you ate? All of these questions will help to indicate the types of foods that you should be going for. And if you are really committed to your quest, keeping a diary will help to isolate the foods that really bring you joy.

Gratitude · Lifestyle

This Joyful Morning…

jacquelineobyikocha11 Comments

Walking, Meditating, Thinking, Reconnecting, Praise The Lord, Rejuvenating, Nature, Walk, In Spirit, Thankful

I walk with the gentle wind touching my skin, its crispness a delightful contrast to the heated breeze of weeks past,

with my face turned to the sun that glitters off the face of the waters like a thousand stars, I stare at the simpleness, the glorious beauty of everything.

The birds chirp away, cars zoom past mere meters away along the highway, and they seem to be in a different time zone,

the man with his clinking bicycle rides past whistling in tandem to the music in his mind and a barefoot man hurries past me, earthing himself and getting feet tanned, I chuckle to myself, it’s all good.

Full breaths of the briny fishy sea air I take in, my soul is grateful.
my low medidative instrumental shuffles on, no words yet the chords reach deep inside and curl themselves around my bones; they are soul food for a torn spirit; it gives me healing.

Help me to be a vessel of your peace Lord. Though my humanness gets in the way most times and makes me a poor example of your peace, those moments that I have inhaled and held your peace, I can’t even begin to explain the exquisite state that it leaves my senses – filled with the vibes that everything is going to be alright and yes, to the heart that believes, everything will be alright.

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

Life · Poetry/Poems

This is Life…

jacquelineobyikocha10 Comments

This is life,
a beautiful, dirty fighter.
filling your eyes with splendour
then punches you in the guts,
with a fist full of pain
that breaks invisible parts
you never knew you had.

This is life,
shaped like a beautiful city,
charming yet endowed with chaos
glitzy upper streets with ghettos to the side;
just when you thought things looked rosy
the stench of its rawness sucks the air out of you
leaving you gasping and watering your face.

©

Jacqueline

Poetry/Poems

Listen. Pause. Inhale…

jacquelineobyikocha9 Comments

water, sea, surf

Listen.

even the water
whispers your name

Pause.

thoughts of you
haunt my moments

Inhale.

you’re the legend
of my soul

©

Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha

Family · Lifestyle

Everyday Ways To Teach Your Kids To Be Responsible

jacquelineobyikocha23 Comments

If you don’t start teaching your children responsibility from a young age, when they grow up and get out into the real world, they’re going to struggle. Every parent knows that it’s important and there are all sorts of ways people try to teach them, like getting them to join a sports team or get a summer job. These are great, but if you want to encourage them to be responsible in all areas of their life, you need to be doing small things every day. Here are just some of the ways that you can teach your kids to be responsible every single day.

child responsibility, upbringing, raising the next generation, responsible kids, family, life skills, lifestyle

Image From Pixabay

Buy Them Nice Things

Before we get into how this teaches responsibility, remember not to go overboard and spoil your children because it will have the opposite effect. If you occasionally buy your children nice clothes from somewhere like Nicki’s fashion for children or buy them a new phone, it’s a good opportunity to teach them to value their possessions and not be careless with them. But this only works if you don’t do it too often. If you buy them something anytime they ask for it, they won’t bother looking after things because they know they can just get another one.

Send Them To The Shop

When I was younger, my parents would always send me around the corner to the shop if we needed milk. It was only a tiny thing but it felt like a big responsibility as a kid. I was eager to make sure that I didn’t make a mistake and so I acted responsibly. Sending them out to do small errands on their own is the perfect way to create a family that all works together to help out around the house. Just remember, wait until they’re old enough to be walking around on their own, and don’t start asking them to do the weekly shop for everybody.

Pay Them For Chores

Before they’re old enough to go out and get a proper job of their own, you can still teach them a good work ethic by paying them to do small chores around the house. Washing the car or raking the leaves in the garden are both good options. It teaches them the importance of working and you can start them off on managing a little of their own money. The key to making this effective is to only pay them for certain chores. They should still help around the house regardless, otherwise, they could get lazy.

Practice What You Preach

You can easily undo all of your good work if you don’t practice what you preach. If you’re constantly telling your kids to pick up after themselves yet they see you being messy, you’re sending mixed signals and they won’t listen to you. Always be aware of how you’re acting when they’re about and make sure you follow your own rules.

There’s no one way to teach your kids responsibility, you have to introduce it to every aspect of their life.  

This is a collaborative post.
Life

I Pause To Play..

jacquelineobyikocha20 Comments

Image result for images of pause

and my roller coaster crashed!
it came to a jarring halt
my mojo kinda left my heart
pursuing green paper to pay the bills
with little time to sleep a wink
several hungry mouths to feed
my brain almost has no time to think
the greenback has become the king
the king of this jungle called life
I need to get my mojo back

Please forgive my tardiness in responding to your comments. I’m usually not this rude but like my people would say ‘something bigger than the cricket has entered the crickets mouth.’

My life has been a bumpier ride of late, events beyond my control have been trying to take the drivers wheel, but I refuse and trying to get back the grip. I took a pause so that I can get back into the game asap. I have taken odd jobs to keep body and soul together as I ride the rough tide. All is well with me, yet turbulent.

Be well and I’ll be reaching you soon. I miss you.

Jacqueline

Family · Lifestyle

Excitement In The Outdoors This Christmas

jacquelineobyikocha12 Comments

Decorations, Bauble, Christmas Tree, Festive, Light

Image Source

Christmas is a truly wonderful time of year. With the world taking on a breathtaking hue of white, the temperature dropping very fast, and loads of little jobs to do, going outside will often be one of peoples’ least likely choices. Of course, though, this isn’t how the kids will feel. To help you out with this, this post will be exploring some of the ways you can add some excitement to your child’s outdoors this holiday season. These can either be as Christmas gifts or as something fun in the run-up.

Sledging: When it starts to snow, a lot of people have an excellent opportunity. It’s unlikely that you live somewhere completely flat, giving you the chance to find some nice, slippery hills to send the kids flying down. Sledging has been a very popular winter pastime for hundreds of years. This makes it nice and easy to find all of the gear you’ll need, and it will just be a matter of doing some research to get all of the safety tips you might need.

Quad biking: Of course, in some cases, you might not be in a place where it snows, and this will make sledging impossible. Thankfully, though, you have an alternative; ATVs. Finding recommended 4-wheelers for kids will take some research. But, with your findings, it should be nice and easy to get started on your next adventure. Like sledging, you will need to adopt some safety methods before you get started with this sort of fun with your children. Along with this, it could also be worth looking for helmets and pads to keep everyone uninjured.

Snowball Fighting: Going back to snow, it’s time to think about another classic. Snowball fighting has been around for a very long time and is a great way to get the kids out for free. As long as everyone has a good pair of waterproof gloves, you will be able to handle the snow for hours at a time, and the kids will have loads of fun. You’ll just have to make sure to set up some rules before you get started.

A New Friend: Finally, as the last idea on this list, you could think of something much more long-term. A dog will live for many years, requiring walking throughout the course of its life. This sort of addition to your family will go down very well with children. With the right preparation, you could have this be the best gift of the year, arriving on the day itself. Of course, though, this is a very big decision to make.

Hopefully, this post will inspire you to start working on some ideas to get your kids outside this holiday season. It can feel very uninspiring to go out when the weather is bad, and a lot of families will spend most of the season indoors. While there are no problems with this, it could be much more exciting to do some outdoor activities, as well.

Lifestyle

Anything For An Easy Life

jacquelineobyikocha21 Comments

It’s a sentence most uttered by parents and carers around the world: anything for an easy life. This doesn’t mean laying down and being taken advantage of, nor does it mean taking ill-feeling and accepting bad manners. No, wanting an easy life means accepting life as it comes at you and making it work for you.

If you find yourself laid up with an injury right before you’re due to go on vacation, you don’t need to cancel your break. Instead, make life easier and look into electric scooter rentals so that you can get out and about and enjoy yourself as much as possible. If you find yourself short of cash before the end of the month, get creative with the canned goods. You never know, you may find a brand-new recipe to appreciate. You can be the ultimate perfectionist if you want to, but unless you learn how to give yourself a break and relax, you’re never going to find yourself in a position where you can relax about life.

Cake, Drizzle, Confection, Treat

Image Source

Life passes by so fast, that if you spend all your time stressing over it and worrying about how you are going to manage, then you aren’t going to live an enjoyable one. Instead of waiting around for the next thing that makes you happy, why don’t you make yourself happy right now? We’ve got some awesome tips to make life easier for yourself right now.

Breathe. Any situation can be hard if you panic, but if you force yourself to stop and take some deep, cleansing breaths, you can find yourself managing your feelings and emotions before they have a chance to overwhelm you. It’s truly amazing what deep, slow breathing can do for your body.

Slow Down. Do you find yourself taking on a lot at work or at home? It’s time to stop being a hero. Share the workload both in your personal or professional life, and let someone else take the load off of you. You want an easier life, right? You have to make it happen.

Break Away. Do you spend most of your day staring at a screen? Whether you’re on a tablet, computer or smartphone, you need a break from technology. There’s no need for you to sit back and spend your downtime on a screen if you’re working on one all day long, as well.

Be Kind. If you treat others with kindness and yet spend time hating on yourself, now is the time to stop. You need to look in the mirror and say the kind words you say to others, but this time say them to yourself. You need to hear your own words and believe in them, because you matter, too.

Date Yourself. Take yourself for a morning coffee at a café with a newspaper, your drink being made by someone else can take the pressure off you to make your own, and it also means that you get a chance to relax. There is nothing wrong with self-indulgence, so enjoy it.

Having an easy life won’t happen overnight, but it can give you a freedom you’ve never experienced.