Sometimes, to elevate the mind
out of the miry bog of poor thoughts
takes every ounce of energy
that we have.
I’ve struggled this past week to get out of the nebulous state of my mind, to endure the flaring pain of Fibromyalgia and annoying flu that has me fatigued in all sorts of ways.
I try not to center my posts and my life on the malaise that I struggle with especially Fibromyalgia and Post traumatic stress disorder because I am not my pain.
Secondly, it’s difficult talking about invisible ailments to others, especially when some are busy looking for how to undermine other peoples challenges.
I choose not to make these things the focal point of my existence because they are not and no, I am not in denial. No matter how much these issues strive to take a lot of my attention and even when I am walking ball of pain, I choose not to indulge in any form of a pity party but face anything as it is and to keep searching for ways to overcome.
My blog space has been silent, but my mind has been a battlefield. I needed all my energy to pull myself up by the bootstraps.
It takes a lot of patience with yourself to recognize your faults and to own them.
It equally takes twice the humility to resolve that you’ll do better in the future.
Ultimately, it takes patience to master and improve on who you are and whatever it is that you are doing. Anticipating instant success in changes that concerns us only opens up our thoughts and attitude towards impatience and frustration.
May you not tire in running your race.
Jacqueline
Every Tuesday, I share snippets of thoughts that I call ‘My Thinking Corner.’
I would like to invite you to participate. The challenge is quite simple. You can check this link for more details.
This quote above is me talking to myself lately. I’ve embarked on different things and there are days that I wake up believing that I know what I am doing, but by the end of the day I just feel as though I am bumbling around mindlessly as though the hills that I have to climb are so high and the valleys cold and lonely.
On such days, I whisper a silent prayer of hope in my heart and holding on to my little seed of faith, I keep following the green light, knowing that all things work together for my own good.
In face of doubt, don’t relent. Take a deep breath and reevaluate. What is there to gain in turning away from your direction? What is there to gain in forging ahead? Much more. So, let’s keep on our course.
It is natural to suffer trepidation and even fear when we are experiencing dark moments in our lives. These challenges could be daunting to such an extent that we stall and lose sight of how far we’ve come and the focus on where we are heading to.
When we go through disconcerting moments, we may actually get to our brightest moments and experience far more growth than we anticipated because our deepest struggles have a way of refining us and making room for enlightenment and growth.
The important thing is to keep picking yourself up and keep moving forward no matter how many times you stumble. You will look back and be amazed at how far you came and you’ll leave your situation behind feeling far more fulfilled.
Sometimes, life pushes us through these difficulties so that we don’t become blasé, life keeps us dreaming and reaching for more.
Every Tuesday, I share snippets of thoughts that I call ‘My Thinking Corner.’
I would like to invite you to participate. The challenge is quite simple. You can check this link for more details.
Think of those things that are currently troubling you and write them down.
Don’t try to focus on immediate solutions; just focus on getting those thoughts out of your mind and onto a paper.
Close your writing, go and do something rejuvenating, like taking a walk, calling a friend and having a bit of laughter, whatever works for you.
Give it a day or two, then pick up what you wrote and read it.
You will observe that writing it down helped to declutter your mind.
Secondly, putting it in writing brings clarity and possibly simplifies the matter and finally reading it gives your mind an opportunity to look at possible solutions from a more mind-liberated position.
Some short words of wisdom are sent in by Deb. Do take a peek. You learn something new every day.
I connected with Joe in this space many months ago and not only has he been supportive, I find his articles inspiring. I never visit his blog and come away empty handed. Today, he has agreed to share more personal details about himself with us.
Thank you, Joe for obliging my nosy inquisition. My regards and best wishes in your endeavours.
Tell us about Joe. Your background, short biography and general outlook towards life.
I am originally from the Bronx, New York and of Puerto Rican and Scottish descent. My Puerto Rican heritage dominated my life. Yet, I do not speak fluent Spanish. I know nothing about my Scottish heritage.
Me as a baby.
I currently live in Florida with my husband of seven years and our two fur babies Maddy and Lotis.
A dysfunctional family life and living in the Bronx helped to make me one of the statistics. I was a dropout from the school system by the age of 16.
I later returned to school to get my High School Equivalency diploma and went on to college to study Culinary Arts.
I subsequently changed my major to Psychology. I made this decision because I started studying metaphysics and saw a correlation between the two. In my opinion, Cognitive behavioural therapy is very similar to using affirmative self-talk.
I never completed my studies but continued to explore these subjects independently. To this day these are two things that interest me very much.
I am the one on the right.
I love understanding how the mind works… what makes people tick… how habitual thought patterns can be changed.
I love taking a recipe and making it my own… cooking for others and seeing their faces when they are enjoying the meal I created.
My other likes besides cooking and psychology is gardening.
These are some of my plants in my garden.
Some of my crystal collection.
Photography: Some of my shots below.
For my singing, you can check out this post for that.
Pollyanna
Nobody is perfect. But, for the most part, I am a very optimistic person.
I have a strong faith in the goodness of my Creator and I believe that there is a reason for everything, because of this, I tend to look for the silver lining in every situation, even in the midst of hard times I look for the reason and try to adjust my attitude to not resist what is going on. Some might call this being a Pollyanna, but I like to think it’s just having faith that I am always where I’m supposed to be in life.
Transitions
Like all people, I have experienced some events in my life that have changed the direction my life was going.
Miracle On 42nd Street
One such incident happened in the year 1990.
It was the day after Christmas that my life changed as a New York City bus jumped the kerb in Manhattan. I only remember seeing the bus coming toward me. The next thing I remember was being on the corner of 42nd street and Lexington Avenue.
The next day I saw myself pictured on some of the major New York newspapers. There I was, laid out on the corner of the streets of Manhattan. The headline read, Miracle On 42nd Street. I survived this accident only by the pure Grace of God.
I have the belief that things happen for a reason and that this accident was to help prepare me for what was to happen next in my life.
Instant Family
Two months after my accident, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer and she lasted only 8 months after finding out about her condition. This resulted into my inheriting the responsibility of raising my two younger brothers.
I wrote a little about this here if you’d like to read about it.
Oops! I Did It Again
After raising my brothers, I eventually ended up working with special needs people as an education coordinator, coach, and trainer. However, my work with this community ended on October 9, 2013, when I experienced another accident.
I bet you thought I was going to say something about Britney Spears 🙂 I won’t go into what happened with this accident, but if you want, you can read about it here.
This latest transition in my life leads to the next question.
Tell us about your blog and your purpose for starting it. Did you have any set goals in mind when you were setting up your blog? What do you think about the blogging phenomenon itself?
After having my last accident my self-image and everything I thought I was changed. I was physically unable to do most of the things I once did. Being physically unable to live as I once had affected me emotionally as well. I soon found myself in depression. The only outlet I had was my journal. One day while writing in my journal I got the inspiration to share my writing and so, “What I Gotta Say About It” was born. However, there’s more to the story.
My Intentions
When I first started my blog, I was really interested in informing people about things they might not have known about. Things like the NSA and our privacy, whistleblowers, our civil liberties being taken away, and the like. I also wanted to discuss spirituality and self-improvement. As time went on I realised I like writing about these things but I needed to focus on something concrete. So, I decided to focus on helping people to realise their highest potential but, I also want to take it a step further.
Building A Community
I have had an awesome experience interacting with the blogging community. So much so, that I created another site in the form of a social network. It is my hope that I will build a community where everyone can share their knowledge and resources with each other. I’m also researching how to create online courses and would like to offer that. It’s not completely finished yet, but soon enough hopefully.
Take us with you on a typical day spent with you. Show us a bit of your World and yes we love photos of your pets if you’ve got any.
My Daily Quagmire
My typical day consists of
Looking for a job.
I was released to go back to work. However, I have limitations. So, this has been quite challenging.
I’m contemplating studying to be a life coach. I think some sort of credential would help me on my mission to help other people.
Taking Care of Maddy & Lotis
Maddy is our dog who is 15 years old. She has random seizures and is prone to getting attacked by Lotis. Lotis is our brand new puppy, who is a handful. We recently lost one of our fur babies (read about that here) and added Lotis to the mix. He is only 3 months old.
Maddy
Lotis
Thank you for the opportunity for the interview Jacqueline.
P.S.: Would you like to grant an interview or guest posting? You can send an email to me at JacquelineObyIkocha@gmail.com
Every Tuesday, I share snippets of thoughts that I call ‘My Thinking Corner.’
I would like to invite you to participate. The challenge is quite simple. You can check this link for more details.
♦ When you are feeling down, by all means, don’t ignore your feelings, acknowledge and ‘deal with them,’ if you don’t you’ll simply pile them up that one day it becomes an avalanche.
♦ Do not stay down for too long, for climbing out of a rock-bottom pit is far more difficult than falling into it.
With the way life has been, it’s no surprise if anyone feels down, but the hard truth is that it’s probably never going to be a smooth sailing life ever, so except one wants to remain down and rock-bottom out, it’s better to acknowledge the problems especially if you can’t run away from them and begin to apply your own practical and sensible solutions in dealing with those that are within your purview.
It’s just one chance that we’ve got to live this life and we’ve got to keep giving it the best shot.
BEAUTIFUL posts from Deborah and Petra:
Joyful childlike qualities: this post touches me that I have no precise words to express how Deborah’s connection and words about her autistic brother make me feel. Stephen lives life in the present moment with childlike enthusiasm 🙂
Look up: sometimes things may not go exactly as we wish them to, but they only challenge us to look up and see other alternatives and narratives.
Please do step in and share a moment or two. One thing that I have learnt with doing this exercise is that I have always come away far more enriched than I set out.
Below is my first just published Poetry Book “Out of the silent breath” which is available on Amazon and Smashwords.
When you buy my book, you support me in an invaluable manner.
Jacqueline writes from her heart on passion, pain, suffering, loss and LIFE. I have been incredibly moved by her poetry and I know I will return to “Out of the Silent Breath” again and again.
If you enjoy my works and would like to do so, you can fuel my creativity with a slice of cake or coffee
This happens to be the season in the year where kindness takes a lot of precedence over here.
I’ve witnessed generous gestures by people around me more than usual, that I can’t help but wonder why we as humans just can’t continue to live like this.
Why should kindness simply not be a common factor in our lives every day, then I also realise that it may not be as easy as I would wish because sometimes, I even struggle to be kind to myself.
For the past week, I have been super-charged with a lot of thoughts of things I need to get done (like how to effectively market my book, how to write the one that I am currently writing, work and life balance and so on) and feeling guilty for not doing as much as I should be doing, that if truth be told sometimes all I truly want to do right now is to just fall into bed, curl up with a book and eat as many bars of chocolate as I can possibly muster, but such luxury eludes me as a working, writing family woman.
Thankfully, taking part in Niki’s Kindness challenge has kept the thoughts of kindness at the forefront of my mind, making me make aware that I should soft pedal and take it a bit at a time in order not to run myself aground and for the past few days I have been consciously attentive to keep my mind focused on the positive things that I have achieved at the end of each day and less highlighting of the negative.
End each day with kindness.
“Be kind to yourself and then let your kindness flood the World.” Pema Chodron
Below is my first just published Poetry Book “Out of the silent breath” which is available on Amazon and Smashwords.
When you buy my book, you support me in an invaluable manner.
She is amazing at describing love and life in her poems. She creates such beautiful images with her words. Truly, she is a talented writer and I’m so excited to have her poetry book and to continue reading through it.
![1468909433244[1]](https://acookingpotandtwistedtales.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/14689094332441.jpg)
a cooking pot and twisted tales 