Hard to Say Goodbye...

Today is VERY bittersweet for me.  If you read , then you know that for me twitter has been a lot more than just a social network.  I get to meet some of my sorority sisters in person for the first time later today and I'm SUPER excited. But the event that led to this meet and greet was not a happy one.  We lost our Soror Crystal Y. Davis suddenly.  Everyone keeps saying that it doesn't feel real-- and it doesn't.  I feel as if I'm sitting here waiting to be shaken awake from a horrible nightmare, and she'll be there.  So far, no such luck.  Sickle cell took her from us, and knowing that she's no longer in any pain is comforting, but I find myself wanting to know why? Why her? Why us? Why her family and her daughters? I am unable to make it to DC for the services, so my sorors and I will celebrate HER life today in New Orleans.  Rest In Paradise big sis.  We love you and miss you. And like Cyd said, you're dancing with the angels now.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope everyone enjoys this day and has lots of family and love surrounding them.

Go Girl It's Ya Birthday...

... however there will be no partying.  Today I turn 28 years young.  BUT I will still tell people 25.  27 was a CRAZY year for me. The year started bad, was bad in the middle and ended badly.  But you know what? I am alive, kinda healthy, and I have a ton of family, friends, and Sorors who love me.  And to be truly loved by these people that I have in my life? Best gift anyone could receive.  Things could be better but they could be worse, so I am thankful to see another birthday.

I'll actually be at work Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights (which kinda sucks but Lord knows I'm blessed and thankful for this job), but when the clock strikes 12am Wednesday morning, I'm going to celebrate.  Not just for me but for my Soror Cryssy, a fellow Sagittarius, whose birthday celebration I could not attend and now she's no longer with us.


Oh and this song will be on repeat at several different times today. Rihanna- Birthday Cake.

More than Just a Social Network...

Twenty four hours ago I received proof that twitter is more than just a social network.  It came in form of a text from my Soror Z who said she had bad news.  She told me that she'd called to check on our Soror Cryssy Davis and was told that she had passed.  Surely I was reading this incorrectly. No way this was right. Maybe she'd dialed the wrong number.  So many things went through my head.  How could this be happening? She has two young daughters under age 4- one only a few months old.  Surely they have not lost their mother.  And then the tears started to flow.

And honestly they haven't really stopped.  I got no sleep yesterday.  I got on twitter early, hoping to have been awakened from what seemed like a bad dream.  What I saw only made the flow of tears increase.  so many people loved Cryssy. She touched SO many of us and what's weird is that a lot of us haven't met her face to face.  It is proof that you can love someone you haven't met that, that they can be an important part of your life, through texts, emails and tweets.

I hadn't known her long but I knew her long enough to know that she had such a big heart.  She was full of love and genuinely cared about people.  After having her baby she was the one checking on me when I was having a rough time and in need of encouragement.  I can't tell you all how much it meant to see the simple message "how are you doing today baby girl?"  You just had a baby, I should be checking on you, but she had to make sure that I was doing okay.

She definitely left an imprint in my heart and memory forever, and I noticed today the amount of my Sorors who felt the same way.  Some new her longer, some had spent time with her in person, but we all loved her and we all miss her already.  And her love reached so much further than just my sorority sisters. Other friends of hers who also loved her, and who were brought into our lives by her, people who I can also say that I care about, expressed their love for Cryssy.  In the end one thing was evident-- no way was this "just twitter." It's like we have a little family.  A crazy family that makes us laugh, gives us advice, shares their lives with us in so many ways.  I plan to start meeting more of my twitter family, but even if I don't, they all have a special place in my heart.

Don't Put a Bad Word in Your Soul...

The picture above is a tweet from Kirk Franklin.  It pretty much speaks for itself.  This is why you shouldn't ask everybody to pray for you.  And it's why I can't understand people who still support Eddie Long and others like him.  Why are you still sitting in THAT church on Sundays? 

You're Just Like a Pill, Instead of Making Me Better You're Making Me Ill

Suicide has been in the news a lot lately over the last couple of years.  Accounts of teens deciding to end their lives for one reason or another, often due to bullying.  I think about the topic of mental health often, especially as it relates to black people.  I read somewhere that at least two thirds of the black people who need mental health treatment do not receive it.  Although cost and availability are often an issue, I think a bigger one has to do with a stigma placed on mental illness in our community.  Someone who is depressed is often told to "pray about it" or to be positive or optimistic.  Sometimes they are even made to feel like they have no right to feel the way they do, because somewhere someone is in a worse situation.  I think that last one is what I hate the most.  Who are we to tell someone that their situation isn't "bad enough" to be depressed?  Sure someone else's life may seem worse to us, but there are always things that we as outsiders can't see.  That person who's life seems worse may have a stronger support system, or could be seeing someone for psychiatric help.

In the end, it's always easy to say that suicide is never the answer, but obviously, to a lot of people it is.  So tonight on twitter when I saw that a young lady was tweeting as she attempted to commit suicide, I took it seriously.  I prayed and hoped that someone she knew had gotten to her before it was too late.  Her tweets played out like a public suicide note, citing an abortion that she regrets, and a guy who allegedly coerced her into it and later broke up with her.  Several hours earlier she'd even mentioned anti-depressants, but that she felt like the side effects outweighed their benefits.  I wondered to myself if she'd ever been to a mental health professional who could evaluate her and explain the pros and cons of these medicines to her, and hoped she was okay.

Then it started.  For some reason I decided to search her twitter name, to see what kind of things were being tweeted in response to her tweets.  People accused her of faking this suicide attempt. First off who are you to say that someone you don't even know is faking something? And even if she was trying to get some attention, it's obvious that the girl was in pain and needed someone to help her.  If she was faking, maybe having someone reach out to her would have been what she needed to see that she needed to get some professional help.  Other's made jokes, and tweeted her asking if she was dead yet.

Someone in a different state called the police, and it seems as though someone was able to get to her and get her to a hospital.  I pray that this is true and the young lady is still alive.  What really scares me, however, is the people who may also have searched her name, seen the ridicule she was receiving, and decided that they would not seek mental help for themselves, in an attempt to avoid the same.  People often say "it's just twitter" and it is so obvious that it is SO much more than "just twitter" and I wish people would think about the consequences before being so insensitive.  Everything is not a joke, especially mental illness. Just remember, someone close to you could be struggling with something similar before joking about someone committing suicide.

My Vision Board

Vision Boards.  I heard about these a little over a year ago.  I was never big into Oprah or similar shows, and no one I knew was really talking about them, so I had no idea what they were or what the purpose was.  A vision board is a way to use the "laws of attraction" to make things happen in your life.  You get a board and put pictures or words that represent things you want out of life.

I started w/ this plain cork message board I bought at Walmart like a year ago. (Yeah, that's how long it took me to get this thing moving.)  I thought it was too plain. I wanted it to be happy and colorful, because I need happy and colorful right now.  So I covered it with scrapbook paper.  Sparkly, colorful, girly scrapbook paper.  And added a blingy sticker.  To me the hard part was finding pictures or sayings that represented what I want.  I'm still not 100% done with it.  I had to go through SO many magazines.  (Between my parents and I we have subscriptions to Essence, Ebony, O, Men's Health, Ladies Home Journal and Prevention.)  I actually printed a couple of things that I knew I wouldn't find in any magazine.

Things represented on my board: getting my DVM, money (financial security, stability, debt management), marriage and family (meaning babies), health (spiritual, mental and physical) and weight loss, new car and house.  I didn't put anything related to friends and family on there because honestly, that's a pretty good part of my life.  I have awesome friends and family.  Even if they get on my nerves occasionally I couldn't ask for better.  I also need to find something to represent travel.  Because that's something I want to be able to do.

Here's some pics of what I have so far: