Actions Speak - The Golden Rule

Someone that follows my blog reached out to me recently to ask why I have not written anything lately. At first I did not know how to respond.  After giving it some thought for a couple of days I finally realized that when I am silent it is because I am listening and processing.  A wise person once told me that we have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen more than we talk.  I will add that we also have two eyes so that we can see. The past few months have been very challenging for almost everyone.  It is hard not to feel discouraged when you turn on or read the news.  Just when you think it could not get any worse something else happens.  

Everyone has an opinion and no one seems to be able to share their without someone getting offended or an all out argument breaking out.    We seem to  have lost our ability to agree to disagree and move on. Although some of the issues being debated right now are ones that really aren't debatable. Every human being deserves basic human rights and decency. Some are so offended by the BLM movement right now.  Why you ask?  If all lives really matter there would be no need for us to fight for Black Lives matter. As the election approaches I know things will only get worse. I have never before seen our country so divided.  It is very concerning to me the state that we are in.  

My silence does not mean that I have given up.  It does not mean that I have lost my voice. My silence right now simply means that I am listening, watching and processing. I recognize that there are much bigger issues than the random thoughts of Terri D right now.  There is so much hatred on display right now that I am trying my best to maintain my composure. Keep the faith. I am still trusting God's divine plan.

With all of that said there are many like me who are being silent and I realize that yes there is a time to be quiet and listen but there is also a time to voice your thoughts.  Voicing them is great but what is even better is letting your actions speak. Don't tell me how much I mean to you or how sad you are to see what is happening.  Show me by your actions that you care about me and what is happening to others who look like me in our country right now. The bottom line is that we must do better in all aspects of our lives.  We have some big issues to resolve but honestly it's simple.  Let's all follow the golden rule, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Long distance marriage sucks

This post is very personal. I wrote it over a month ago but am finally ready to share it.

For the past year and a half I have been away from my husband physically separated from him because he is not able to come here because he does not have a Visa. I have spent a lot of time experiencing a bunch of different emotions about our situation but just this morning (June 13^th 2020)I woke up very early and as I lay in bed wondering why I was awake at 4 in the morning on a Saturday I began to realize something. I have always felt that there was a bigger meaning to my relationship with my husband. You see my husband is Dominican and I am American and when I met him, I did not speak Spanish and he did not and does not speak English. With all the things that are going on in the world right now it has become clear to me that there is a bigger purpose for my relationship with my husband. That bigger meaning is just for me, but I have learned so much about love through my relationship with him. It is not the romantic stuff and I think in my past relationships I have been a hopeless romantic interested in the gooey stuff like the flowers and all of those romantic gestures. My relationship with my husband has not been really any of that for a number of reasons, the communication challenges, cultural differences things like that.

I think I finally realized that this exercise that I've gone through with this relationship has been about learning how to love someone that can't understand you easily. Someone that you can't understand easily.  Learning how to love someone whose culture is completely different than yours who doesn't understand your culture. Learning how to love someone who is literally thousands of miles away from you most of the time. I think sometimes we've gotten accustomed to instant gratification in all aspects of our lives and it's easy to love someone when you can get that instant gratification meaning they can say a word or they can do something for you to make you feel better but it's a lot harder to love someone when those things that are typically easy are difficult. I really think that this relationship has taught me or is teaching me patience with love and understanding with people that think and feel differently than I do. It goes back to a post that I wrote in May called intellectual humility.

 I really think that I've always felt that this relationship was just so much bigger than me Terri and my husband Raulin. I've always felt like there was just a much bigger lesson and purpose and I think it finally hit me as far as what that is. Lately my husband and I have been having a lot of challenges with communication not seeing eye-to-eye on things, having a difference of opinion and at the core of it I realized yesterday that I was asking him to be the husband but I wasn't allowing him to be the husband because every suggestion that he gave me for how to solve some problems I would say no we can't do that or no I don't like that. It occurred to me that on the one hand I was asking my husband to be the man to be the problem solver to participate in helping to solve some of our problems but every time he came to me with the suggestion I had a reason why that wouldn't work so I apologized to my husband and I told him that he had to do what he felt was best because he is currently living in an environment that I am not. He is more familiar with his environment than I am, and I need him to do what he feels comfortable with. It is easy for me to sit here in the United States in my comfort zone and tell someone else what to do and how to live for them to be comfortable but they're not in the United States they're in their comfort zone so I've learned a lot in the last 24 hours I realized a lot about myself about my relationship and some things that I need to change and do differently but at the end of the day even though we're not physically together even though it's not easy to communicate with him a lot I love him and I know he loves me and we are figuring it out as we go. 

This October we will celebrate our 3rd wedding anniversary and a few weeks later in November we will celebrate four years that we've been together. There are a lot of people who can't understand why I've stuck it out this long why I haven't given up and to those people I will say that my grandmother who I miss dearly always told me anything worth having will take work and yes I have been married before twice and those marriages ended in divorce but this one is different this one is teaching me that you must have patience. Good things will come to those who wait and even if my husband doesn't get to come to the United States even if our marriage doesn't survive in the long run for whatever reason I can tell you that every day that I have been in a relationship with him or married to him has been an adventure the days that I spent with him have actually been some of the best times of my life and not because I was always smiling and happy because I was learning and I was growing through the process that's what life's about y'all it's about learning and growing it's about experiencing all the things that life has to offer some things will make you smile some things will make you cry but it's about growing through it all so this post is dedicated to my husband whom I love dearly and I want to thank him for all the love that he's given me, all the lessons that I've learned from him and I hope that this is just the beginning for us, not the end.

The bottom line is this. I am Learning and growing through the discomfort of being separated from my hubby.

Shame on me

I am ashamed to admit that today is the first time in my life 52 years of living that I have paid attention to the 19^th of June or Juneteenth.  I am a black woman, who raised a black son and two black daughters, and I have been disconnected from my roots, my history.  It is for this that I am ashamed.  I trusted the system to educate me and provide me with the tools I needed to learn and grow. 

Shame on me. 

This system is not designed to grow me. It is not designed to provide me with anything.

Shame on me for thinking I was accepted or that it was okay for me to be comfortable here. 

Shame on me for believing that things were better. 

Now I know better so I must do better. 

Shame on me for thinking that people saw me only as Terri or Author Terri D. 

Now I know better.  I know that I am and will always be that black girl Terri.

Never have I felt so black but also so very aware of my lack of knowledge of the hatred that I have been swimming in.  Oblivious among those screaming stay woke but I was sleep walking.

Shame on me for not seeing beyond the surface smiles. 

Shame on me for not digging deeper into my roots and my history to understand where I came from to fully appreciate where I am today but that there is still so far to go.

Shame on me for not realizing that the fight for equality would include me. It was not something of the past, it is present today and unfortunately will probably last for many more tomorrows. 

Shame on me for not paying attention to what lurked just beyond the surface.

The past month we have all seen things that maybe we never saw or paid attention to before.

I was taught to do better once you know better

Now we see it, so now we know.

So now what?

I can't breathe

I can't unsee the image of an unarmed man (black) literally being kneed to death (suffocated) by a police officer (white). As a mother of a young black man the grandmother of three young black male children my heart is so heavy. For me it is not just about a black versus white thing it is a human versus human thing however I am a black woman and I love and care for several black men and I can't breathe. 

I know personally how it feels to worry about your child coming home at night because they are constantly being targeted by law enforcement simply for driving while black. When my son who is now in his 30's was a teenager he was employed and he drove to and from work alone and at least once a week as he was driving back home from work in the evening he would be stopped by local law enforcement. My son was often asked where are you going? Where are you coming from? Why are you in this neighborhood? The neighborhood that he lived in.  My son was a young black man, a teenager driving a car in a Suburban Pennsylvania neighborhood and he was stopped repeatedly. He was not speeding, he was not driving erratically, his taillights were not out, he was not disobeying any laws other than the laws of the policeman who felt he was out of place.

I can't breathe when I think about all of the young men (black) who face the same type racist driven treatment, emotional and physical brutality from law enforcement across this country.

I can't breathe when I think about all of the mothers who have buried their children who have died at the hands of law enforcement in this country.

I can't breathe when I think about all of the other mothers who are raising young black men who now worry every single moment that their children are not in their sight because of incidences like we have seen time and time again. An unarmed man (black) has been brutalized at the hands of law enforcement (white) in this country that so many people call the land of the free. I guess it is only free to those who do not look like me.

I can't breathe when the response from so many who don't look like me is but what did he do? Does it really matter what he did? The man lay helpless, handcuffed, detained unable to breathe crying out for his mother.

I can't breathe he said repeatedly. Does it matter what happened before? If he had not been a black man would anyone even question what he did before the video started rolling? If he had not been a black man would he have even been lying on the ground knee on his neck being detained?

I can't breathe.

I can't sleep.

I can't believe this is where we are in 2020 in a country where we are raised to believe that we are the land of the free. We are the land of opportunity. If you look like me this does not apply.

I simply cannot breathe.

Intellectual Humility

It has been a few weeks since I posted anything and I wasn't really sure what I wanted to cover in this post until a few days ago.  I had the opportunity to participate in two separate interviews last week. 

One was with Ella Curry and her Ban Radio show.  I was one of her guest on her Mind Your Business Crown holders master class.  I talked about my Connecting the Dots Life Coaching business.  During the interview I touched on several concepts that were covered during my training last year but there was one in particular that stood out as something that more people need to be aware of in our current climate.  I'm not a political person so this isn't really about politics at all.  It is about how hard it is getting for me to remain positive about things with so much negativity everywhere. At times I barely recognize this world that I am living in.  So much greed and hate.  Where is the love and compassion?  I choose this quote and photo because it is one of my favorites and it is also very true.  How many times have you struggled to remember exactly what someone said to you but you could remember how it made you feel?

I decided to talk about Intellectual Humility.  The idea or concept of Intellectual Humility has been around for quite some time, however in my life coaching training manual it quotes Dr. Elizabeth Mancuso, Professor of Psychology at Pepperdine University, who talks about being humble about your ideas, beliefs and thoughts.  She referred to it as Intellectual Humility.

She goes on to explain that "Intellectual Humility has four particular behaviors and attitudes:

1) Not being overconfident about your knowledge and beliefs,

2) Being open to adjusting and revising your knowledge and beliefs when necessary,

3) Being respectful of the view points of others, and

4) Not being defensive when others have a different perspective than yours."

I understand that not everyone thinks the same way that I do and I believe that I allow others to express their views freely without arguing or making them feel that their opinions do not matter.  Everyone is a bit on edge right now and I get it.  We have all been isolated in our homes for the last two months.  Frustrations and emotions are running high.  People want OUT of their houses, they want things to be the way they were.  Some consider many things that we are being asked to do unfair.  Throw into the mix the tense political climate due to the upcoming election and you have the perfect storm for conflict. 

I have lived long enough to know that there will always be conflict and people will disagree.  I guess what I am trying to say is that things appear to be getting worse.  People are no longer able to just agree to disagree and leave it at that.  Why does someone have to be wrong and the other person is right?  What happened to the golden rule?  Treat others as you would like to be treated?

Imagine how things could be if we practiced a little more intellectual humility?  Will this solve all the problems of the world?  Absolutely not BUT it certainly couldn't hurt.  The respect that you want from others starts with you giving it to others, or better yet respecting yourself first. 

Google Intellectual Humility and  you will find a lot of information and quotes from different people about what it means.  In a nutshell it is about the four items mentioned above and maybe interacting with one another with a little more compassion and love.   

The second interview I had last week was with The Voice 17104 Harrisburg PA, The Nathaniel Gadsden.  The show was centered around international travel and cross-cultural relationships.  I was able to share information about my travel and living experiences in the Dominican Republic.  I thoroughly enjoyed participating in the show and sharing information about my experiences which are also covered in my memoir titled Passport Wife.  You can check out all of my books here on my website www.AuthorTerriD.com

My husband is also on lock down in the Dominican Republic and things have been closed so as of now there is not an update on his visa but we are both remaining prayerful that once things open up again the process will continue and he will be able to join me here in the United States. Until then this is how we will be together.

May 2020 Changes are coming

Like the expression goes April showers bring May flowers,

many people will be blooming like flowers this month as restrictions are gradually lifted.  Just like everyone processed the stay at home orders differently everyone will handle the restrictions being lifted in their own way.  Some will be running from their homes with joy while others may be a bit more tentative about leaving the comfort and safety of their homes. I'm more than likely going to be in the later category.  Due to several underlying health issues I need to remain very cautious, therefore my reentry into society, even with social distancing guidelines will be a bit slower.

In these unprecedented times we all have to process and make decisions that are best for us and what we feel comfortable with.  Most of all we must practice compassion and patience with ourselves and each other.  Remember that everyone doesn't think or process things the same way you do.  Other people are allowed to have their own opinions and it doesn't have to cause a fight.  It really is okay to agree to disagree.

This pandemic has taught us so many things.  We've learned how to handle many things virtually, we've been working, home schooling, virtual doctor appointments, socializing and learning how to be creative and have fun in new ways.  Over the past 7 weeks I have seen so many creative ideas, virtual game nights, dance parties, new fun challenges one of my personal favorites was the Don't Rush challenge.  Many people making masks and finding other ways to help others during this time where many people's lives and livelihoods have been disrupted.  Many have taken this time to relax, recharge and reset.  Whatever path  you choose it was probably exactly what you needed.  For those who are essential workers and especially healthcare workers who've had to continue working even under extremely stressful conditions I applaud you and thank you for all you've done and will continue to do.

As for me, I was somewhere in the middle.  There have been days over the past seven weeks where I've been very productive and there have been days where I felt like I could barely get out of bed.  A few things that I've realized about myself during this time are:

1) I have way too many pajamas and I don't know why so many of them are grey, my favorite color is blue.
2) I'm beginning to understand how hermits survive.  I'm discovering new ways to not leave the house everyday.
3) Why am I so much more productive here at home?  There are so many distractions but yet I'm getting things done.
4) There are pros and cons to living alone during a pandemic.  I think that I personally experienced all of the emotions associated with them at some point over the past seven weeks.

One of my greatest accomplishments during this time has been the release of my latest book titled Journaling for Self-Care for Young Adults.  Available on Amazon (Link  below)

Journaling for Self-Care

I have kept journals since I was a teenager.  It's one of the ways I process my thoughts and feelings.  Although this book was released at a time when many people need help dealing with their emotions it wasn't planned this way.  This content was created for a workshop on how to journal I was scheduled to do at my high school Alma mater on May 1st, but of course it got cancelled.  The book is a great tool for those who need a little help working through their thoughts, feelings and even to set goals for the future.

The affects of this pandemic are far from over and for many their lives have been forever changed.  Remember to practice patience and compassion with yourself and others.

Blessings to all

Terri

Deep thoughts

No matter where you are in the world right now, chances are your life has in some way been impacted by the Corona virus.  Here in Pennsylvania where I live today our governor issued a stay at home order and schools have been closed indefinitely.  We have entered into unfamiliar territory in all aspects of our lives.  Kids out of school, parents working from home or out of work, businesses closed, churches closed and streaming services.  There are more questions than answers.  Everyone  has been impacted in some way by this pandemic.  My heart aches for the children who are struggling to understand what's  happening, not understanding why they can't see their friends.  The students who were looking forward to proms, and graduation ceremonies.  Parents please take a minute to talk to your children about how they are feeling.  Business owners, investors and salespeople who had big plans for 2020.  Couples with wedding plans or expecting children.  Things have been completely turned upside down.  We all need to be patient and realize that it's not going to fix itself over night. 

Maybe it's just me but things on social media have been a little different lately.  I've noticed a little less bickering about political differences and more collaboration.  We have DJ's hosting virtual dance parties, musicians hosting impromptu concerts, some amazing face time collaborations.  People are banding together to share positive messages, prayers, pictures of hearts, beaches and landscapes to flood our timelines with positive images and messages to get our minds off of the news occasionally. We're checking in on each other, hosting virtual happy hours, date nights and my family has started family check in's via zoom.  Teachers are driving through the neighborhoods of their students to let them know that they're missed. 

These are all wonderful things, all proof that there is still some humanity in the world.  However none of those things take away from the seriousness of this pandemic.  We all need to listen to the authorities and follow their advice and guidance in order to slow the spread as quickly as possible.  Many people are expressing the sentiment that they are "stuck" at home.  No my friends we are safe at home right now.  Let's attend to all of those things we didn't have time for before because we were too busy doing things outside of our homes.   

On the other side of this pandemic what will the world look like?  How will this impact how we live our lives moving forward?  Those are questions that we cannot answer but maybe you've thought about them?  During times like this with so much uncertainty it's best to stay focused on the things happening around you that you can control.  Worry is truly a waste of energy when it's truly out of your hands.

I haven't spoken to anyone yet who isn't feeling some type of anxiety over what's happening right now.  Although no one really knows what's going to happen I think it's safe to say that things will probably never be as they were.  We are all being forced to examine ourselves on every level possible right now.  We're being tested in unimaginable ways.  It's because of this fact I implore you to seek help if you're feeling overwhelmed, extremely frustrated, angry and/or sad.  I've seen articles talking about the increase in both child abuse and domestic violence over the past few weeks.  Some predict a surge in births in nine months where others expect the already high divorce rate to skyrocket. No one really knows but during this difficult, stressful time take a moment to acknowledge your feelings and seek help. 

If you're interested in learning more about how to journal leave a comment or visit my website to contact me via email.   I recently finished my how to journal book titled Journaling for Self-Care for young adults.  It will be released to the public in the coming months.  Stay tuned. 

I'm sharing a link below of a therapist that is talking to as many people as she possible can via phone during this confusing time.  Reach out today or refer a friend.

 www.empowermentinsights.com