Be the Role Model Your Kids Need
Show your kids that family should always come first. Family is the first to shelter you and tend to your basic needs. Throughout your life, they serve as a support system you can rely on. Your kids need to feel comfortable with their support system. Depending on a support system is critical when it comes to self-care. Prioritize your children even
when you have busy seasons at work. Always have a plan of attack to ensure your kids receive quality time with you and you do not feel pressured. You may want to be available at bedtime every night or to work in the kitchen or clean up with them. Always plan new experiences so you can look forward to something new. If you did not previously work out, start with programs for beginners. Start with short walks and work your way up
to longer journeys around the neighborhood. Find workouts that you can do with your kids. Consider going on bike rides with your kids or playing sports in the yard together.
Make Physical Activity a Priority
Integrate physical activity into your life as a priority. Encouraging your kids to engage in physical activities and sports they enjoy can help them stay active and healthy. Setting a positive example by being physically active yourself can also encourage your kids to follow suit. If you’re in a walkable neighborhood, even simply leaving the car at home and walking to run some errands can make a difference. Having an active lifestyle as a priority not only benefits their physical health but also boosts their mental health and
reduces the chance of anxiety. Workouts can include learning how to meditate or giving themselves time to reflect on their day while moving. Even cleaning your home can be an opportunity for exercise. Next time you’re organizing their playroom, get the kids involved and turn it into a game.
Instill an Action-Oriented Mindset
Make sure your kids have the tools available for self-care. For example, learn how to provide nutritious meals for the whole family so your kids will one day know how to go out and seek healthy food over unhealthy meals.
Motivate your kids to act healthily by helping them enjoy it. For instance, if you want them to eat healthily or exercise, make it fun for them to seek out.
Find Comprehensive Health Insurance for Your Family
Be proactive about your family’s health with regular doctor visits. When looking for the right health insurance for your family, consider factors such as coverage options, cost, network providers, and any specific healthcare needs you may have. It may also be helpful to compare multiple plans and seek guidance from a healthcare professional or
insurance agent. If your employer doesn’t provide insurance, look for policies through the ACA or Freelancers Union. Physical activity boosts mental and physical health in children and adults alike. Teaching your kids to take action when it comes to caring for themselves can lead them on a path to a fulfilling future. It’s also a good idea to be proactive about your family’s health by finding comprehensive health insurance.
Planning a pregnancy for it not to go as planned was just God asking me if I am ready to be a believer again. Yes, you question was I ever a believer and at 28 I believed my faith was strong until we find ourselves in the most intimate of spaces to have to use it.
I miscarried, it sound so poetic coming off my lips because it was finite. Right? It had given me something to chose as concrete and then make a plan again. It was something tangible that my mind, body and soul could wrap around but it still cut like the whips with fine tooth nails that ripped the skin of my ancestors. It was the paradise that Israelites was promised but never given.
I had read miscarriage post with so much disconnect and with the fake smile we give the white folks at target acting like I understand the bout of it, but I didn’t. I guess I was secretly happy it had never happened to me, but my day had come. & even then like all I tossed it like a lay up saying “at least I wasn’t too far” acting like that phrase was bandaid that would heal the spirit of the truth of there was a DEAD BABY, but not a baby at all.
I suffered a blighted ovum which meant that the embryo never formed. That it attached, but due to some scientific shit, it had never formed. No, I don't discount my experience of having a real baby, but my mind goes back too the thought of at least it wasn't a baby at all which doesn't take away from the void of being pregnant and still I made jokes like Murphy to myself to cope with “well if Beyoncé had one” trying to pull myself from the painful place of question which is WHY ME!? Embarrassed because now I would have grieve publicly because my black ass wants to be a influencer?! Tf 4 years of HS to graduate salutatorian, 4 years of college and 18 months of a masters program for me to sizzle down to my aspirations to be a influencer whew, but back to the blog. I miscarried. & even now thinking and rewriting I know that publicly is only what I decide to give the world of my story of negro spiritual "I won't complain"
I haven’t processed it. I guess I’m trying to find a miracle in it. Some religious or scientific reason for this happening. I've had some good days where I feel like this was "Gods plans" and other days I am doing the research to understand my body more and what it does to protect me because ultimately whether we admit it or not, that's what it does.
To the women like myself, I say don’t let this put fear in your heart. Try again for you are magical as shit to bring life from one realm into another. Live in your moment of extreme sadness and full out what ifs, live in your self doubt but only for small moments. Fight back, but prepare for your blessing is on the way.
I think about the promise God made to Sarah that she would have a baby. I think about how she had got fed up with God and manufactured her own plan to obtain a son, Ishmeal from her maid. Then at 90 years old God granted Sarah the desires of her heart.
Waiting is believing and believing is breaking through enough to see what God has told you. I am the womb man who never wanted to kids, my desire and love for myself told me that, but now I am womb man who longs for children well more. & I know if God kept his promise to Sarah, mine is kept.
]]>I am realizing on this journey of conception for my next child that it has to start in the mind. That willing it for myself and really desire that. Sometimes as I feel caught between influence and my own strong willed mind of what I actually want. No, this doesn't mean I don't want a baby because I genuinely do, but this does mean up until now I was clueless into the struggle of conception for many women. I literally thought because of my birth rite as a black women I would never face the fear of this desire to conceive not become a reality and I suffer from no infertilities issues and the fear of pulling out the pregnancy test and it being negative has overcome the joy of positivity. That before now I prayed for a negative test and did the Lord if you spare me one more time I won't do it again, knowing I was lying like a con man on the subway in New York City.
To discuss this with my home girls is to get the pretty text messages of encouragement and not know how to communicate that those were nice but not enough for my anxiety and fear of being a black woman giving birth again had come to consume my thoughts about this planned parenthood thing that I thought was only reserved for white women who looked like Standford wives whose husband cheated on the weekends with the neighbor.
And as I thought again my mind tends to wonder if we have the joy in just planning our pregnancies. Not a family because I think as black women we dream the biggest dreams, but when we thought about it did you go through tedious process of the observation of your body. These days I have become somewhat more aware of my body. I have observed the way she moves like a river or small stream depending on my mood. I realize how years of bodying up emotional anger had weighed on my bodies ability to release itself in the most intimate way with my partner while we doing the nasty. I realize in order to receive what the Good Lord had for me I had to not just be present, but listen to my body and not being in control.
For this black girl that is hard. So on the road of conception I am the most open I've ever been and for me thats a scary place, but a place I need to be in right in order to receive not just a baby, but what I have planned.
]]>I learned exactly how culturally ambiguous I am when I worked in the international terminal of an airport. What I found was that customers tended to assume that I was the same ethnicity they were. Mexican customers (and later, Mexican students) thought I was Mexican. Lebanese customers thought I was Lebanese, Egyptian or otherwise Arabic. The most interesting suggestion I ever got was that I look “half Mexican, a quarter Filipino and a quarter Korean.” Say huh?
The one thing I’ve NEVER been accused of is being 100% African-American. Quite the contrary--I’ve had to, on far too many occasions--argue with people that that is indeed what I am. How anyone has the audacity to tell someone else their ethnicity is beyond me. Granted, being African-American is far from being 100% anything, because our lineage is nearly impossible to trace, but that is the designation I assign because every ancestor that anyone alive in my family has known, was black.
Because folks always assume that I am biracial, or some other colorful blend, I find myself often saying, “Nope, I’m just black.” Then a sting of disappointment hits my stomach and I feel guilty. What do I mean just black? Am I minimizing what it means to be black? Is black not good enough? If I were a passerby and heard someone say the same, it would sound like they think being black is a disappointment, or that they long to be more exotic.
Of course I don’t mean it that way; what I mean is that I am solely black. But I can’t help but hear my own words in a way that offends even my own sensibilities. I never want my biracial daughter to hear me say “just black” and feel that her blackness is somehow worth less than being anything else. For that reason, I am working to check my own language and the perceptions that it creates.
I am not just black.
I am wonderfully black (no matter what shade I am).
I am gloriously black (no matter what music I listen to).
I am proudly black (with a white husband and biracial daughter).
My blackness is cool, it is enough, and it is magic.
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Doubt used to turn into dreams at night, fantasies of having never loved you . Prayers of being tied to you for life — but not this way . I don’t regret her . She’s my reminder of how I always felt about you . So In love, She looks at me and I melt, remember when you used to do that to me?
I’ve already created a life for her , one outside of us , where she grows into this fearless woman . So respected and loved that she’d never read this and relate . A daddy’s girl without that daddy issues. Is the damage already done ? Tell me it’s not too late.
Around kitchen tables where we cried about the choices of ourselves with ending up with our baby daddies, getting unsolicited but needed advice from the elders who smoke newport 100’s and drink Coors Lite. I’ve grown up listening to the same phrase we don’t get to choose your family and it wasn’t until the pregnancy test read positive that I realized that was A LIE. That my Childs legacy was directly tied into the legacy of the daddy. Whew that was some shit to make you start questioning your own choices in the niggas you even gave your number out too. That my son would be hustling for the last plantation name given before Lincoln cut the financial ties with the south making a bunch of brown bodies free with no identity.
So, yes I was babymama and the frog’n it because shit he was a frog until proven otherwise. I wanted him to know that now that we did more then kiss on a wishing star that my daddy had already told me I WAS A FUCKING PRINCESS and because of that he became a prince or whatever.
I realized that our legacies started to mesh with one another whether I knew it or not. I was met with the challenge of honestly accepting the things I couldn’t change. You know like the serenity prayer that hung on the bathroom door at your grandmothers house. Then it became a internal but intentional search on how I was going to address the FROG and how he was going to address me because our little tadpole had to be addressed and our avenues, though different the message had to be the same.
Whew and when I say that was a lot, like I am still working on it and my frog has become the man of the house with the same gumbo pot Tiana’s dad had. For you reading I pose the question: Have you allowed for yourself to think about the other legacy that's building on the other side no matter how hard we try to shield them for it?
No, I am not saying upgrade the frog but I am saying he’s a key character in the drawn out fairytale that we continue to write for ourselves. That even if he’s the antagonist of the story he lines are already typed. Now can you narrate the story, fo sho but you cant control the legacy.
So, to end this I hate how Tiana's legacy had to be her family had “love” and that she only became a princess after marrying the stupid self centered middle eastern prince. SHIT and that the grit of her hard was a somehow overshadowed by a white thirsty ass friend and the prince.
So, shit if your baby daddy is a frog sis know two things, YOU PICKED him and that no matter what the essence of your child’s legacy will be tied to maybe a nigga that can’t spell. Its all fair in love and fairytale sis.
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Then again, it appears, looking back, that motherhood may have been easy. Providing nurturing, caring, and protection was not exactly required, seeing that we were practically in charge of raising ourselves.
The only hugs and I love yous I ever received were from my grandfather, but because he earned a living as a long-distance truck driver, it only allowed me to see him a few times a week. Unfortunately, this lack of communication and absence of affection provided by my
primary caregivers, carried over to when it was time for me to become a mother to my daughter. Although I swore to protect her from any tangible forces within my power, that exists within our universe--because of my mother’s inability to protect me--though I would give my life for her, I failed to offer her the one thing she truly needed, me.
I am not sure if it was because she grew so tall that it felt awkward to hug a child that was not a pint-sized version of me, or if it was because there was no me to give. I suppose that it did not help that with her stature, she spoke her mind freely—something I had allowed her to do,
worried that without a voice, she would be too scared to speak up if someone were to try and harm her. Unfortunately, with this voice came rebellion and defiance.
Although I grew up with the women in my life unable or unconcerned with showing me love, because of my grandfather, and because of the way I saw different mothers interacting with their daughters around me, I began to understand that on some level, it was necessary, that in some way, I should give my daughter the love I was deprived of growing up. But there was, and still is, this wall within me that all those feelings and emotions are hidden behind. At least I think they are there. But the awkwardness of wrapping my arms around this now grown woman when we see each other, for some reason, frightens me.
Who do you turn to, to have these conversations with and ask for suggestions on how to show love that you have never experienced? Certainly not the women who raised me. And if I were to learn to show affection, is it too late to change the pattern?
And now, because the best man I have ever known no longer occupies this Earth, and is not here to show me that I am worthy of giving and receiving love, I suppose I need to figure out on my own how to look inside and find what I am looking for. And maybe if I dig deep enough, I will tap into a well that is hidden inside, causing a spring to burst forth, I sing emotions I never realized existed.
Written by LaTonya Santa
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