Poverty is not my Friend

I stepped outside yesterday and found that my summer days had truly come to an end.  I guess for the first of November that was a good warm run.  It had been chilly but nothing like today. I always get a little sad around this time.  I am a summer person by nature and no fault of my own.  Born August 1, I can't help always longing for the heat.  Well on this day I decided to pretend only difference was that I enjoyed the sun from the ride and when I had to go into the cold element I accomplished what ever it was I was doing fast and back into the metal fire place.  I went for a ride and decided to go about town and take some snap shots for my school presentation that is coming up soon.  For my project I have to choose a particular part of the area and do a photo presentation and tell what is a positive force in our area and what is a short coming.  We also have to explain what changes if any need to addressed and what approach do we look at it from.  Community Development is where I feel we need to focus our project on.  We are focusing on the downtown area of our city.  This particular area is very diverse and so complex.  In a city where the rich and the poor share the same space.  The one difference is one is on the inside looking out and one is on the outside looking in.  What I found was what I have always known existed but try at times to block the images out of my head.  Now today I am totally different, I am working so hard to be a part of a bigger picture.  Yes my photos is one perspective of many whom come together and fight for the greater cause.  Humanity needs to rear it's head and find a way to see all people as equal.  Sometimes I feel I have so much to say and so much to share I get to emotional and try to say all at once.  For this blog I just want to spread the word regarding advocacy for the less fortunate.  There are so many people whom are suffering today.  I speak of the homeless, battered, mentally disables and substance abusers to name just a few. While I rode around and took pictures.  I found myself seeing two worlds clashing.  On one side you have to well off and some are even rich.  I'm sure any one of the people who are living in pent houses downtown, can look out their window at any given time and see a homeless person walking or sleeping on the streets.  I rode past the Cherry Street Mission and there was a long line of people waiting in line for what may have been dinner.  It was around 5 p.m. the line was growing as I rode by.  I saw so many people walking to get in line.  I wanted to take a picture, but that would have been a violation of their human right, with out me asking.  I was not brave enough to go among them and ask, I felt they are in dire straits and who am I to impose on them in such a way that will only make them feel even more hopeless.  I want to empower these people and try to find a way to help get them back on track and on to success.  If I can help one person in my profession before I leave this earth I will feel I have accomplished a goal.  I have helped many people throughout my life and I did not have to go to school to know how to help someone.  While I am in school I reflect on my life and realize this was my calling and to allow myself to dare dream, I am accomplishing my dream, now I'm getting close to checking yet another task off my bucket list.  I am so grateful to my Allah for allowing me a second chance at life.  I feel my life is starting over in so many ways and it is all for the better.  I once lived not to far from being homeless like the people I saw today and I know the struggle and how it feels to be hungry and only have bare cabinets.  Today I live very well and my hungry days are behind me, but I know it is all a gift from the almighty and I will work on this earth for his praises.  I want to be a part of a community that has one goal and that is to make a change for the people who can't change on their own.  It's time to put poverty on the reject list, for Poverty is no one's friend.

Invisible Love

I have been one to walk to the beat of my own drum, never have I lived my life to what others expected of me; well most of my life.  There was a period in my life I allowed myself to be controlled but the control came from my father and whatever he said do, I'd do because father's knows best.  Well most of the time.  I remember a time in my life when it seemed dark and I felt trapped.  When I mean trapped, I mean like the animals that are caged at the local zoo.  I felt like life was full of restraints and I was only able to go so far before the doors would remind me that I am locked in.  Well when I was freed from the restraints, but it was not my father who caused me to feel this way but he unbeknown st to the situation, supported my lifestyle at the time and for his choice to tell me to stay I stayed and what a huge let down it was.  Without going into the particulars, I will write around the main idea of this lack of feeling freedom and express to you the love I found out of this bad time in my life.  Once the bond that tied me to a life of misery was broken, I began to live and find who I was as an individual of this life.  My right side came together with my left side and decided that it was time to make a mark in life that would be left as an everlasting impression of who and what I want out of life.  Today which is twenty years later.  I have stepped outside my box and moved on to a higher level in life.  I once never thought I'd ever go outside my current state.  I was so boxed in mentally that I was afraid to fly, drive on the highway, or even take a train ride.  I have experienced two out of three and currently planning my first train ride.  I write here on my blog for my state of mind and my well being.  I am constantly looking for improvement in myself and forever seeking knowledge.  I am in my last year of my Social Work BSW degree and that is an accomplishment, but what is most miraculous about this is that I am on the Deans list which speaks volumes of my growth.  When I was in high school I barely graduated and was a C average student.  Back in those days I swore to myself I was doing my best but in reality I was doing less.  I have applied my knowledge along with my streets smarts and have come up with a master plan.  I will leave this world with the piece of mind that I Tamara Lynn Turner Fuseini gave her all to her self, her family and most of all to Allah.  My love for self was lost and turned upsides down and at sometimes lost.  I am a African American woman who has made through rough times and I sometimes feel like Andy Dufresne from Shawshank Redemption, the part when he crawled through all that shit, and came out on the other side clean and pristine.  He had beat the system that had tried to take his self esteem.  He endured so much abuse and was innocent of the crime he was sentenced to.  I know how that feels, only I have never been locked up in jail, but I have experienced imprisonment of the physic.  I once loved and did not know how to even love myself.  I guess you can say my love was once invisible and I was not aware of my full potential.  Today I am home schooling my children and I can see the difference in their abilities and I feel blessed to be able to give them a part of me that I did not even give myself.  Yes I once was Invisible Love, today my love is visible for self and in my life I have chosen to share a part of my world with you.  I will come back here and tell my sad stories along with my happy moments, but this one here is for those who feel they have no love or very low love, take that invisible love you have for self, family, and life and bring it to life.  For life is bigger than you will ever imagine, but we are all here on earth for a reason find your reason and make it happen.