Yeah...and so, anyway...

My ex husband and I never had what anyone could call a "good relationship". I have to own up to my part in this: by the time I met him, I was very unsure of myself and suffering from the effects of a very out of control eating disorder, low self esteem, guilt about being a disappointment to my parents (this was a projection of my own disturbing thoughts; they never did show me any indication that they were disappointed in me), and, at age 22, I had dropped out the last semester of my senior year in college. I told myself that I needed a job more than I needed the degree because I wanted to move out of my parents' house. But that wasn't it. Here's the truth. I had an obsessive need to look like the many stunningly beautiful Black women I saw each day. I thought if I looked as good as they did, I could snag a boyfriend just as easily as I imagined they had done. The mixture of imagination, jealousy, resentment, and insecurity is an extremely bad combination for anyo...

My son Marc emailed this personality to me and my daughters: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp I've taken different versions of the Myers-Briggs personality tests over the years, and always with the same result: Your Type is INFP Introverted Intuitive Feeling Perceiving Strength of the preferences % 33 50 25 44 INFP type description by D.Keirsey INFP Career Choices by Jung Career Indicator� Provides the list of occupations most suitable for your type taking into account the type formula and strength of the preferences. Based on a sample representing 40 most popular and high-demand occupations. INFP type description by J. Butt and M.M. Heiss Qualitative analysis of your type formula You are: * moderately expressed introvert * moderately expressed intuitive personality * moderately expressed feeling personality * moderately expressed perceiving personality Only one percent of the population (of the world? The United States? The web site didn't sa...

One of the things that I've realized over the past few days is that I can longer afford to waste time wishing I could find the courage say certain things to people with whom I have had disagreements with in the past. I'm 50, and as my recent health crisis has shown me, life holds no guarantees. I don't want to go into the next world with a lifetime of regrets and issues that hold me back from God. Not only that, I would like to spend my remaining years here on this planet living usefully, in whatever way God sees fit. I don't know what that entails yet, but I'm hoping writing and teaching are somehow involved. I really don't like to do much of anything else on a professional basis. I love astrology and looking at the more mystical aspects of everyday life, but making a career of those activities makes me shudder with revulsion. It's just not right for me. I've been sensing that I need to clear out some stuff that I tossed over to the side because I...

A follow up from yesterday's post: My daughter Clarissa, and the father of my grandson, Galen, left yesterday to fly to Houston, Texas. Galen's mother lives 40 miles outside of Houston, and they wanted to take Xavier to see his other grandmother. (That's so weird to me: the other grandmother! I can't explain why. It just is .) Clarissa called me to tell me that they landed in Houston just fine, but getting out of the airport presented them with some rather peculiar difficulties. I took a deep breath. I knew it was coming. As soon as she told me that she and Galen were planning to take their baby to Texas, I knew what they would be encountering: racism, Texas-style. Nothing like seeing a tall, strapping young white man with a cute-as-a-button, diminutive young black woman along with their obviously "mulatto" (such an ugly word) child to bring out that old-style attitude. I was hoping that I would be wrong about my assumptions, and that race "really ...

Life just keeps going on...sometimes real good, sometimes not so good. Sometimes real bad. Real good: I'm still abstinent from all flour, sugar and excess portions. That is definitely a miracle, especially since I remember saying to friends that the only vegetables that I like are the ones found on top of a hamburger. That's not entirely true, but the only way I would eat salad was to drown it in ranch or Cesar dressing. I eat all types of vegetables now, and I can't say I enjoy them. I eat them because I'm supposed to, and I just want to get my meals over with. It's entirely God because my will says Angela would rather have a double cheeseburger with fries. Just for today, I pray every five minutes and I don't eat anything that I haven't committed to my sponsor. That's it, just for today. And I have released forty pounds from my body since last August. I guess I should be doing a happy dance, but I honestly don't care. I have other things to...

I realized that I intended to write a bit more about "motive". It's such a disarming thing to deal with because I've come to realize that in spite of my consciously good intentions in my dealings with people, I have dark, self-absorbed and needy motives underlying some of my actions. This is quite disturbing to me, although I realize that it only makes me human like everyone. But...I wanted to be so much BETTER! (sigh) The things I've come to learn about myself ever since I stopped eating addictively (thank you, God) have been both alarming and enlightening. So I did manage to write about the message I absorbed in early childhood about being a woman and feeling less than a man. But I didn't talk about how that has affected my life. The best way I can describe it is that growing up a tomboy was one way I coped with that deep-seated feeling of invalidation. It was very empowering to be able to beat the boys at their own game. Unfortunate...

Yesterday, the area that I live in held its annual convention to elect a delegate to the National Convention of Baha'i in the United States. Every year, the convention seems to get better and better for me. I'm understanding more about how the process works these days, and that is a blessing. I used to go to what was called district convention for years, and wonder why I was there. It wasn't that people weren't doing what we were asked to do during convention. It's just that my head was so cloudy at the time with all of my overeating, I really couldn't comprehend much of anything. That I was able to not only understand what was going on at convention, but also fully participate in the process is, to me, a miracle and testament to God's transformative power. I never realized how much overeating affected my thinking process and interactions with other people. The way I know that now is that some clarity has arisen from the act of remaining abstinent ...