Teach me how to love

Just when I think I know how to love I learn another lesson. My life so far has been a series of lessons on how to recognize, receive and give love. I want to believe I am an expert on how to love but even after 51 years of attempts and many hours of practice on multiple people and a myriad of teachings devoted to this very topic I sometimes still feel like a novice.

Love seemed like such an easy word and concept to grasp. Children do it so easily, yet as the lessons and traumas of life set in somehow we unlearn this magical mystical thing that should be as easy as breathing.

This week I learned that my go to is selfishness. I think of me first. My ego, my reputation, my wants, my needs, my desires, my motivations, mine. These are the first thing I think of instinctively. My second thought is what does God think and my third is to take a moment to think of the person, place , situation, dilemma and how they will be affected.
True sacrifice is a lifelong pursuit that was shown to me this week.

I was challenged to love someone that I say I love all the time, yet to sacrifice for them took a minute.

It wasn’t anything life shattering or complicated just a battle of my inner self trying to be kind, thinking of someone else other than me, letting go of material possessions in an act of unselfish love.

This should have been instinctive and easy yet there was a battle none the less. I surrendered in the end and when my heart, mind and soul had settled in, then the joy came. But in the process I thought about how I have only ever wanted to be a vessel of the greatest love ever and yet the concept of this love has not yet fully grasped me and taken over yet.

My ego is still winning and “ all flesh must die” is the message I am now embracing.
I began to formulate my ideas and beliefs about love through my childhood family and it was very traumatic. I then went to learn love in a marriage and after 30 plus years, I am still learning.

God gave me 5 amazing spirit beings and they have been some of the best teachers of love for me.

As a world traveller and a missionary I have displayed acts of love to complete strangers.
Family, friends, co workers, strangers and authority figures have all taught me about this intricate word that we apply to so many things that God says He is( love).
When I sit in the love that God is then I realize that I don’t know what love is and I need to allow Him to teach me again.

I once started underlying the word love or heart in the bible as I read it to see how many times it was in the lessons I was gleaning and it showed up quite a lot. Not to mention all the other lessons that originate or lead to love.

They say that we are all in the pursuit of happiness- I wonder what our world would look like if we all began to desire the pursuit of real love?

Charmaine 

Not Here Anymore

My heart aches, when I think about you

My heart aches, I don’t know just what to do

My heart is aching, feels like its breaking

Don’t want to live my life one day without you

 But you’re not here with me… anymore

A tear falls down, with the blinking of my eyes

I wipe it away, but I still hear my heart cry

My head knows that you’re not here, you’ve gone far away

Yet my heart remembers, like it was yesterday

I can’t take this pain much more

I want our life back, back like it was before

My heart aches, when I think about you

My heart aches, I don’t know just what to do

My heart is here aching, feels like its breaking

Don’t want to live my life one day without you

 But you’re not here with me… anymore

Time should have stood still and waited for me to catch my breath

Cause I wasn’t ready to release you to go just yet

Cause you weren’t just here, you were a real part of me

Intertwined within my life in ways I couldn’t see

I know that this is life, I embrace that it’s real

But grasping the truth, doesn’t change how I feel

My heart aches when I think about you

My heart aches, I don’t know just what to do

My heart is here aching, feels like its breaking

Don’t want to live my life one day without you

 But you’re not here with me… anymore

Every morning I wake up knowing “life goes on”

But would somebody please tell me, when will this pain be gone?

I know you`re in a better place,  where you always wanted to be

Yet the thought of being apart from you, is just not consoling me

 I whisper softly … “I want to let you go”,

But my heart screams loudly- NO!

My heart aches when I think about you

My heart aches, I don’t know just what to do

My heart is here aching, feels like its breaking

Don’t want to live my life one day without you

 But you’re not here with me… anymore

For Tony- Charmaine Hinds  November 10, 2009

If You Like Pinacoladas…

One of my biggest lessons in life has been attached to something I have continually shared with people I have worked with for years.
“You can not make Pinacolodas when all you have been given is lemons and water. Your best bet is to just add your own kind of sugar and make the best damn lemonade you possible can!”.

When they begin to tell me about all the expectations that have been placed upon them , whether they are fictional from within their minds or real, placed there by people who have no concept of how, when, where and what it takes to accomplish the task being done, I share emphatically to them to say the following;
“When you get me a coconut and a pineapple, then and only then can I attempt to maybe think about creating a Pinacoloda. but not without a little bit of my special rum”.

I believe my black history teacher in my public school is the one that started teaching me this when he taught me about my circumstances in this world as a young black woman emigrated here from the island of Jamaica. For me the difference was that I also was the first generation in every arena in my family.
People have always asked me to do things and I have wanted to do my best with excellence and go up and above. But unfortunately. I haven’t always had the practical or tangible resources to complete the task at hand.

If you look on the outward it seems like the playing field is even and the odds are not stacked against me, but in truth there are invisible factors that have continually hindered my progress all of these years. Now don’t get me wrong, I have risen above my circumstances in amazing ways. I swim like my life depends on it, but make no mistake, these are lemonade circumstances and the struggle has been real!

I did not have a generational lineage of wealth, power and prestige that gives me the advantage afforded to so many other people. In our family we didn’t have fancy homes, money for extra curricular activities, well tutored, cultivated education, connections in business and society, a cottage or annual vacation to exotic places, to give us a level up for our next generation.

No, I come from a line of slaves and blue-collar workers, (why do they call them that again?) that had to work twice as hard just to scrape by and make a living. I was never given an example of a married couple making it to their 30th wedding anniversary to pattern my own marriage off of, but I did it. I was a first generation everything, high school graduate, all my children from one marriage, an entrepreneur, an ACE ( adverse Childhood Experiences) overcomer, and all of this came with Pinacolada expectations.

When they ask me how I have gotten the necessary ingredients to make something that slightly resembles a Pinacolda, I let them know about my secret ingredient that makes everything taste good. Faith.

“Now Faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see”

If I have had an unfair advantage at all, this was it. I have had Faith.

I started out making the best lemonade on the corner, and with some time and experience and with unshakeable Faith I have been blessed with a coconut, a pineapple, and the best rum made from the sugarcane of Jamaica. That’s why “I love me some Pinacoldas”.

So to all you “Lemonaders” out there- let me give you a little hope... just add FAITH and see what happens.

Sense of Direction

I have always had a very uncanny sense of direction. It is a gift and a treasure that is a part of the essence of who I am.

"Sense of direction" is the ability to know one's location and perform wayfinding. It is related to cognitive maps, spatial awareness, and spatial cognition

When I was just a little girl, maybe 6 or 7 years of age, my mother took us on a trip to visit my Aunt (her cousin) in New York City, New Jersey to be exact. One day after feeling cooped up in the house my mother decided to take me and my little sister for a walk. We walked around the streets until we were feeling tired and then my mother verbally told us that we were done and that we would head back now. We walked for a while until I noticed that we had passed the same corner with the shop with the pretty clothes in the window twice. I grabbed my mothers coat and tugged at it and said “mom you are going in the wrong way” she shrugged me off like I was just a little kid who had never traveled anywhere and didn’t have the faintest idea about what I was talking about. So, after we went around the same street with the same markers that I had noticed the first two times we had passed them, I saw my mother become frustrated and go into a shop and say something to the lady at the counter and then come out looking even more worried. I would learn later that my mother didn’t know the address of where my aunt lived. By this time my little sister who was only 4 at the time was complaining that she was tired and I saw my mother get even more frustrated. I was a brave little girl and I took a hold of my mothers’ hand and told her to “come on I know the way home”. Sure, enough I used my little girl memory and within 15 minutes I had followed the photographic pictures that I had stored in my mind and we were home at my aunt’s house. It was brave of my mother to listen to me, but I feel she had no choice but to trust me. She shared this story often to explain to people how special she thought I was.

I would rely on this “special” gift many times through out my life and it would direct me back to places, people and things.

Once when we were on a visit to Israel with a group of worship dancers. We were heading back to the apartment that we had rented and we accidentally got on the wrong bus to go home. When we got off the bus to try to find our way, I recognized a bush type of tree that we had walked by earlier that Sabbath" morning and I instantly knew the way to get us back home.   One woman that we had rented the apartment with said to me that she felt it was in the other direction. She had been to Israel many times before and stayed at this apartment, but I knew she was incorrect. We had a standoff and I decided that I was confident about where we were to go and it was late at night and I didn’t want to get lost in the dark. This posed a problem for the other ladies as they had to choose which one of us to follow. Personally, I think it made no sense to follow after me but I was confident and my sense of direction was something that if you had known me for any amount of time, even though it seemed illogical, you would trust my pattern. All the ladies decided to go with me and the one woman walked in the opposite direction. As we walked the streets of Jerusalem I pointed out in the dark, to the other women land marks that we had passed earlier on that morning on our walk into the old city. The women couldn’t remember but they trusted me very similarly in the way that my mother had that chilly day in Jersey. As we rounded that last street and they saw the lights of the apartment building I could tell that they were stunned that I knew the way and that the other woman was in fact lost. We were right about going in this direction but we made one crucial mistake. The other woman had the key to the apartment so we had to wait outside in the dark for another 2 hours till she found her way back home that evening. Lesson learned.

On that same trip it was our final days in Israel and we on our second visit back to the wailing wall. We had one more gate to visit and had been unable to locate it and we decided to go back to Sukkot Hallel a 24- hour worship place located on Mt Zion. Again, I told the ladies the way I thought we should go to get there as we were walking, they felt that it was in another direction. We came to an impasse where we discussed that we would just go over the hill and see from a higher place where we were and then decide what to do from there. As we came to the top of the hill, right there to our right was the last gate that we had trouble finding and over the other side was the 24- hour place of worship we were trying to get to. Again, my sense of direction was right and we were right where we needed to be. The ladies asked me how did I know this was where we were supposed to go and to be truthful, I did not have a logical solution, I just knew.

I have used this gift in so many amazing situations. When I think back about it, I realize that I have come to rely on this amazing uncanny sense of direction in every area of my life.

Patois Jamaican Creole Language

I lost my language and have recently retrieved it back as a treasure but there is no place in my life to use it. Though my husband and children understand Patois, they don’t speak Patois, my close friends and work associates don’t speak Patois- where is it appropriate to speak my native language?

The way my ancestors chose to communicate was amazing it was created out of necessity and beauty, innovation and creativity. Patois Is not just like broken English, it is so much more!

They wanted us slaves not to be able to communicate and rebel, they wanted us to assimilate and become civilized like them, they wanted to make themselves superior by dominating us on their terms.

This simple Pidgin language created into creole by the sheer act of being forced to let go and forced to assimilate is Patois.

I was taught Patois like every child that lives in a bilingual household, by hearing it spoken to me and by speaking it back. Unfortunately, I was corrected by white and black teachers in school whenever I used it and laughed at by my brothers and family friends, as I wasn’t immersed in the culture and my accent was a bit more Canadian. So speaking the language, brought shame and hurt with it. There was no pride in speaking Patois- I was praised and rewarded for English. So I excelled at the English language and in the process lost my native tongue.

I remember the language and how to formulate the words but my tongue has been silent for too many years, but then so has the roots of my heritage.

 Patois has the true components of a language and can be taught and understood.

And like many of the things in my culture I have had to redeem it so that I could see the true value and treasure that it is to any Jamaican, even if you live in the diaspora. How is it any different from the language of the Spanish or French? We would never tell a Hispanic or person from another language not to speak their native language. Why is Patois any different. Is it because you don’t like the confidence and attitude that comes when we speak Patois? because you can’t understand what we are saying and don’t want to take the time to learn? The powers to be try to insinuate that we are not speaking the one language that has dominated the world for years, but why should we?- we are Jamaican!

I would love to write a book in Patois to honor the treasured Jamaicans! It would be my ode to the land that I love ... Jamaica.

Me a go duh it yea man!

Paper brown bag girl with the sparkly green eyes

If a color could evoke jealousy then green it was, hazel to be exact
They never saw me, just the color of my fair skin and the unique way my cat eyes glittered with flecks of green and light brown.
I stood tall, but they still looked at me as if I was an oddity, something rare, to google at and to say “ how beautiful you are”                                                                                                                    

As if my one quality was in them trying to figure out what type of mullato breed I was.  

Mixed up and hated for the way I settled in between.                                           

Not black, not white just a mix in between.
But she is paper brown so she is able to toggle between here and there and… nowhere
Brown girl in the ring tra, la, la, la, la,
That was not me
I was the light skin girl in between ha, ha, ha, ha,


Why do you hate my hair so long and thick like a mane that you tug on it till I cry,cut it into a afro to prove that your children are black too.                                                                                                 

Yet it does not equivalate, to validate the entrance fee into the world of black where one drop is enough, as long as you know our history and don’t deny the struggle.                    

Under the railroad she goes to find her heritage lineage and struggle within to settle within her own skin
Pigment that is strong in summer to give her the tan glow that all whites seek and in winter she is the ghost that peers out from behind, behind her greenish hazel eyes.
They sparkle and they shine with light when she is alive, fully living the life that Creator has endowed her with, after she has traveled many moons to get here.
Get here? get where?
What is the destination if life is truly all about living?
No more paper bags we now want the plastic
plastic, fantastic, fake and not real
With the truth of the situation with which we can not deal
All shades of the same color but with blood that is still red, red blood that flows from my veins and still stains the same as the cocoa, chocolate, milk white or Boston tea, paper bag and tan
Spectrum of multi color that makes up light , human struggle, earthly fight, hold my chest tight with breath that is held to see of they will choose me or if I am good enough or if the hatred because of my difference will win again

Half breed

Like the house nigger had a choice whether to be bred or not to be bred

That is the question!

Your answer that has made her the receiver of the field niggers rage and the pull of the plantation master’s lust, thrusting her paper bag skin into growth as she births the nastiness that happens to anything that He calls good and is defiled by evil.

Yet her paper brown baby is innocent till found guilty. Guilty of being born into a world with standards as unrealistic as plastic that holds in the heat and creates wrinkles that ripple out to affect time yesterday and tomorrow.

So back to the paper bag challenge – Paper brown bag girl with the sparkly green eyes.

My message to her

Here I am at 20 -this is my message to her
Don’t waste time worrying about it- your mom and Bob Marley were right everything’s gonna be alright.
Tell your brothers how much you love them - they won’t be here for you to tell them later. Your family may seem dysfunctional but they are gonna shape, strengthen and mean a lot to you one day.
Listen to your heart, gut and instincts- it’s a gift not a curse
You are going to live a colourful amazing life and have great stories to tell! Keep writing it isn’t all about making money.
Wayne is the one - it won’t be easy but it will be worth it!
You know that crazy dance that you do at the clubs, one day you will get paid to teach it to a lot of people!
You will not be a famous model but your beauty won’t go to waste - you got the black won’t crack blessing!
And girl hold on you will get your wish and have those 5 children you we’re asking God for.
By the way He is real and He’s gonna prove it to you! Again and again and again.

In the Mirror

Something amazing happened a few months ago 

 As an exercise to help me, I began to write using colorful dry erase markers on my bathroom mirror,positive affirmation statements that I needed to begin to believe. I wrote “It is worth it”, “with Me all things are Possible” and “I am a work in Transition” or “ For Such a time as this” and many more.

I looked in the mirror every morning and then would read them as I saw this in me. After a while I felt like I had received these messages into my spirit, so I took some window cleaner and cleaned the mirror. A few months passed and then one morning I took a shower but one thing was different. I forgot to turn on the fan when I entered the shower. So as I came out and went to look in the mirror something awesome was there. 

 Because the steam had stayed on the mirror I could see the words engraved in the mirror as clear as if it had been written with a pen. The words were still there! As I re -read all of the statements that I had been declaring I began to cry and become so grateful for this message. Even though I wasn’t doing the exercise any more the words had been there... invisible.

 I felt God was telling me not to forget these statements and even though I couldn’t see it that it was still written and still true. I watched as the steam whisped away and the mirror in front of me became a clear reflection.

What are you believing today? What statements have you been believing that are invisible but still there. It may be time to do inventory and write some new statement. 

Two Shiny Pennys from Heaven

Today I was touched by two amazing Pennys from Heaven.

The first Penny added value to my life by impacting me to look outside myself and be the change I wanted to see in this world. She was a role model in the way that she continually allows her life to be shared, relevant and impactful . She holds space for you and is full of information and wisdom. Always looking for solutions to the "unanswered" problems. Being a connector for those that have, to help those that have need. When you know better you do better was a mantra that she gifted others with.
She was in the end of the beginning and I had the privileged to tell her that I loved her. When someone makes a difference in the way you live your life its important that you recognize it. She was leaving the place but I knew her presence would still be felt on the planet. To me she was like lightning and thunder, a supernatural natural phenomena that is caused by change and causes change to occur.

My second Penny was a beautiful sensitive soul that I had the honor to bring value to. We bonded our hearts together during a difficult season as she gave birth to her eighth child, a son. As she loved him in adoption, she trusted me and put my name on his birth certificate so he would one day know the story of how he came to be. Now that she was having her ninth and was incarcerated once more, I had the chance to go down memory lane to remind her how strong she was and how HOPE is a choice. My smile was wide and my heart was glowing as we held hands and cried and got caught up. Tomorrow she will be leaving and arriving all at once and my prayer for her was that angels would guide her as she tried to find her way. 

Two shiny Pennys from Heaven have been loaned to me to remind me of the value in things that I sometimes deem worthless. These two Pennys were the sum and value of my fortune today.

Medical Ban

I have been banned and rejected by my family doctor. He said that because I have chosen to not fulfill my prescriptions and his advice, that he would no longer be able to be my “family doctor”. He thought I should find myself a naturopathic doctor. At first I was flabbergasted and even offended at his remarks and then after meditating on it I changed my perspective. I had finally joined many great people before me that had been banned by the healthcare system as a rebel!!!!

Below is a picture of all of the prescriptions and medications that have been prescribed to either myself or my family. I made the decision after much research to go a more natural method such as food, essential oils or even just time and patience to let the body heal naturally.

I kept these to remind myself and others that I share my stories with that medical advice is just that, advice. Each person needs to do their research and remember that God has created our bodies with an amazing immune system that can be aided to allow healing to take place naturally. My children were never vaccinated and have amazing immune systems to fight off disease and illnesses.

I still go to the doctor for confirmation of diagnosis and for more serious issues that need to be addressed. This is using the advancement of technology to my advantage. 
But I have also rejected surgeries, recommended procedures, abortions and many other courses of action that I was not comfortable with.

I am in great health and love being in charge of my well being and the decisions that accompany that right and privilege. 
I encourage each person to listen to your gut and follow the advice that resonates with your heart. Use wisdom, knowledge, get a second and even third opinion and remember you have to live or die by your choices.

Lynching

Lynching 

Looking up with tears I remember

But who can ever forget?

The many bodies on those trees

that were hung up by their necks

Lynch mob gathering

With evil intentions, hearts grown cold

Noose in hand swung over a tree

Will the truth ever be told?

From standing upon a selling box

Their final journey ended here

Hanging in visual terror

For all to see and fear

Dear White People I am asking you

How can we reconstruct

And build trust from silent oppression

When your legacy of lynching has gone untouched

These victims cry out from the grave

Like branches on a willow tree

A memorial we must build unto them

 And to all affected by slavery

Breaking the cycle for future generations

Yet around and around we go

Modern day lynching still occurring

You will never change what you don’t know

When will you exonerate the innocent victims?

Strung up for violating the racial hierarchy

Multiple sites of horror on land

What a vicious racial history

Hangman’s knot wrapped around ragged rope

Leaving photo stain of racial violence

Exhibits of artistic brutality

This strange act made no sense

 If we published the complex list of names

What would the inventory of time say?

Are we dreaming about equal justice?

Is it even possible today?

Meet me at the hanging tree

Where the fruit suspended there is important to me

There a dead man is calling thee

To right the wrongs of history

Happy Mothers Day

As I reflect on my relationship over the many years with my own mother, I have many mixed emotions.

To me she was the beautiful stranger at 4 years old that picked me up at the airport, when I came from Jamaica to Canada. In my confusion I tried to understand and bond to the word “mother” when relating to her.

She was the woman that was often unpredictable, who believed in corporate punishment, that came out more as unleashed rage. Many bandages, visits to emergency, wounded parts in my soul and meaningless “I am sorry”, would store in my memory bank until I withdrew them one day and let them all go.

She was the 22-year-old pregnant girl that failed twice to abort me and decided to have her 4^th baby, because God must want this one to live.

She was the woman that first taught me about God in hard times by watching her read through the Psalms and believing like a true Jamaican “don’t worry about a thing, cause every little thing is gonna be alright”. Forcing me to go to church to pray for her would one day build the foundation for a true relationship with the God that loved me.

She taught me about my culture through soul food and Bob Marley music on Saturday mornings while we cleaned the house. It was here that I learned how to dance my troubles away as I “shot the sheriff” and “listened to the three little bird sitting on my doorstep”.

She spoke to me that black is beautiful as she helped to establish the first black history after school program with the only black teacher in our school in Toronto in 1977 so I could have black pride in who I was.

She was also one of my best teachers as she modeled to me what not to do as she told me what not to do. The double warning stayed with me and unfortunately caused me to embrace the “super mom syndrome” as I vowed never to be a mom like her.

She was the pair of arms that wrapped around me when I was hurting, even if she was the cause of the pain. She whispered in my ears words of love that kept me calm during my multiple illness and sicknesses. She always wiped away my tears and told me to be strong.

She was the little girl that had been left alone in Jamaica by her mother, who moved to England and had no one to show her how to love a daughter. But she would try her best, it just came from a place of trauma and brokenness.

She was the abuser that abused, the hurt that hurt and the broken mesh of a person crumpled on the floor trying to make it all better.

She was the voice that was louder than any other sound I had ever heard that raised the decibels in every message that I tried to convey. Screaming was a way of life in our household.

She was my champion in every arena when someone was trying to push me into a corner and she taught me how to be a fighter, for myself and for others. Her pushing me has given me the resilience that has helped me navigate my way in this world as a black woman.

She was my road map to finding true love as I watched her with her husband move to her boyfriend after boyfriend, after boyfriend… looking for a man to just love her.

She was the person I hated one day and loved the next. My emotions so twisted as my mind kept telling me “you have to love her she is your mother”

She was the mother that left me home at nights with a grown man that she knew wasn’t my father, to go and party with her friends. She would miss read my messages to her that I was being sexually abused and wanted a mother to rescue me.

She was the secret keeper of the lies she told to me to give me a better existence. She would also be the revealer of the truth that I would seek to regain my identity.

She was the dividing wall between me and my true biological father, hindering me from knowing the source of my heritage.

She was the mother of my half sister, 2 dead brothers before their time and a brother I never knew growing up.

But then came God.

Today I recognize her as the tool used to sharpen and strengthen me to learn to love.

The vessel that carried me for 9 months and gave me the greatest gift of life.

The woman that resisted all stereotypes and boundaries to allow me the freedom to reach for anything I desired.

The imperfect being that had a heart of gold trying to give me something from nothing.

My commitment to my husband of 32 years as I broke the pattern and linked a different chain.

The reason I loved my own children so fiercely and unconditionally

The force that gave me a mothering spirit that allowed me to have so many spiritual daughters and sons.

The sound in my message that says I have a voice and I have something worth saying.

The well of grief that understands loss and learns to live again.

The dreamer that taught me to believe in myself and to think just maybe… anything is possible.

She is my mother and I have such love for her and gratefulness that God knew who I needed to be my mother to make me the woman I am today.

I am proud to say I am my mothers daughter

Happy Mothers Day Mom.

Cup of Generational Blessing