This is dedicated to the ladies

This is dedicated to young women, single moms and other women who may be broken and don’t realize it. I was inspired by this documentary that I saw on T.V. today, it was called “Flying; confessions of a free women”. This documentary was so powerful and I recommend it to every woman no matter what situation you are in.

I was reminded of my own childhood when I was molested and didn’t know what to make of it. My fragile innocent mind didn’t help me realize that I was being abused and therefore couldn’t connect emotions to what was happening to me. As I grew up to be first a teenager then to adulthood it was then that I finally realized the impact of what actually happened. I noticed that when I was around men, particularly black men (my abuser was a tall black man) I would freeze up and become vulnerable. It’s like my body would flash back to being frozen when he took advantage of me. I don’t know why it took that long for me to see this reaction; maybe it was because I was going through puberty and all the other girls talked about sex while I indulged myself in going to church. I almost felt like an outcast. It wasn’t until I was in the ninth grade that the ultimate curse started creeping up onme and that I wouldn’t realize until I was much older; the cycle of loving men who didn’t love me back, the anger problem that I didn’t even realize I had, not really knowing who I am, and when the right man came along not believing that he could love me and not knowing how to love him back.

I’ll call him “sunny” because I don’t want to slander anyone, and I absolutely loved him, he was light skinned and to me, he was ok. Secretly, I wanted to be with a white boy but that wasn’t socially accepted where I came from. I loved him and allowed him to use me for 4 years, we would what we call “hump” (lol) and kiss all the time over at his house. Whenever I would ask him if we were a couple, he would say I don’t know and leave it at that. I never pressed him on it because I didn’t want to stop what we may or may not have. I guess I thought that if I just kept it up then maybe one day he will love me back and then we could get married one day. Well, that day never came, ever, and thus became the story of my life. I grew up going from one relationship to another trying to find the “true love” that everyone always talked about. The fact is that I fell in love with every man that I ever dated and never felt the love in return. Although I married one of them, I never felt that he loved me enough, not the way that I wanted him to.

A lot of women have gone through or will go through this same thing because when you are taken advantage of at a young age, it changes your personality and thus changes the person who you were meant to be. I didn’t realize this until one day I was crying so hard praying to God asking him why all this has happened to me. What did I do to deserve this? I actually thought that I was cursed. It was then that I pulled away from men and started to focus more on myself and my daughter. You can’t see anything until you come out of it and that is when you start to see things from the outside looking in. If you stay in a situation, you will never see what it is doing to you or what you’re keeping yourself away from. I am now happily married and allowing myself to be loved in return, but not because I felt that I had to, but because I simply let it happen.

I hope that this article will reach every women who is in that situation where she thinks that she is stuck with that man who keeps telling her that he loves her, but is really stringing her along just because he can; that women who knows that her man is cheating on her, but believes that as long as she stays faithful then maybe one day he will change, or even that women who has a good man, but doesn’t know how to love him so he ends up leaving her and then she finds another man just to treat him the same way. These situations belong to all of us and we need to uplift each other and come together as women so that we can have each other to depend on. I am not saying lets be gay together, (no offense to those who are) but lets let each other know that if there is a problem that we feel that we can’t get out of; that we will encourage each other to live better lives. Our daughters’ need us to be strong for them and to show them what kind of man we need in our lives and to let them know what we will and will not take from a man. We need our son’s to have good men in our lives that can show them how to treat women and how to be good fathers.

Women, we need to become strong and independent so that men will chase us and not visa versa. Our emotions run so deep and we need to use that for something positive. We don’t know how special we are and how powerful our voice can be. God gave us passion for a reason ladies, he gave us passion to go through nine months of labor, to raise our kids without fathers, to live on our own so that we can support our family even without the aid of child support where working 3 jobs just to put food on the table, and he gave us passion to care about others. I’m not saying that we are destined to go through these things, but God did say that he will not give us more than we can bear; and I believe that passion is the strength that he gave us to get us through it. These are things that only a few men have, I’m not saying that there are no men out there like this, but I bet they had strong powerful mothers and we need to be that for them.

How can we be strong and influential?

First of all, by becoming strong, we become influential for others who observe us.

Stay positive-If you reflect on negative things then that’s what you will get back. If you are going through something just stop and calm down so that you can clear your head and start over. You will be able to handle it once you recover.

Acknowledge that you have a problem and work on it. If you don’t acknowledge that you have issues, then you will always stay the same and thus, never will grow as a person.

Judge yourself daily. Remember that no one is perfect, not even you. If someone tells you that you hurt them, don’t be quick to dismiss it. Ask yourself, did I do something good today? Did I help someone? Did I think of someone besides myself today?

Do something for yourself without anyone else. Try to get in the habit of doing something for you like going to the movies. This will help you not to rely on other to make you happy. You can make yourself happy and then you will not settle for less when it comes to other people.

Work on your future. You always want to better yourself because you want to be as success as you can for the sake of building yourself esteem. You children are looking up to you and they will follow your good example.

Learn to love yourself. Women let themselves get beat up and taken advantage of at the expense of others happiness; we need to stop this crazy cycle and turn all that love to yourself. You can learn to love what you like and how you like to be treated and then you won’t let anyone treat you like crap again.

Don't let anyone define you. You always want to create the person that you want to be. If you've ever been told that you're nothing, then become someone. Always think of yourself as the person you want to be and if someone else says otherwise, try your best to stay focused and stay strong knowing that you know where you've been and where you are going.

Never live your life for anyone else (not including your children. Stop living your life to make your man or anyone else happy. If you do your best to follow your goals and dreams, this will make you happy in the long run. If someone else is dragging you down and keeping you from your dreams then that person doesn't deserve to be apart of your life. You want to be around people who are encouraging you to become a better person and who are a positive influences in your life. You will find out who they are because as soon as you start doing good things in your life, they will be there to try to bring you right back down, but stay strong and firm because you will get past them and do well for yourself in the long run.

Seek faith. You can do this by finding something to believe in that will get you going daily. You can seek faith in all kinds of ways such as helping others. This really works because when you do something for someone else, you realize how good you have it. Not only that, but you feel good about what you did for someone else. For mothers like myself it can be our kids, we can take them to the park more, do arts and craft with them, or anything that makes them happy. By building faith, we build our self esteem and establish who we are as individuals.

I hope this article finds you in peace and love,

Lakishi Johnson