I have been blessed to be around different kinds of women throughout my life. All of them had one thing in common: They just wanted to be happy, loved, and appreciated. What’s wrong with that? Nothing. However, they put their trust in different people who let them down or hurt them badly and it caused them to take a path, that before hand, they would’ve never thought about going down.
A Couple of Real Life Lessons
I was a little girl and there was a woman whom we called “Angel”. She was a petite woman, dark-skinned, and very thin and fragile in appearance. I thought she was a sixty year old woman. I was nine years old. I didn’t know any better. Come to find out, she wasn’t even twenty-five years old and was a crack addict. I was told by a family member one day when I asked why she didn’t have any teeth in her mouth and why she would be so sad at the drop of a dime all of the time. When they told me this, I felt so sorry for her and I began to see why she was so sad so much of the time. Then she started talking about how men had hurt her, how she had no family, how she lost all of her teeth, and more. I started to wonder how in the world was she still alive. They told me she was beautiful before she got on crack. They said she was very smart, and used to be a nurse but she had been abused so bad so much till she tried it to get over the pain in her life and became addicted. I felt so sorry for her. It was one of the saddest memories of my life but it wasn’t the last.
I knew of a woman who would hang around my parents who come to find out was a stripper. She was so beautiful. One of her parents was Italian and the other was black. She had beautiful blue green eyes and she had beautiful skin with silky long brunette hair. She was only twenty five at the time and she liked to hang around certain family members that we would go visit from time to time. She said she danced because it was her only means of survival and because the father of her child wasn’t in the picture and didn’t care. I was a kid so I wasn’t so quick to judge but I learned that she tried drugs to help her muster the strength to dance in front of men who degraded her constantly as she would dance. She said she smoked and would drink on the regular just to zone out until she was done. She had built up a wall to guard herself from any feelings because of what she did for a living and the only thing that moved her was her child. But then, she became an alcoholic and soon after we learned she too was addicted to drugs. She stopped being a good mother and ended up homeless sleeping with her child where ever they could lay their heads. It was so sad. She didn’t know that she taught me by observing her life to be very careful of who you give your heart to and have children with. I was young but I saw the pain in her eyes and it made me somehow understand not to judge her. Just pay attention.
Relationships Can Have an Effect On a Person
As I grew up, of course, I was around other women and those who got addicted to drugs, all of them were just trying to soothe the pain that they were constantly being made to feel. They just wanted it to stop and to be numb to it. They did cry out. Some were unhappily married, some were the mistresses who didn’t find out till later, some girlfriends, and some were abused as children or teenagers and like the rest, tried the drugs as a way to numb their feelings so that they wouldn’t have to keep trying to cry out about what they were going through; how they were being treated. It didn’t do any good though because in the end, they ended up addicted, lost everything they had including their “sense of self” and ended up doing things that they normally wouldn’t have thought to do. I still have no judgment towards them. I just still wonder if the men in their lives that had this effect on them even knew it. I wondered if they cared, if they tried to mend their wounds. I wondered if they apologized at all.
I’m not saying that the men in their lives were evil or any of that but they did have a greater impact than they might’ve thought they had. I learned that we as women are emotional. We need love and support. We need to be appreciated. Those are some of the most free and least things we will ask or require of a man. Sometimes we set our sights on a man because of what we think he will be to us instead of seeing just who he is before we even knew of him. Not really accepting that he is the way he is or chooses to be and we have to either decide “is it worth it, will it make me happy, will it benefit me, or will it drain me and take me down?” We can’t make anyone change. We can only HOPE that they will if they are affecting us in a negative way.
There are Natural Herbs and Medicines Available to Help Cope
Right now, I know of all kinds of natural herbs that are legal and very good for soothing anxiety, stress, and depression. They won’t cause harm to the body or anything. I just wish, even though I was just a child myself, that I had knowledge of those natural remedies at that time. I find myself wishing that more women had access to them so that they could’ve used those instead of addictive drugs when going through those harsh life experiences. All I can do is think back and wish huh? Well, I’ll be doing more blogs on natural herbs and essential oils that are good for helping cope with depression, anxiety and etc. They are also beneficial from a health perspective.
More people, not just women, are going through stressful times right now and I am not saying that I know everything, but I know some of those herbs can help keep a person’s mood elevated when they need uplifting without giving them an intoxicated type of mood. I am just a woman with a voice who cares about the stress level of America, of the world, right now during this pandemic.
Be kind, Stay alive, and stay safe.
GG
Mom Life Lessons w/GG 