Good Evening, Heartache..

*sigh* Last night, I was in a horrible mood.  It hit me like a ton of bricks, and I realized that I finally needed to release some tears; tears that I've been holding back for a long time now! 

In my pursuit of unhappiness, I started watching various YouTube videos of Jill Scott performing "Hear My Call" (which started the tears btw) to her performing "Good Morning, Heartache."  Eventually, I  ran across Lady Day to assist in the flow of my tears. 

Today, I couldn't get the jazz legend out of my mind, so I figured I'd share a few of her dopest pics with you....

The Classic: Lady Sings the Blues

I had a Billie Holiday Greatest Hits album.... will definitely need to find that for more "rainy days"

If I had a pack of cigarettes last night, I probably would have lit a few of 'em.

And finally, a smirk.. looks like she buried the pain for the day to press forward.  :-)

This wasn't intended to be a discussion post, but I'd like to know, when you realize it's that time to cry, what do you do to get the tears flowing?  

Liv and Learn // Let it Loose!

I had grabbed a notebook randomly out of my file cabinet a while ago for one of my many boring classes I had to attend. As I sat in my class zoning out, I opened it up and realized it was a journal I used to write in when I was pregnant with my last child and also when I was deployed for 4 months. To pass time (and see how good my writing skills were back then), I started to read the entries I inputted. Man, I had sooo many problems listed in that thing. Given, a lot of negative events were happening in my life at the time, but man, it seemed like a permanent rain cloud was over my life. So I continued reading and as I did, I felt some of the emotion that I had felt at the time re-visit. Reading how hurt and depressed I was back then was terrible & I also got angry. So then I started to reflect to see why I was still upset over old stuff. Why was I unhappy now about things that:

1. I can't change 

2. Were the result of having negative people around me that I've now disassociated with

3. And most important, the issues were over AND done!

Just realizing where I was and how much God has blessed me with now lifted my spirits and made me take those pages out the journal and rip them up. While yes, I have the memories of the things that have happened in my life, tearing those pages up was a representation of me literally letting it go!

In life we like to sometimes focus on the bad. Instead of looking at all the positive we've done, how good things are in life, we can get caught up in the bad day we had at work. Or that one person hurting our feelings instead of thinking, man, I know tomorrow will be better or yeah, that one person did that, but I have true friends that I know will not treat me in that manner and respect me.

I urge you all to have a positive outlook on life and live in the NOW! Trials only make us stronger & when you look back over what God has bought you through, I hope you can see that you are truly blessed! MUAH!