
Image via Wikipedia

- Image via Wikipedia
It’s Saturday the end of a good week. A friend called and invited me to meet her at the movies at UWM. Yesterday I accepted a job offer and I will be getting my new hire packet next week. I started my internship at Bread of Healing Health Clinic and I made a new friend. Actually several new friends. some of these were fellow students from UWM that I took the opportunity to talk with about our ideas and goals. One of these students lives with a young person I met several years ago. Another friend was someone I have been getting to know through the Internet. Still more people were at the Bread of Healing Clinic.
Yesterday I added to my planner the notation: what am I doing with other people today? I want to use that as a reminder to look around and take advantage of opportunities to create community.
I was pleasantly surprised today when I mentioned This I Believe to a group of people I have been meeting with off and on over several months. Several people mentioned that they had listened to some of these essays. One one said she had written an essay. what this taught me was that nobody owns a coping strategy. I offered my interpretation of the experience, saying that the process of writing and reading these essays was not necessarily religious. But one woman disagreed. The truth is, we’re both right.
This is a subjective experience and her truth is as valid to her as mine was as valid to me. That is how we create community by sharing our ideas and our lives.
I believe that my moods affect my cat and the way she responds to me. The cat is busily playing with the stuffed animal sprinkled with catnip as I channel Sly and the Family Stone. I do a lot of quiet things like writing on the computer that don’t involve the cat. But I believe she can tell when I am upset and I think some of the things she does reflect her annoyance or happiness. Today she is happy and that means something to me.
This was a week that included me being pro-active and taking care of my needs for community, income and security. A minister I used to work with used to tell me: you have not because you ask not. When I withdraw, I am accepting a mental suggestion that these people don’t want me around so I will just reject them before they have the chance to reject me. As a result, I end up suffering and people don’t learn what I have to offer. A woman who I used to love used to ask me about whether I had friendships and I was proud of having very few close friends. Eventually I lost her from my life, too.
This week I continued to shift the paradigm. I even found entertainment in the form of several videos from UWM . I watched the videos after completing my homework and then wrote about them on my blog so that others could learn about them.
I used community services to help improve my life. And I shared in a positive and helpful way with my new friends about the things I was doing that were helping me. I thank myself from the bottom of my heart and the week is still not over. I knew you could do it, Kenyatta. Good job. I encourage everyone who reads this to use any and all of these coping ideas and to pass them along to their friends and family.
- Sly & The Family Stone (camcash21.wordpress.com)