All we need to make it through this thing called life is all that we have been given. It is easy to forget that when we are caught up in life's daily stressors. Too many times ee get caught up in feeling sorry for ourselves. We take for granted the things we have and the strength we have been giving to get through life's valleys. When you think about our stress response, our body is wired to automatically get us through the hard times. The stress response does not stop to ask us for your opinions or interpretation of the problem. It just kicks in and does what is necessary to protect you. Imagine that. Imagine that we are equipped to protect ourselves from harm, instinctively. Where we have to step up is in dealing with the aftermath. Every day, every moment, our bodies are reacting to changes in our lives from the smallest thing to the major catastrophe. What we cannot fail to do is recover. When our body releases stress hormones, and we activate the stress response it i...

Risk Love me enough toss your insecurities aside  and risk.  Love me enough  stop fighting against yourself  toss your doubts, fears, and pains aside  and risk Love me enough  be uncomfortable  be inconvenienced  Risk your complacency with me Love me enough put it all on the line -WMT

A few years ago I posted about Sydney Guillaume, a Haitian choral composure, whose work is being sung by choirs all over the world. Through his art and talent, he is sharing Haitian culture and exposing our marvelous resilience throughout the world. Check out my previous post and his song Twa Tanbou. Kanaval is not new but always puts me in a good mood. It makes me want to get up and dance and revel in the glory of my life. The second song I want to highlight is titled Gagot which basically means a hot mess. I really enjoy this composition because I think it not only captures the essence of the Haitian people but also what life is all about. Often times, we expect or would like to live in this perpetual state of joy and happiness when in reality to live life is to push through layers upon layers of mess. On the surface, it may seem like a bleak understanding of our existence, but the miracle is in our ability to push forward and create moments of joy and happiness and fulfill...

Drip to Hard Feeling spectacular holding myself up as waves crash against me knowing I'll withstand by WMT I have a love/hate relationship with some of the current hip/hop industry and the new rap songs that are being produced today, well with most of them actually. The reality is that most of them promote messages that are actually detrimental to our community. On the one hand, they push violence, drug abuse, misogyny, and materialism; however, on the other, we have to question whether it is art imitating life. When rap first started to make waves the argument was that rappers were talking about their experiences and their struggles. During the rise of rap, we also had a variety to choose from. We had the fun stuff to listen to, conscience rap, gangsta rap, west coast, east coast and etc. Granted now there are a host of new styles of rap being produced but we have to search for them. The music that is being promoted and pushed out in front of us are the ones...

Music inspires me. Research has shown that music can affect mood, anxiety, stress and overall wellbeing.  I have a "Feel Good" playlist of songs that I know put me in a good mood and I play it whenever I need a little pick me up. Solange's single Stay Flo is one of the songs that puts me in a relaxed, vibing groove. It inspired me to write my latest cinquain about letting life flow. If we do not learn how to move through the ups and downs of life, we will be bogged down with disappointments instead of working towards moving through time. We cannot get stuck or stay still because we will find that time has moved on without us and we could have made moves. Stay Flo Problems  come and go, good times don't seem to last yet joy's in my spirit, going with  the flow by WMT Check out the Stay Flo Lyrics

These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them. -Rumi Gerd Altmann The body does not lie; however, we may not listen. When I worked as an emergency room nurse, I would care for people that came in with pains and aches that they have avoided for quite some time. Some of those folks would leave with a manageable diagnosis and some would have to be admitted because the disease progressed further than a quick ER visit could address. Regardless of the outcome, the story is usually the same, a pain that started out as more of an irritation or one that wasn't so bad at first grew until it was unbearable. Why do we ignore our bodies? I am equally guilty. When I was first diagnosed with lower back pain due to some bulging discs, I did not go into the see the doctor until I could not bear it any longer. I had allowed myself to get to the point when it basically hurt to move. I am pretty sure that my body had been communicating to me for a while that something was going on. Now, I...

Bad Boys for Life, starring Martin Lawrence and Will Smith, will be released on January 17, 2019. I was looking forward to seeing this from when they first announced that they were getting back together to reprise their police detective roles. Bad Boys for Life. Martin's waves though :) The full trailer is packed with action, guns, and more action. It is one of those trailers that make me wonder if they just put all of the good parts out and what we will be left to see are the fillers. I absolutely love trailers but I have to say this one did not do it for me. I feel as though the movie is going to be a disappointment, but hoping it is not because, after Gemini Man, Will Smith needs a win. As far as Lawrence, I cannot remember, off the top of my head, the last good movie he was in. Bad Boy for Life's success could not hurt him either. Not that Martin Lawrence is hard up for cash. According to Wealthy Gorilla , he is worth over 100 million dollars. The residuals on Martin ...

93 Days stars Danny Glover as Dr. Benjamin Ohiaeri who has to spearhead a team's response to an Ebola outbreak in the city of Lagos. Apparently, this movie made the rounds in 2016 and I completely missed it. In addition to romance, action, and science fiction movies, there is nothing I love more than a good medical drama. So the fact that this was about an outbreak in a city with over 21 million people, piqued my interest right away. I thought this film was going to be about some scary viral thing that changed humans into raging zombies like 28 Days Later or something like the movie Outbreak. What I did not realize was that it was based on true events. I was actually in awe and saddened at the same time. Ultimately, this film was inspiring and eye-opening if anything else. I do not want to hear anything about a white savior chatter because there was a white epidemiologist that was assisting with treating the people that became infected. Okay, there was a bit of that and I ...

What should you do when you feel out of sorts? There are times when things in life feel out of place even though nothing much has changed from yesterday to today. An unsettling feeling comes over you and you may find yourself stuck. What do you do? I have been known to sleep. I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know? -Ernest Hemingway Photo by StockSnap Sleep has been largely ignored and taken for granted by the medical community for a long time. You hear, anecdotally, that you should get eight hours of sleep but until recent years it has not been truly understood why. There are so many pieces of advice regarding sleep that it can be overwhelming and yet they are still working on understanding the overall reason why sleep is so important. One thing we do know is that depending on the day, getting some sleep can mean a world of difference and make us feel better. There are four sleep theories listed on Harvard's sleep education website...

Terminator: Dark Fate had a disappointing box office and I can fully understand why. I went to see it because I absolutely love nostalgic things, especially if they are science fiction related. When I saw the old gang back together again, Arnold and Linda, I knew I would not miss it. Admittedly the trailer did a great job of selling the movie. So instead of going to see Harriet (after the backlash from us, I decided I have to go see it just to compare the movie to what is being said about it) which was automatically on the list of movies I would not see since I am trying to avoid dramatic films that will lead me to have a visceral emotional reaction, I went to see a light, action-packed science fiction movie. I was disappointed. I do not really know if I can describe how I felt about this version of Terminator. I was really excited to see it because it spoke to the original movie but then they altered history and I felt some kind of way about it. The action scenes were exciting and...

Take a brief moment to imagine yourself getting into a minor car accident. You basically know the steps that are to be followed. Most likely the police will be called, you may need to go to the hospital to get checked out, then you will call your insurance company and go from there. This is a stressful event for anyone because it is unexpected and disrupts our life. Imagine if you did not have any clue of what to do? The stress level would be ramped up tenfold. Knowing the situation helps you navigate through it in a calmer fashion because you have some sense of control in a difficult situation. "Knowing is half the battle," famously said every time I watched an episode of the G.I. Joe cartoon. I did not realize the true depth of the quote until I became an Emergency management planner who spent weeks into months planning out events that may never happen and some that did being that I live in Florida and we get hurricanes yearly. Nevertheless, we planned and prepared b...