My Name is Jali

Stop me if you've heard these before: "You don't have any problems. You don't pay bills, you don't have to worry about paying for food or clothes. All you have to do is go to school and be a child." "You're a child. You don't know what tired is. You're too young to be tired." "Just get over it. You'll be okay." "Don't question me. You are a child, and what I say goes. Don't worry about why." I never understood when adults played down children's problems. To me, it's another form of neglect. Telling a child or teenager that their problems are not really problems is just as detrimental as refusing to feed them or beating them until they have cuts and bruises. My thing is this; I may be 16 and my worst problem may be dealing with a classmate who doesn't like me. You may be 42 and worrying about whether you lose your job and could care less about what ANYBODY has to say about you, much less so...

Lord, in my early twenties I come to You with these very humble requests As I age, may I age gracefully May my thighs never rub together when I walk May my back fat never grow to look like backwards titties May the only muffin top I encounter be the kind that I eat May I "snap back" after each child May varicose veins be an urban myth May arthritis find a cliff and jump May Alzheimer's disease be just a distant memory May all my natural teeth go in the grave with me And may people mistake me for my great-great-great-great granddaughter's sister. Amen.

Don't you hate that line when somebody breaks up with you and they say some version of "it's not you, it's me"? Well, I say, you are absolutely right! You might be saying it to make me feel better, when secretly, you really believe it's me, but whether you realize it or not, you're speaking truth. We need to take ownership of that knowledge. Get this: If you know that you are the best person that you can possibly be at that moment in time And you are trying your hardest to stay true to yourself while respecting the other person And making every effort possible to maintain that relationship And it still doesn't work, you can believe that it's not you. Don't waste your time on the "whys" and "hows" of the relationship falling apart As tempting as that is to do Don't focus on what you could have done differently and how you could have been more supportive of the other person As hard as it is not to Don't a...

It's no secret that I have not enjoyed my college experience at all... A big part of it was that I did not want to come here in the first place so there was already a black mark on my attitude about college in general... When I got here I called myself giving it a chance by becoming part of a clique. The clique broke up and I took that as an excuse to condemn the rest of my time here and I have been miserable ever since. This is gonna sound like a pity party for a minute but bear with me, I promise it's going somewhere! But anyway... I hated that the school was so small, it was in the middle of nowhere, there was no public transportation, I had to ask people for rides if I wanted to go ANYWHERE off campus, everybody was either part of a Greek letter organization or wanted to be a part of one, I was trying to stay saved and there was no church around where I felt comfortable and there weren't that many saved people on campus who were trying to hold on like I was, and ...

You know that song from Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella ? When Brandy sings, "In my own little corner, in my own little chair, I can be whoever I want to be"? Well, that happens to be one of my ALL TIME favorite songs even to this day because to me it shows the message that you don't need anyone else around you to have a good time or to feel good about yourself I was always belting out "I'm glad to be back in my own little corner... all alone, in my own, little chair..." Because in that little corner in the little chair, nobody else mattered, and nobody else could bother you. But one day I came to a VERY disturbing reality. Eventually, you have to come out of the corner, and the longer you stay in it, the harder it is to adjust to the rest of the world. And the easier it is to retreat back to the corner, hiding. I'm sitting at work, music on blast, with the door closed and a sign on the front door telling people that if they don't ...

"Women don't really want the truth. Y'all say y'all do, but you don't." To every man who has ever uttered those words, please read. To every woman who has ever heard those words, please read. If you're talking about a REAL woman, one who has matured to the point in which she can look internally and accept that she is a flawed character and always has room for change, YES SHE DOES want the truth. The whole truth, and nothing but the truth! Of course, there is always a way to say things respectfully and you should try to make it as clear as possible that you are making your claim in love and/or in the spirit of doing the right thing, but the bottom line is that it should always be the truth. I was at a forum last night, and one of the girls asked why guys lie. A guy responded that he may lie to a girl because he knows he isn't where he needs to be in order to be with her, so he lies so that she'll talk to him. There were so many things wrong...

    I came to this conclusion last night while talking to YET another one of my girl friends about - you know! Those creatures. They come in our lives, wreak havoc, and only the Lord knows what happens next. Some stay, some leave, and others just don't know what to do, so they just run around in circles and all the while WE deal with the emotional backlash of it all.     So my friend was in that stage that a lot of us ladies find ourselves in after we've been hurt before but somehow found ourselves on the brink of love yet again. Scared. Here was this guy who wanted to be with her, and she had equally strong feelings but, paralyzed by the memories of being hurt before, she continued to refuse him. The twisted thing about it, though, was that she wasn't even worried about HIM hurting her... She was worried that SHE might hurt him because of what had happened to her in the past. So here's what I said:     I told her that she was already hurt...