Closing Thoughts After Reading The Woman in Me

 

Britney Spears went through hell. And to think–as a teenager–I wanted to be a popstar inspired by her. But, again, this is simply her story. Her tragic journey. It’s still sad, though. I couldn’t imagine working to achieve all that fame and money, only to one day find myself being outside the control of my own life. To be always controlled, subdued, and used by people who were meant to love and protect me. When you factor in her parents and their own family history, it starts to make sense. Either way, I don’t find too much I can say about Britney’s story because it’s almost classic in the expression of how “everything that glitters isn’t gold.”

Nonetheless, I have some deep, reflecting thoughts I can add regarding how much of a fan I was of hers from back in the day. So much nostalgia was happily activated as we recounted the beginning of her career on up. I suppose it was the terribleness behind her stage throughout her career is what left me frustrated and a bit sour. Still, as of closing her memoir, I’m left more with gratitude for my own life. While feeling strengthened and encouraged to keep going forward. To keep living and not so much in the past. And to pray. I think that was the number one thing I left receiving from the book is to pray. I need to do more of that outside of the routine means in which I pray before I drive and sleep. I need to pray more when I'm unsure and frustrated; lost and confused by thinking I'm in control when I'm actually not.

So, yeah. Reading The Woman in Me was absolutely great. And without a doubt, Britney's story reminded me how there is power in prayer.

Currently Reading in May...

 

My Sister is so Nice & Message of the Week & #FridayReads

My sister ordered me a good ole copy of Cicely Tyson's memoir, As I Am, for my birthday.  Just waiting on this thing to come on.  I put it on hold at the library (with a little begrudge and potato salad on the side), but still gunning for my own copy to place nicely on my shelf.  A necessary copy.  Indeed.  Here's to waiting... impatiently... but allowing God to do His work.  I'll cry happy tears.

In the meantime, the message for the week is...

As for #FridayReads...

Earlier this week I chomped down big on A More Perfect Union by Tammye Huf for the #ReadSoulLit Read-Along.  I'm a little over one hundred pages from its ending.  I'll probably finish it early next week, or even over the weekend.  It's so cold outside that I don't want to even go anywhere.  But I definitely want to finish it before the end of next week.  Unfortunately, the connection and resonance isn't as profound as it was during my earlier experience of reading A More Perfect Union.  Maybe it's because I'm juggling three books... or maybe because...

Few Favorite "Becoming" Moments

#nonfictionnovember WRAP-UP (week one - or whatever)

Favorite Lines on Death From Tembi Locke's "From Scratch"

When You Understand Someone You Love Is Dying

3 of my Favorite Messages from Tyler Perry's Higher is Waiting

Relationships Are Like Quilts

#NonFictionNovember ~ Memoirs on LOVE & LIFE

I'm just going to slide this in here, with little explanation (not that it's really needed with these two celebrities).  Wait, other than I'm starting #NonFictionNovember with books I've been wanting to read for a while now.  Or, rather yet, memoirs I've wanted to consume.  Either way I'm going for something inspirational to launch the hashtag with.  

Tembi's story for a little touch of LOVE, because Lord knows that's an abstract concept when it comes to me.  Tyler for some of that GOALS-type of inspired stuff, because Lord knows that's just as abstract a concept as love.

Ooooo-weee, chile.  Anyway, I'm already 50 pages into each and love them both.

New Year Reflections | A Walking Child

I was thinking about New Year's resolutions when I realized I have a small aversion to space-less tasks and obligations.  Especially those ridged and timed, as opposed to flexible.  I think it has a lot to do with my mother trying to raise me.  To mold me into a strung and responsible person (her own secreted concerns included).  However, I grew responsible at the cost of keeping everything–including my feelings/emotions–walled to myself.  And responsible in the sense that during my 20's, I had a hard time saying no to unwanted commitments.  

So as a child I suffered a little; unable to just be me because of someone else’s idea of how I should be.  And the same came true as I grew and became angry at myself, people, and my stifling environment.  I’ve gotten better at being who I am and sharing it.  Especially in the past three years.  I came from a wearer place, so the second I hit thirty, I didn’t have emotional space for the baggage from myself and most certainly others.  There were things I needed to do and express.  Things I needed to achieve for myself.  Things I needed to reach in others.  No more emotional drainage.

Anand's Calling...

Anand Giridharadas’s India Calling is sort of my first foray into readings based on Indian culture, and the country in general. It’s an “intimate portrait” written by Giridharadas regarding his experience as an American-born Indian returning to the country his parents immigrated from before his birth (as well as his sister‘s). He exams the many influences as to why his parents left India, between a somewhat stifling culture and a tumbling economy. And then he relays how many of those grounds for fleeing have evolved and changed over the years. For better or worse is often the question. Nevertheless, it’s at a consequence that some Indians find themselves culturally deprived and economically disadvantaged compared to the transfixed success of others.

So what could be the catalysis to this change within the country? Here’s where Giridharadas also assesses the cultural influences outside of, say, the caste system that once held a cord over India‘s public. Women and men of India are beginning to take control of their lives–their circumstances. And it’s complicated to do so, as the people of India give away many of their old cultural standards for something new, adventurous, and maybe even considered sinfully enticing. Giridharadas explores these changes through seven chapters where individuals he‘s spoken with, concerning the conceptualization of India Calling, share their stories. From fundamentalist, entrepreneurs, spiritual, and love-lost citizens, he categorizes his chapters between Dreams, Ambition, Pride, Anger, Love, and Freedom. And it’s here that I’m going to share quotes and pieces of each chapter to give you guys and idea as to how revealing I found India Calling.

DREAMS

"India was changing when I arrived, and it continued to change dramatically, viscerally, improbably.  The freeze I had sensed as a child seemed to be thawing.  It was partly the enormous physical churn: the quantities of earth being moved, the malls and office towers and gated communities being built, the restaurants opening, the factories pumping out cars, the blue jeans being sewn.  It was the new verticality of the big cities, the slum dwellers in Bombay moving into towering apartments financed by New York investors, the mushrooming of village backwaters into congested satellite cities such as Gurgaon and Navi Mumbai and Electronics City.  It was the villagers who have been moved off their land so that Tata Motors, the once-stagnant company where my father worked, whose lifeless culture had pushed him toward America, could built the world's cheapest car, priced at a little more than $2,000."