Yesterday, Wednesday, November 26, 2025, I worked from 07:15 AM until 2:00 PM, and my Fall Break began right as I clocked out! I plan on doing my fair share of resting, relaxing, writing, reading, working out, and watching movies. For the holiday, I will cook braised BBQ beef & onions, seafood salad, & baked cabbage with onions & Roma tomatoes. I will also have Hawaiian sweet rolls.
I am inviting peace, quiet, reflection, love, and a stress-free day to my doorstep. If anything does not align with those things, it will have to be removed from my space.
If you intend to celebrate Thanksgiving Day, may you enjoy it to the fullest with minimal to no drama, good food, family, and football (or your favorite movies). If you do not wish to celebrate the holiday, may you have all the peace, love, good food, great TV, and good reading on the itinerary.
Regardless of anything, though, may all of you be safe. Happy Fall Break, everyone!
Peace and blessings.
Have you gotten your copy of Séduire: Serial Tales & Flash Fiction at Lulu in E-Book& Paperback versions, or Amazon in Paperback(only) yet?
I am on Substack as well. Poking the Bear’s Belly for Fun is a place of healing as I speak aboutrecent events with a previous place of employment, as it pertains to racism and discrimination, growth from the transition after resigning from that company, and life’s foibles and overall experiences. I welcome your visit.
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” ‒ Nelson Mandela
If you’ve been following this blog for a while (or my previous blog before it) or you’ve followed me on Medium, then you’ve likely read about my kid sister. Today is her 26th birthday, and it hit me like a Mack truck that my baby is no longer a baby. She’s closer to 30 now than she is to age 20, and I’m seriously in my feelings about it.
I’m wallowing in crocodile tears, mentally flipping through the memories of us as she was growing up, and reminiscing about her toddler years, and I am NOT okay. Lol!
She’s beautiful. She’s intelligent. She’s talented in so many ways. She has a love for musicality and can sing the socks off most people I know. To say that I’m proud of her is a major understatement.
Here’s a snippet from her birthday poem:
You are the blessing I prayed for–my dream come true. Every day, I am wowed by the woman you are becoming, and I bow before your changes.
You restore all that is good within me, and there’s no price for that. I’ll never be able to repay you, but I’ll love you until my last breath.
I wished for a sister for so long. It was one of the things that was HIGH on my list of wants as I was growing up. To have that dream come true and my wish granted when I was 19 years old was one of the happiest moments of my life.
Bless, you are amazing, and I am so proud of the woman you have become, and I look forward to who you will be in the future. Keep shining, kiddo! I love you!
Please join me in wishing the kid a Happy Birthday, folks! 26 years on this earth is a testimony nowadays, and I am over-the-moon that she has one!
A Father’s Day tribute to the fathers who are doing what they should, when they should, and how they should for their children.
AI-Generated Image: A Black father and his young daughter hugging each other and smiling.
Hey, Daddy. Is it okay for me to still call you, “Daddy?” At my age, it seems infantile and off-key… somehow, I feel that you don’t mind. I know you don’t mind. Over the years, I’ve taken the time to reflect on what it must have been like for you, a young father in your teenage years, trying to raise a daughter. What did you have to learn and how? Did you have questions? Were you afraid? Did you look at me and see hope, fear, and pain? How did you manage to pour so much love into me as a man I never knew I needed when you didn’t have a father yourself?
I’ve never met my grandfather. He died while you were still eating icies on park benches or chasing girls on skates. Remember that story you told me about that one neighborhood chick who smacked you in the face with her skate and chipped your front tooth? What were you doing? Ah, yes… you smacked her on the ass when you saw her walk by. Serves you right. I think I even told you that. And you mentioned, Grandma Tiggs (your grandmother, my great-grandmother) whooped your behind shortly after for good measure. Ha! Again, serves you right! You told me you learned a valuable lesson; women’s bodies are sacred and should be treated as such.
You still have that chipped front tooth.
Yet, that didn’t stop you from dipping into and dodging multiple women. You were a quiet ho. You have told me this a number of times. Said you couldn’t outrun the blood in your veins–the many men before you who’d ho’ed around and gotten away with it. Multiple Rolling Stone Papas in our family. You were just following suit–raised by the role models who were too busy modeling in between the sheets instead of teaching you how to properly treat a girl/young lady/woman.
And there you were, looking at a baby girl with your entire face staring back at you. 360° of change crept into your heart. You saw a version of yourself you knew you needed to take care of–needed to protect. I became a means to an end for you… a savior of sorts? Yes! Isn’t that what you said?
Mama mentioned being jealous of me the first few years of my life.
I stole her man.
Me with my big, bright brown eyes. Me with my uneven lips. Me with my smooth, sandy red hair, laid evenly on my head. I stole her man. How could someone fix their mouth to say something like that to their child? I remember cocking my head to the side, shifting my expression, and rebutting, “Oh, is that right?” to her because what else was there to say?
But I look back at our pictures and I notice your smile is a bit wider–a bit happier–a bit more focused, and it was all for me. I was your show-stopper, your new reason for living. So, maybe jealousy was warranted from a woman who spent her high school years chasing behind a man, catching him, then breaking his heart before he could break hers.
I doted on you. Everything you did mesmerized me–I longed to be at my Daddy’s side. 19 years later… after the divorce… after the boys… after trials, errors, tribulations, and victories, you created another version of yourself who looks so much like me. Together, we’ve stolen your heart. You no longer have it. It’s split in half between the two of us. And as much as I wanted to fight her for it when she was born, I cannot deny the fact that she needs it just as much as I do.
And you never loved me any differently. You never changed. You still, Hey Baby’d me every time I called. I only felt like I was losing you because you no longer lived at home. Home was another place for you. In another world, far from what my longing heart needed. I was left with a mother who didn’t know herself, so she ran behind men to find the pieces of her life she dropped in the dank spaces of clubs and hot corners.
I don’t think the boys will ever understand what your girls have with you–what we mean. The first and the last. They’re all in the middle. You have to gather them up one by one and spew different, varied versions of the same scripture into their minds:
Proverbs 4:1:“Hear, O sons, a father’s instruction, and be attentive, that you may gain insight.”
Proverbs 4:1:“Hear, O sons, a father’s instruction, and be attentive, that you may gain insight.”
Psalm 103:13:“As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.”
Hebrews 12:7:“It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?”
Colossians 3:21:“Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.”
But you can utter only one to me and my sister, and we hear you loud and clear: “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.”, Psalm 103:13.
AI-Generated Image: A Black father hugging his two daughters, one older and one younger.
Now that I am 45 years old, I wonder, how are your early 60s treating you as you still parent me? You are patient. You are kind. You are a critical thinker who passed these characteristics onto me, and you haven’t flinched in your actions toward my womanhood. I can call you with my worries, but I don’t–not often. I can call you when I am crying, but I don’t–not often. I can call you when someone has broken my heart, but I don’t–not often. But when I do, you offer me your undivided attention and you give me the floor. And with this, I throw every inch of pain at it and watch it dance before me in waves.
And most calmly, every single time, you tell me that if life were easy, I wouldn’t grow. I wouldn’t learn. There would be no lessons for me to share with those coming after me. You let me wail into the receiver, you give my tears the greeting they deserve. And then you remind me of who I am and of the strength coursing through my veins.
You are not going to save me from adulthood. You let me lean into it and feel it as I need to, and then… You love me even harder. And this is what I’ll remember, Daddy. It is why I love you as hard as I do. It is why I know until the last breath I breathe, your heart is mine. And my heart is yours.
For the fathers braving every single day, raising their daughters. For fathers who fall short, yet still pick up the slack. For fathers who give everything they have of themselves to their children without hesitation. For the young ones who manifest greatness, and it seems to wither before their eyes. For every uncle, grandfather, big brother, and caring neighbor who took on more than they should have… I see you, and I love you for your existence.
For the motherless, childless, mothering mothers who still mother & always will
AI-Generated Image: A Black woman and her four children, two girls and two boys. They are all facing the camera with lovely smiles on their faces. The mother has her natural hair swooped to the side and full in the back. She is wearing an orange-ish top with a bold red lipstick. The children are leaning against her, two to each side.
Each year, I document how I mother while being childless, and I am inspired by so many women who are mothers in their own way. They have mothered the motherless, tended to the childless, cared for the wayward, and loved the newly orphaned and tormented. I know older sisters (myself included) who still mother their significantly younger siblings – they offer advice and pick them up in the middle of the night from clubs when they’ve had too much to drink and are far too inebriated to string full sentences together. They are Wonder Woman and Superwoman in ways I cannot fathom, while still managing to pull their lives together just in the nick of time to keep it from falling apart.
I have befriended aunts who have lived their lives centered around their nieces and nephews (myself included). They never miss a birthday, video call at all hours of the day to see their babies’ smiling faces, pop up at schools to surprise them with lunch, and will stomp a mudhole in an older kid bullying a baby of theirs and then ask that child, “Where is your mama so she can get some of this, too?” like it’s just a normal Tuesday during a regular week.
I know elder cousins acting as mothers for their younger cousins who have lost their way – the paths of life have worn them down to the nubs, and all they can do now is cry and weep and wail on their cousin’s shoulder. They are pillars in the face of adversity and can calm their blood-related loved ones down in seconds flat. I loved an elder cousin like this once. I still do, even though she is no longer here with us on this Earthly Plane. I admire these cousins – they are my suns and moons – light in an ever-increasing darkness.
Still, as the definitions apply:
Mother: The Definition(s)
I mother no one. I have mothered. I do motherly things. I can mother up and down the corners and edges of this world, but I did not give birth to a child. I have been all that I can be to my cousins, nieces, nephews, brothers, and sister, and so many more, but they are not mine. They do not belong to me. I did not vainly labor with any of them. I cannot recount delivery tales of anguish and agony, nor can I gloat about them taking after me when they do something of which I approve.
My ovaries did not contribute to society. My womb is barren – it is a prison cell for emptiness and passing hours. I have no desire to see it grow with a miniature version of me inside.
I am in awe of those who have taken the plunge. For the women who are mothers by definition and tradition, I tip my hat off to you. You have a job that never ends, and you receive no pay, no time off, and no vacation to rejuvenate your mind or spirit. You are often overlooked, cast into the shadows of endless time, and you do it all without complaint, although you want to. And you have your heart committed to this task until you or your child(ren) die. How heroic is that?!
I wait on the wings of hope, secretly wishing I could understand – gain just a glimpse of your life, then I remember . . . some of us are here to be what we can be, and we mother in other ways. I find a sense of solace within this reminder. You have my love and respect. You are to be championed every hour of each day.
AI-Generated Image: A Hispanic woman cuddling her two boys. She has a beautiful smile, and both boys are leaning into her, engaged with the camera. There is a blurred background of green and perhaps a playground out of sight, too?
As I sit here and type this message to each of you, I want you to know of your brilliance, of your patience, of your timeless selflessness that knows no bounds. If you are a mother and mothering the way you are meant to fit that role, you have my undying admiration. If you care when the word seems to fall off the tongues of menaces who have forgotten its meaning, I see you. If you are soldiering forward with $15.27 to your name and have prepared a meal for your children using $12.58 of that, I see you. You’ve got every other human being tracking you down and leaning against your chest yearning for a thirty-minute suckle at your breasts, yet you constantly put your children first and slam the door in their faces and verbally admonish their requests, know that I SEE YOU.
For the mothers who are not mothers, mothering in the face of time, barren wombs, lost hope, wayward siblings, and all of the missed marks of this world as you raise your gift of nurturing to higher heights, I see you. When the world says, “But you are not a mother,” I hear your cries in the middle of the night as you softly shout back to the women who hold the title only, “And neither are you!” I see you. When you’re stopped in the grocery store by a toddler who noticed your smile two aisles down and ran behind you to see it again, escaping his mother, you have a good heart, and that baby can tell, too. I SEE YOU.
For the motherless, childless, mothering mothers who still mother and always will, this is your day. And with it, do what you will. You have earned it, and with it, may I embrace you fully and wholly and center you when everything in this current realm is burning to the ground. Find love and hope in the eyes of a child you mothered and look at your reflection in their eyes.
You are more than what you think you are to them. Believe me.
“Becoming a mother makes you realize you can do almost anything one-handed.”
Mother’s Day Card 2025, created with Canva.
I will share “Something To Think About” for the next four weeks on Sunday afternoons. It may be a quote, a picture, an interesting phrase I heard, artwork, etc. Whatever I share will surely be intriguing or involving enough to spark a casual discussion or in-depth conversation. Stay tuned every Sunday for this feature!
Have you gotten your copy of my new book: a collection of serial tales & flash fiction, Séduire (E-BookandPaperback) yet?
I recently signed up to write on Substack as well. Poking the Bear’s Belly for Fun is a place of healing as I speak aboutthe most recent events with my place of employment as it pertains to racism and discrimination. I welcome your visit.
A Cornered Gurl 
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