Tag: dailyprompt

My Body was Telling Me Something

Every ache and every pain was my body communicating with me. It was saying don’t sleep that way or run like that. My body was saying stretch more and hydrate better.

My sister once advised me that my hair would tell me what it liked when I decided to start my natural hair journey. Like, wear my curls. My hair responded to different products in different ways. Some products made my hair feel soft and my curls pop. Other products made my hair feel dry and brittle. Trial and error was short lived.

I gave up land animals eight years ago. One of the first things I noticed after I stopped eating meat was my body odor. Lol, I can’t believe I’m sharing this but it’s true. I didn’t smell the same. I smelled better. My musk wasn’t musty anymore. It was a mild odor. Barely there.

I stopped eating potato chips. They made my legs swell. My steps felt heavy and I love to walk. The swelling affected that. It was from the salt and processed flavoring. I went to the doctor about the swelling and was prescribed water pills. I never took them.

I felt inclined to lean in more to the cause of the problem. Took inventory on what I ate. I don’t consider myself a terrible eater. I eat plenty of vegetables and drink tons of water. So it didn’t take me long to realize what the causes were. It turns out that anytime I need to figure out what is going on with me, the process of elimination leads me to the culprit.

I gave up candy. The sugar caused my whole body to swell. My face and hands especially. Not having sugar after a day gave me terrible headaches for a couple days. My body went through withdrawal because of sugar. I thought I was overreacting but once I hadn’t had sweets for a few days, the headaches were gone and I noticed that I didn’t wake up swollen.

I ate candy for Halloween this year and I woke up feeling bad. The swelling was back. It only reinforced the fact that I’ll continue to stay away from candy.

Tortilla chips constipate me. I do eat them every now and then. I love chips and salsa so I have to enjoy it sparingly.

Ice cream is another one. Can’t have it. Ice cream causes violent stomach pains and terrible gas. Nice cream is a wonderful replacement. I want to learn how to make it myself. There’s so many chemicals in the none dairy ice creams. I want to cut the chemicals out.

There are other things but I’ve shared enough for now.

So many of our problems can be solved if we stopped and paid attention to ourselves. So, slow down and look within.

Until next time, take care of yourself!

Adult Halloween is the Next Wave

I don’t know about your neighborhood but ours was pretty empty of trick-a-treaters! I mean there’s never been this overwhelming amount of children in my neighborhood but this year was pretty much DEAD!

I propose we turn it PG-Adult! We set up tables with mini appetizers and mocktails. We dress up and parade our streets with music and a good time.

I’m a mom. The kiddos are getting older and what will we do?! Let Halloween go, hell no!

Let’s refocus our efforts to adults! Make it a block party. Maybe some folks do this already maybe not. Something has to change though. The kids are far and few between now a days and the magic of Halloween cannot die.

So who’s with me, let’s keep imagination alive

Until next time. Take care of yourself

My Algorithm had Me Down Bad

I noticed that my feed was a lot of the same over stimulating content about relationships and even some not so favorable political jargon.

Sprinkle in some sewing stuff and one or two motivational channels and that about summed up what I’ve been consuming on a regular basis, lately.

I’d been naturally, progressively changing over the course of this year and it was time to address the timeline.

I’m not on any social media platforms at the moment. It’s been two years and counting since logging off of TikTok and I’d completely given up on instagram the year before that. So I thought those changes were good. My opinions were not changing too much though. I had to purge again.

I have taken to listening to different things on YouTube. Hair content, it’s silk press season and split ends has your girl in a choke hold. Informal interviews on podcasts from some of my favorite artists and people I didn’t know about, sends warm and fuzzies through my mind.

I even explored gritty life stuff. Ladies of the Night and addicts. I’m not opposed to learning from others in any form. Life is something else and people end up living it so many different ways. It’s inspiring to me how so many different folks find courage to share their experiences with strangers on the internet. So I don’t know how I ended up on toxic row.

Somewhere on my exploration I started consuming the relationship bait. Everything was about how terrible men are and how terrible women are. Wife’s hating their lives. Husband doing their wife’s wrong. Mother’s regretting their children. It was a lot. It was sad. And the worst part is that it was filled with folks projecting themselves onto every situation.

If I’ve learned anything in my forty years it’s that you have no idea what you will or will not do or except or be, until you are right there in it. You can create scenario after scenario but until you are faced with the difficult reality you don’t know what you are capable of handling. If you would stick to the boundaries you created. If you are jumping the gun on a situation. You don’t know until it’s happening.

I’m not saying that you can’t learn from others mistakes or take advice from people. But so much of what’s out there in this Information Age is just an abundance of opinions of what people think they would do. We are all different. Every situation is uniquely its own. Just because you are going through something very similar to someone else doesn’t mean you’ll get the results they did.

We each have to make our own choices based on the circumstances of our own situation and hope for the best. Just because someone or something didn’t work out for someone else, doesn’t mean it won’t be the best outcome for you and just because something does go well, great even, for someone else doesn’t mean it’ll work out for you either.

I’m saying all that to say, I changed my algorithm. No more relationship stuff. Or crazy political takes. I’ve burnt myself out with the constant stream of delusion. In real life, people are just people living their lives the best they can. “Get off the internet” is one of the best phrases for 2026! lol still read my blog though!

Until next time take care of yourself

The Little Things

No matter how much we are programed to think that we are all the same, we are not. Well, we are not as different as we’ve perceived each other to be either! This applies to everyone and everything. Having moved away in my early thirties from the city I was born and raised in. I got a startling reality check of the similarities amongst different racial groups, that I’m almost embarrassed to admit, I believed were nothing alike. In my ignorance, I had no idea that other races even mixed.

We live in America, captain obvious here. If a person was mixed in this country, they were either mixed with White or Black. The most common mix is White and Black but guess what, that is not the only combination that exist! There are all types of beautiful multi-raced folks in this world and leaving my little, narrowminded surroundings opened me up to all the other possibilities.

As I continued to observe and learn more about my new uncharted territory, I saw the little things made us all unique. Things like hair styles and makeup. Popular car brands and articles of clothing. The way bread was cooked or even rice. Besides our inherent physical differences, the very slight variations of the way we each did a thing made it, a thing that turned into a practice or belief or tradition. It became a Mexican thing or a Turkish thing. A religious thing or a vegan thing. I like to think that I’m so different in so many ways, but the truth is I’m very much like so many other humans cluelessly experiencing life on this planet.

I think its beautiful to do something, anything in a particular way. Just know that we all have a special way of doing the same things!

Be kind to yourself

Daily writing prompt
Which aspects do you think makes a person unique?
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You’re a Good Mother… Yikes

I don’t take compliments well. Being told I was a good mother has to be one I’ve heard a lot, and it would make me cringe. What was a good mother? I’ve accumulated parenting styles from all the mothers in my life from childhood through adulthood and became a compilation of them. Mostly the best parts, :). I must say that I have pretty incredible children. Both of them are kind, funny, smart and uniquely themselves. I am proud of the people they are becoming but I didn’t know what made me such a good mother. What measured those acts?

Some people said it because of how neat they looked or how well-mannered they were. Some people said it because my children were in a lot of extracurricular activities and made good grades. I hated to hear it. I just set out to make my children whole and the qualifications of a “Good Mother” seemed mediocre at best.

I want/wanted my children to do, well, everything! I didn’t get to do much of anything as a child. No sports. Not much hanging out with friends or even going outside. I also had no real grasp on parenting. I struggled with emotional intelligence, fifteen-year-old me is alive and well at times. I struggled with what I set out to do or the idea of a thing verses the reality of being in the trenches of everyday life, not knowing what the heck I was doing. All while trying to become a whole person myself.

I’ve apologized to my kiddos so much for the countless mistakes I’ve made as the person responsible for keeping them alive until they can do it themselves. I advocate for them. I love on them. I give constructive criticism. I celebrate them and their achievements. I listen. I inform.

I don’t photograph everything we do but what physical evidence I do have of them, is seemingly happy. Only time will tell if the most impactful job I’ll ever have will pay off in one form or another. Until then, I’ll continue to parent them to the best of my ability. I still don’t know about the good mother compliment, I do try to be a good human every day though.

Regular Steph

Daily writing prompt
What was the best compliment you’ve received?
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Towering Shelf

Oh, I couldn’t pass this prompt up!

I had this deep desire to create a bookshelf! Not just any shelf, I needed it to illuminate light. I’ve had dark and mysterious shelves and I just got bored with them. Books and nicknacks and dust, dust, dust! Gets trapped and forgotten in the dark corners of the traditional styled shelf, so I created a simple, yet statement piece that I get to enjoy seeing every single day!

Daily writing prompt
Describe the most ambitious DIY project you’ve ever taken on.
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It had to be towering to scale the room, 7.5ft tall is what I settled on. I push the envelope with everything I do so as big as we can go. Go bigger, lol!

I create imperfect pieces making things by hand, none of the shelves are the same size.

I hit a learning curve when ordering my custom glass shelves. One universal size would suffice.

Sanding everything down by hand and attaching the shelf rest was the most time consuming part of the process. The sanding between paint also sent me into a tizzy.

I used Joanna and Chips, Magnolia chalk spray paint from Lowe’s. 5 cans and this is the color black. It is not black at all. It definitely appears in the navy family of colors.

My shelves are perfectly aligned. 🙂 I impressed myself with the execution of this project! I put this thing together, ok! It came out really great!! Like I said earlier, I just enjoy looking at my shelf. I get a satisfying feeling adding new things to it. I’ve done a few more solo projects since this beauty and I’m looking forward to sharing those as well.

I can do whatever I set my mind to, 🙂