Pain free breath- what happens when you stop smoking

Today is Wednesday, the day before Thursday. Thursday will be two weeks since I decided to stop using cigarettes as a crutch and to quit so I could open up my lungs and really get fit.

Last night ESC and I did 50 mins of kickboxing. I wore weighted gloves weighing 0.5kg (1.1 lbs) each. I could breathe! There was no tightening in my chest, no feeling winded, no lactic acid build up!!! I did however feel tight in my injury free knee so i didn't push it to the max as I could have done (breath and stamina-wise) for the first time in years. It felt good. Really good.

I feel like I have accomplished something exceptional. I guess I am that kind of girl :) Yes it has been a damn struggle but I rose to the challenge and have been facing it head on. These are the moments in movies and plays that makes all of us find hope in our own struggles. It's catharsis in the making; the introduction of the elements of victory over the impossible: "Life, meet Struggle. Struggle, meet Courage. Courage, meet Commitment. Commitment, meet Hope. Get very acquainted."

Stronger Woman in Me

This is a celebration of the road ahead... and the reasons for doing it.

I have a new personal anthem:
"Love me more"
To be honest though, it's not entirely new. I used it to walk away from The Past. and now I am adapting it as theme to get past my personal challenges. It is what my decision to be fully present and accounted for is all about.

It's on my fridge and my bathroom window. It's in my heart.

I bought a few packs of nicotine gum. Cold turkey may be good for salads but not for me.

I have decided to give up cigarettes for a few reasons:
1. I had planned to eventually (and made several attempts)
2. I am compromising my health (physical, mental and spiritual)
3. I have to at least try to love me more than any addiction
4. It restricts my ability to workout and enjoy my workout

I must say that they make a huge difference... and they are pretty cheap here. They work out to less than $4 per pack.

Woman in the mirror (be present and accounted for)

Stop it right now.

Stop thinking about how fit and fabulous you were.

Look at who you are now.

Be present.

Stay present.

You are smart. Beautiful. Brave. Kind. Happy. Alive. Well.

Realize what is compromising those things.

Inactivity. Lack of self- expression. Reclusiveness. Food. Insecurity. Fear.

Do you realize that you are wonderful as you are?

Do you realize that the fact that you think so deeply about where you are in relation to where you want to go makes you more likely to get there?

I know you. You WILL get there.

Find peace in the journey.

Life is about balance. Finding Qi. Centre. Grounding. It takes TIME. Give yourself time. Celebrate small victories.

Stop giving yourself such a hard time.

Tough love doesn't always work.

You have accomplished so much.

Stop worrying so much.

Relax.

Live!

Love until it hurts and forget about broken hearts.

Dance. Since it's illegal to do it it in public here, close the curtains, turn up the music and dance like no one is watching. Not even you.

Let go.

Be free.

Breathe.

Move.

Feel.

Daily.

A la minuit.

Meditate.

Feed your body well.

Cry when you feel like, but make sure you cry hard and for no longer than 10 minutes. Then laugh. Louder than you cried.

It's OK to be sad sometimes. Fuck flower power. Just find balance.

Eat well.

Pray lots.

Love without end.

Note from a spinster

I used to hate that word. "Batchelor" conjures all things George Clooney and "Spinster"... my granny's miserable twin sister. "Batchelorette" may be politically correct but I am not certain that the British First Aid in English has made that the official synonym for "unmarried woman."

Then somewhere along the way...through great soul searching, I found my peace with the word, the term, the concept, the existence. I was an unmarried woman, no? A spinster, no less, no more.

I started off my 20s as most of us do questioning everything. God, religion, family, friendship, relationships, people, the opposite sex, the same sex, age, work, love, hope, life, peace, sanity, identity. I started off my 20s depressed.

I remember Azikiwe explaining to me at about 23 years old that my constant doodling of abstract faces and my counter-depressive practice of drawing faces with charcoal in a drawing pad was the revelation that I was questioning my identity. It was subconscious. But I had every right to be doing so.

I had some fundamental paradigm shifts in my last summer of being 19- the one that ushered in twenty. Being born in early August means that I spend two summers at every age. The ushering in...and the fading out.

It was a cathartic point. I made decisions that would forever disrupt my worldview and how I viewed myself in it. Therein lies the conflict. If I no longer knew who I was after 19 years, then who was I really?

That took me years to answer. Almost 10. And it wasn't smooth sailing.

There were some hits and plenty more misses. In the quest for finding out something of which you know the foggiest, there are often times more failures than successes. There were many lessons in that... chief of which was the one taught by the harrowing process itself- resilience. Anyone can fail. Everyone will fail. It is the process of starting over after failure that truly reveals character.

So there were many starts. I started many jobs. Many relationships. Many friendships. Many interests. Many philosophical outlooks. Many self-help projects. Yet, I continued to fail.

And then... as I developed a new language to name this new identity that I was discovering, I began to have a concept of who what where when why and why not.


Fire. Fascinating. Beautiful. Hot. Burns.

Talent. Embedded. Growth. Release.

Work. Love. Visible. Square-peg. Round-hole.

Love. Fascinating. Uplifting. Transforming. Hurts.

Grace. Undeserved. God. Granted. Revealed. Redemptive.


I have been thrashed about on love's floor and broken into pieces. Yet, like the phoenix from the ashes, I rise.

I rise, rose and continue to be risen, pressing on to greater glory higher than my own.

This is a gift...this spinster business... what else could nine years of finding yourself be?

So at the end of it all, on this the twilight of a new day in my journey, I salute the spinster in me, who has helped me to define me.

I walk away from this place whole and into a marriage whole. I am whole on my own. Even in my darkest hour. I am happy on my own. Even in my moments of utter despair. I find my own joy. It lies within when all beauties fade.

I have grown. Leaps and bounds. Ask anyone who truly knows me. But how? Because I have lived in every moment-good and bad and allowed them to take me places hitherto unreachable. In doing so, I discovered my biggest revelation of all time. Grace.

I give thanks.

What lies beneath

I tell you, it is hard to look into the mirror and see the amount of damage that has been done to my body in just one year. The mental and spiritual stress affected my body in the worst way. My body seems to have aged leap years. Stretch marks are in places they have never been, cellulite in proportions greater than the cottage cheese content in Imelda's backup lasagna recipe, and eczema presenting varying shades of discolouration, dryness and severe itching to the point where I cut myself scratching to soothe the irritation. But you wouldn't believe the biggest challenge in the whole reflection episode: loving the woman in the mirror, no matter how disappointing the reflection.

This is the eve of my last Twentysomething year. Surely I have gained some body image insights in the years I have thrashed through the whole complicated issue. And no matter how annoyed I am now that the scale had not budged after intense dance classes this week, I still have lots to love. What do I love about my big fat, spotty, lumpy, stretched marked self?

1. I love the fact that I never stop trying. I never really give up...yes I may kind of zone out for a while and "let myself go" but I never let it happen indefinitely.

2. I love my eagerness to try new things, and to put my body through physical challenges like modern, african, belly dance, and yoga and pilates. I also want to try Tai Chi and some martial arts later on.

3. I love my sense of adventure. I like being outdoors and discovering new places, and being one with nature.

4.I actually like to be active and prefer to work in an active environment like broadcast production and photography, which require a tremendous amount of stamina and physsical fitness especially when location shoots come into play.

5. I love that I can make myself eat things that taste awful simply because they are good for me. I can and do excercise control over what I feed my body (as long as I am not in one of those zoned out modes).

6. I love the fact that I can go from smoking between 10-20 cigarattes per DAY and buying them by the carton, to coming home with less than two pack (not cartons) and not buying any cigarettes since I have come home. I have bummed two single fags since 2 Sundays ago.

7. I love the fact that I try to be real with me. I have my shortcomings and I am not afraid of doing the dirty work of facing them head on in the battle over my soul.

8. I love the fact that a shopping spree is no longer something that brings me happiness. I spend money on things that add significant value to my life. I no longer have credit cards and I plan to keep it that way for as long as I can.

9. I love my refusal to apologize for my presence. I occupy space, fat or skinny and I make no apologies for that. Yes the mirror image under harsh light may be a little daunting but there is a whole lot more of me to love than stretch marks, eczema and cellulite can interfere with. I am a woman, whose body changes through the different phases of life to which I learn to adapt and grow towards. I learn more about me in the tough times anyway...and that is when I have to really do resistance and circuit training of the mind, body and spirit. Guess what happens as a result? I get stronger and build endurance.

10. I love the fact that I have picked a man who loves me for all the goodness that lies within because as he often says "all beauties fade."

In spite of all the topical and superficial things we are blasted with by the media and their sponsors telling us that we have to look and dress a certain way to be happy, the truth is that all that is what it is-surface. Just like the stretch marks and the eczema. The real stuff that we are made of lies beneath. When we are balanced, grounded and centred, it all shines through.

Derek Walcotts' Love After Love

I posted this poem first on September 14, 2007, but felt moved to re-post now. Love After Love is a most beautiful and surreal poem. Walcott is the Caribbean's own Nobel Laureate (St. Lucia).

by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

The eve of Turning 30...a TwentySomething assessment

I just realised that I wil turn 30 in August of NEXT year! I may still be 28, but that puts things in a slightly different perspective.

There are soooo many plans I had. Goals to accomplish. Of course, all before turning 30. Alas! Life intervenes. And in a damn good way, might I add.

Forget the house, the marriage and the children and the highway to financial wealth. I am happy. I am even better than happy. I have deep-seated delight and contentment in the fact that I have spent the time really working on me. And in the most fullsome way, realising me.

Some years ago I accepted the fact that marriage and children were not an expressed and guaranteed rite of passage, especially if I really cared about who I wanted marry and the circumstances in which I want to bring children into this world.

I decided too that those standards, though high, were not to be compromised. Here's why. It dawned on me that I was perfectly whole as I am... and then without a man to truly call mine, and even now in a relationship. I recognised that these were merely add-ons from the whole list of electives that one could choose in the course of life. I also became aware that there were many others to select from.

That was the beginning of my epiphany... freeing myself from the childhood expectancy of wearing white and being labeled "mother."

I then set about the pursuit of chiseling the "woman."

I believe that finding me, my voice, my purpose and my singular yet consuming personal joy was even better.

There are still goals...a life is aimless without them, but they are different.

The older I get, the more flexible I am with them, because sometimes in executing you find that they are not worth pursuing. So you adjust accordingly.

Like the rising the corporate ladder. I was leading teams from I made my producing debut at 19 for a children's TV programme. Went into the corporate world and became a PR Manager for a Trans National brand by 25. I owned my own business by 26. Moved from my country by 27.

And got my heart broken sometime between.

The things left to do are doable. The worldwide travel. Photography. Writing. Producing and Directing moving pictures (documentaries, indie films and TV programming). Getting in the best shape of my life. Climbing Blue Mountain. Getting young people to realise their own potential in their teen and early adult years. Getting my nose pierced.

These are goals that are realistic and are will in my reach of attaining.

Owning a house, getting married, having children may come. If they do, I will be content. If not, that would be because I managed to be equally content doing all the above.

Self-confrontation

There is a lot that I have not said over the past month (after all, a month ago today I arrived in my Jamaica and forgot everything about blogsphere). But writing for me has become a part of my existence, and while I can put it off for more pressing commitments, I must get back to it for personal release.

I miss the words. The sound of the keys as I strike them in unconsious and semi-conscious dexterity... expressing not only what I know to be so, but also what I didn't even realise was true.

This is my most honest space, so much so that I would rather not say anything than fluff over what is real. And this is why it is anonymous. My identity is only revealed to a select few, even though this blog is published publicly.

I am not sure I know what exactly I feel like blogging about. I dont feel like talking about the experience in Jamaica, though it was a spiritually and "moodically" uplifting one.

I think I am in a very strange phase... I am trying to tap into some deep level personal growth during a time of abject loneliness and isolation.

I think more than ever (if ever that was possible)... but I am left to my thoughts quite a bit so I have no choice. I am reading like I did when I was studying literature, only this time I get to make my own required reading list. I write more than ever... and I think even my photography expresses more than ever.

I am also dreaming more and my deja vu has even returned! I am getting closer to the real me.

I guess what I have been trying to do then is to dig channels within and without to connect more meaningfully to myself and the world with which I relate.

Life is for living... and living is a choice.

Even though I have been presented with a wonderful opportunity to share my life in a relationship with one whom I call "friend" in addition to "partner", I feel also a distinct desire to maintain my separateness even in our collectiveness.

I guess this is the essence of my current struggle. It has been a while since I have had any relationship and even longer since I embraced a healthy one. I know that my responsibilty lies to myself in ensuring that it remains healthy and in addition, allows both of us to reach greater heights of spritual growth.

I have been learning about myself, and understanding myself more deeply, questioning my motivations and my relations with the external. As a result, I am slowly, finding my footing and getting closer to my own truth.

I think, for the very first time, I can really honestly say that I have become a woman. It's kinda strange... I know... but neither natural nor societal law dictate when one truly steps into adulthood. I have acted like an adult for a long time, and firstborns ususally grow up fast. In the process, I lost a significant part of my childhood and had to retrace the steps to catch up.

I no longer want to be more than I am. I no longer want to be older than I am. I am happy to be as I am, knowing that my growth with continue as my life experiences allow.

I have my human struggles and almost daily I fight a valiant war against the depressiveness of this isolated existence, and I slowly find peace in the midst of lonleliness.

I am not lonely because I am unloved. To the contrary, I am lonely because I am very loved, and miss the free two-way expression of this love with my biological and spiritual families and friends. But I am learning to embrace this loneliness, not as evil, but good.

It is the vehicle for which I can explore the depths of who I truly am and what I truly want out of this life.

Call it a spritual hermitage if you wish, and me a student of life.