...and it is probably going to be a long time before I get the opportunity to do this again.

I am actually raising the proverbial white flag to one of my cousins. Now, realize that this is not me conceding anything, and truly there is only one reason that I would dare say that the white flag, at least with this cousin and in this situation, has been risen.

SO, for those of you who routinely read what I have to spout about on a daily basis, this is going to REALLY take you by surprise, because if you have been reading my blog for as many years that I have been writing it, then you know that I rarely tell people that they are right unless in some small way they are, in fact, right. This is painful in some ways because it means that for once in the history of me and my cousin, she is actually right. This is not saying that I agree with her on everything EXCEPT for one thing.

Her comments to me at first pissed me off, because in general, no one has the right to tell anyone else how they should feel or how a person should allow themselves to "get over" something. Unless it directly relates to me the last thing anymore that I am going to tell someone that they should do - ESPECIALLY after all that I have seen and all that I have seen my parents and sister do for my Nana - is tell someone that they need to get over something quickly, even as that something took years to get as bad as it has. The truth is that I am not sure how much I care.

Here is where she was right - I am angry,and I make no bones about it. I refer to those who have pissed me off without being too terribly horrible about it, and I write about how I feel from my own experience and try hard to not relive anything that I did not experience myself. I only write from my own observations. The part that she is right about is that I am very angry, but what she does not realize is that I have proven the mightiness of the pen versus the sword, and she told me so without telling me outright.

I came to the realization that my power lies within my ability to write from a perspective that people actually understand and can relate to, and when I write, I do so from that place in each of us that is about what our souls have been through versus what the reality is. My soul has witnessed anomalies of the heart and the spirit that no person bordering on human and primal should be excused from. NO person deserves to be treated as though they are somehow less than another because they happen to do work that some may feel is not fitting of anyone they are related by blood to. I have called on the Artemis in me that says it is my position to protect the vulnerable and protest the actions of the sickened and selfish majority. This is the position of those whose life's work is that of the mighty written word. It is not an easy job, an easy mission, but it is one that those women with an Artemis complex take on as a second skin, a game face, if you will.

I am powerful with my word-smithing abilities, much like the person who stood up and said what she did is powerful with her abilities of creating on a level that most only wish they could. What she is waiting for in so far as what it is that she has decided to take on as her life's work escapes me, because she knows what it is that I am talking about when speaking or writing in regards to life's work. I have told her on a million and one occasions what it is that she should check out because just like her mother, she has hands like that of a master sculptor when it comes to what it is that I tell her that I know - and I think even she knows- what she is really good at.

Yet it is on her to decide what it is that she will do with her life. I cannot believe I am going to say so, but this particular cousin was right when she said that I am "very angry." You're damned straight I am angry, and I have the right to be this angry. I have a right to be mad, and I have a right to say what I have to say, and I have the right to be in the mindset that I am in right now. I have the right to say and write and do all the things that I am doing right now. Just like everyone has the right to feel how they do at a particular time in their lives, I have the right to feel like I have been violated, that my parents have been treated poorly, that things did not have to be the way they are and have been for a long time. I have the right to feel like I do.

I thought about it last night - if all this anger is this powerful, imagine all the more powerful I would be if instead I were to draw from this experience what it is that I can do, be and change if I could harness that anger and turn it into something else?

This is not saying that I won't have other perceivably "bad" things to say about this whole situation. Far from it, in fact. This was written because for once in my life I have had to find out from one of the most unlikeliest sources that what I hold in my hands as a gift from God can do so much more than what I am and it is doing.

We each hold the power of our gifts to give to the world in our hands, and we are all blessed beyond measure with gifts from Akua, gifts that no one else is as good at doing as we are. I think I have mentioned once or twice in the past that Elvis Presley scribbled onto a piece of paper one night while on tour the words "God Loves me, but He Loves me more when I am singing." I can say that indeed, God does love me, but apparently He loves me WAY more when I am writing something.

Now, if I could just get the person to whom this proverbial "OK, you're right...sort of..." white flag is partially riased to, to realize that God loves her the most when she is standing behind someone, shears to the frayed tips of someone's long hair, she would understand what it is to know without doubt what she was born to do.

You, me, we all were brought into this life to create beauty for others, ultimately creating beauty for our own Selves. We should all be so lucky to have people point out the splinters in our eyes. I have known for a long time that mine is a power harnessed within the confines of the written word and not within the wars waged that give me something to write about.

Anyhow, now that I know what I am supposed to do...it's your turn.

MAPU

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