Mothers Day is May 12th.

8 Ways to be a good Mother, instead of a Perfect One!

By Kate Kripke

I think it’s fair to say that each one of us enters motherhood with a set of beliefs or expectations about what it means to be a good mother. We develop these beliefs from the pressure of our communities and society as a whole, the experiences with our own parents, and through the expectations of friends, family and media. These outside influences can have so much power and influence over us that when we finally do become mothers ourselves, it is unbearably difficult to listen to our own ideas of what this “good mom” thing is all about. So difficult, in fact, that anxiety, depression, and overwhelming emotion can latch on like crazy to our new identity.

I want to share a brief story with you about a mom who I saw in my office this summer. This mom has given me permission to share her process around the topic of being a good mother, because it gives such a clear example of the ways in which perfectionist thinking and unachievable expectations can lead to distress. Celia* came to my office when her baby was about four months old. She was attractive, articulate, and also very scared by the unpleasant thoughts and anxieties she had been feeling since her baby was born. Celia felt that her thoughts and emotions were out of control and that she was going “crazy.” She described a traumatic delivery in which an emergency C-Section led her to believe that she would not make it through alive. “I realized that I needed to be willing to give up my life for my baby,” she said.

Everything worked out but Postmortem Depression began. When Celia’s symptoms were being managed through a combination of medication and therapy support, she began the process of identifying beliefs about motherhood that might be adding to her distress. We created exercises that with her in my office that asked to write down all the things that she believe to be “good enough” mom. Celia’s first list looked like this:

• A “good enough” mom: Loves her child unconditionally

• Always does what is best for child

• Never resents her child

• Should be able to handle kids all day without needing breaks (luxury)



This list made me anxious when reading it, and so I can only imagine what it must have felt like to her to believe that all of these things were a necessary part of mothering. After some discussion, the list was rewritten to:

• A Good Enough Mom does her best to

• Teach her child how to live life to the fullest

• Be there for her children when they need her

• Teach her child the importance of self-worth Provide food, shelter, and love



Celia is doing much better. She has not had a panic attack in some time and her scary thoughts have decreased. She is more able to access feelings of hope and optimism and she is enjoying her baby more. Her medication is helping with the biochemical imbalances that added to her symptoms of postpartum anxiety and OCD and her more realistic idea of what it means to be a good mother to her kiddo has taken some of the pressure off.

We all do this. Each of us enters motherhood with some idea of what we “should” do in this new and often overwhelming role. While many of those things may be entirely appropriate, many others may be entirely unachievable. I encourage you to ask yourselves what is it that you believe goes into being a “good enough” mom to your kiddos and to write down your own list. Take note of the “shoulds” and the “always’” and whether or not you are noting ideas that are truly yours or whether they are someone else’s (breastfeeding your baby vs providing nutritious food whenever possible might be a good example), your assumptions of someone else’s. My guess is that each of you is most certainly being a good mother already…

Source: http://www.postpartumprogress.com/8-ways-to-be-agood-mother-instead-of-a-perfect-one

A Day Spent In Paradise

By Denise Salman

Creating delightful memories is what a trip to Ocho Rios, Jamaica, is all about, so friends these are the places you must visit whenever you get there.

Dolphin Cove Ocho Rios

This beautiful property has a natural cove which is surrounded by 5 acres of lush tropical rain forest. Visitors have the opportunity to interact and "Swim With" dolphins, enjoying the thrill and charm of these amazing lovable creatures. Visitors can also swim with, hold, feed and learn about the evolutionary secrets of the Caribbean sharks. They can capture their dream of being a dolphin trainer for the day.

Dolphin Cove is the place to spend the day enjoying lots of fun activities. There is something for everyone. Entrance includes and allows guests the following activities as often as they wish. Guests can captain their own mini-boats and explore the coast, interact and snorkel with stingrays, take a glass-bottom kayak ride to explore the fascinating underwater world, watch the hilarious Shark Show and interact with exotic birds, snakes and iguanas on the Jungle Trail walk.

Relax on the glistening white sandy beaches, enjoy the tropical surroundings, taste the famous Jamaican coffee at the Star Buccaneers coffee shop, browse for souvenirs or jewellery at the gift shops.

See the Shark Show while the one-legged pirates roam freely along the boardwalk of “Little Port Royal” and perform a “jig or two”. Entrance is included with all dolphin and shark interactive programs. Once at Dolphin Cove, you’ll have the most exciting experience of your lifetime.

After all that visitors will want to take the wild fun trip along the coast to Dunns River Falls. Where they will hold hands with all those who enjoy climbing and a guide will show them exactly what they need to do to make it to the top of the falls.

A very invigorating massage is what they'll get, if they should decide to stop for a while and sit before a rock where the water flows over. It will beat on your head and your shoulders, leaving them with a great relaxed feeling. Another surprise offered by nature. Visitors will also want to enjoy the exhilarating bobsled ride, which was inspired by our Jamaican winter Olympians. After all that it will be time for a lovely meal at Mystic Dining.

Where the panoramic view is great and the food is excellent. After you have rested for a while you will want to take flight through the tops of the rainforest with the "Canopy zip line tour" or you might want to see eye to eye with the wild life when you take the “Sky Explorer Tours”. Visitors also enjoy seeing the colorful Jamaican butterflies as they fly among the beautiful flowers at the "Butterfly Attraction Garden". And visitors should not leave until they hop on over to Chukka Caribbean.

Where they will extend all that fun. They'll want to take the country bus trip to Bob Marley's Birth place, where he was buried. While they rock to his great Reggae songs and check out all the other things. They can do while they are enjoying this wonderful adventure; after all this visitors will agree with me, when I say Jamaica is truly a paradise.

Tia Simms-Lyma

Tia is the latest sportswoman to come out of the hugely successful stable of athletes at Plymouth College, a private co-ed school in Devon. She started with gymnastics at the age of six and went on to try diving at seven “I got scared at the three metre board” she laughed “so I decided to do something with my feet on the ground”. She’s certainly achieved that - at 13 she is now is a champion fencer specialising in Epee and all eyes are on her for the future Olympic Games.


There would be good reason to take a bet that the quiet, charming youngster will make headline news, along with the many other athletes that have come out of the extraordinarily successful Plymouth College. Over the last few years Tia has been the double British champion, came third in the “Under 15’s” in Poland; finished in the last eight in the British Cadet Championship and is now gearing up for world championships to be held in Croatia. She recently recently fenced for Jamaica, the home country of her mother’s family, when she took part in competitions in Bratislava and Gotthenburg.

Tia now represents Jamaica in Epee and is the only athlete in the country to do so. Representatives from Jamaica (which is her mother’s homeland) asked Tia to represent them in Epee. She jumped at the chance. Tia has a great chance of reaching the next Olympics. It won’t be for the want of support from her family – or from her school. Dad Andy was a semi professional cyclist and sports coach who now works with Tia to help her with fitness. “Tia works really hard, but its important to ensure that she gets as much rest and recovery as she does training and that’s part of my job” he says.

Andy Hill is Plymouth College’s Director of Pentathlon and Fencing. He’s had 30 years of training under his belt and some of the country’s finest have been helped by his expertise over the years. “Tia is doing better than anyone else I’ve ever coached at the same age” he says. “She’s very straightforward, never misses a session, works hard and isn’t temperamental. She’s a delight to work with and she is definitely Olympic material – if not in four years, definitely eight.”

Meanwhile the girl with the radiant smile looks on. “Andy is fantastic” she says. The whole school is really supportive – it’s a very happy environment. I don’t feel under pressure and find it really helpful to be amongst so many other athletes who understand what it’s like to train competitively.”  So what are the hopes and dreams of this extraordinary 13 year old? She muses. “To have enough money to have new Puma trainers every term and to meet Levi Roots – I love his food and really admire how he’s got on in life – oh, and a gold at the Olympic Games” she adds as an afterthought.

Although Tia has a fantastic future in the sport this may be potentially hampered by a lack of funds. Tia needs to travel to international competitions Jamaica. These travel costs are at present unsustainable for her family. Tia like many other athletes desperately needs sponsorship to help her achieve the next Olympics. Without sponsorship coming soon Tia may not be able to attend the world championships in Croatia on the 29th March.

February 14th is Valentine’s Day

7 Ways to love yourself

1. Express Gratitude:
Express gratitude for the person that you are. For instance, cultivate an appreciation for your strengths and gifts. Also, feel a sense of gratitude that you are alive and well, and fully capable of making a difference in your life.

2. Nurture Your Dreams:
Why deny yourself your dreams? When you nurture your dreams, you would love the life that you are leading. Every moment that you live is a joy; you are expressing yourself. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.

3. Boost Your Self Confidence:
Make a deliberate attempt to look for opportunities that can help improve your confidence. For instance, if you are particularly good at doing something, set aside more time to indulge and improve your skills on it. Knowing that you have particular gifts can boost your self esteem.

4. Relax:
Give yourself space to take breaks every now and then. If you spend your time working, without paying attention to your health, it also means that you do not love yourself well enough to take care of your own body. Fill your time with silence, soothing music and visions of beauty; anything that nourishes your Soul

5. Have Fun:
Inject some fun into your life. Life is meant to be an enjoyable. Don’t take life or yourself too seriously. If you can think of life in this manner, you automatically relax and quit worrying over things that do not matter.

6. Look After Your Body:
It is important that you strengthen yourself with proper nutrition and regular exercise. Your body is a temple and you should treat it with respect, love and care. It has been found that the lack of self love is often the root causes of conditions like eating disorders, obesity or even terminal diseases.

7. Learn To See Beauty:
When you learn to see beauty in everything, you will also see beauty in yourself. Hence, stop to smell the flowers. Notice everything. Enjoy feeling everything: the pink blush of the flowers in your garden, the greenness of the plains, the whisper of the gentle wind, or the myriad hues of an evening sky.

Source: www.abundancetapestry.com/how-to-love-yourself-in-17-ways/

SWITCH TO BREADFRUIT FLOUR

By John Anthony

The foreign taste and foreign itches that Jamaicans have developed partly through the efforts of our low self-esteem, history and of the foreign media I call the Hollywood Trojan Horses, now have the common housewife screaming for deliverance as flour prices jump and dance upwards.

Why in a land where we do not grow wheat, do we have a lust and taste for wheat flour? When I was a boy we had breadfruit falling off trees (ripened and rotten)! Why do we not have the taste for breadfruit flour? Breadfruit trees used to be easy to grow and required low maintenance and so the associated costs of production should not be prohibitive unlike yam or cassavas which have to be replanted annually.

But when a brainwashed perception (Wheat flour is the best) develops from a bias, it becomes entrenched and almost immovable. The local housewife and citizenry are as much to blame for rising wheat flour prices because they lusted after the wheat flour, developing American agriculture and did not demand breadfruit flour and so lead to the development of Jamaican agriculture. Hard choices in building a nation often means changing our tastes and preferences before crises hits. We should have developed a taste for breadfruit flour decades ago!

FOOLISH JAMAICANS NEED TO BE TAUGHT WHAT NATION BUILDING IS We thought nation building was watching cable TV and eating American apples. We thought that nation building was getting a multiple visa. We thought that profiling and styling was nation building. Or we thought it meant overstaffing Air Jamaica or using short cut methodology. Oh foolish people no one ever taught you that nation building means zipping up your pants and going home to your wife? No one ever taught you that nation building was changing your foreign taste to local one so your own farmers could develop local agriculture? Nation building means switching from wheat flour to breadfruit flour and setting a goal to plant five million breadfruit trees by 2010! Nation building means cancelling your cable TV and starting a college fund for your children and grandchildren.

WE WILL NEVER DEVELOP OUR ECONOMY AS LONG AS WE HAVE ENTRENCHED FOREIGN TASTES AND ITCHES Low self-esteem people make a low self-esteem nation and LOW SELF-ESTEEM PEOPLE MAKE THE BEST CUSTONERS! All smart marketing experts know this. Low self- esteem people will spend their money on cell phones and not on a college fund for their children. They will buy American grapes not invest in their bank accounts and cable tv before setting up a retirement account. Low self-esteem persons make the best consumers because one of the most potent drivers of human interaction is the desire for recognition and importance. These persons will go into debt and to great physical lengths to feel important and style and profile to catch the eye of onlookers.

In addition, we are destabilizing our economy by demanding cell phones when hundreds of thousands of citizens do not even need them, building the wealth of Irish and British companies who transfer our wealth potential into their bank accounts in London and Dublin, while they masquerade as Jamaican entities! Do we need Garvey to rise from the grave to open our eyes? He is not dead but alive! Open your eyes and behold him! In the future when inevitable price increases arrive we will scream then as we are screaming now when all along we should have been saving our money!

“Jahfakans”

Where is your Cultural Pride?

By Myrna Loy

While I was sitting distribution copies of “Blackbright Magazine” at the carnival, I noticed three noisy Black men. One of them was wearing a red, yellow and green t-shirt with the herb symbol on the front. He was holding a bottle of Remy Martin to his mouth and was gulping greedily. Another wore dreadlocks and was waving a half consumed bottle of whiskey over his head while being held around the neck by the third, who was wearing a t-shirt with the words “Jamaica – Irie Mon” on the front. If you hadn’t seen them laughing minutes before, you would thought they were fighting.

They were generally drawing attention to themselves and obviously under the influence. What infuriated me was that they were imitating Jamaican patios, wore symbols that identify them as Jamaicans when they were obviously not Jamaicans, and worse their conduct was doing Jamaicans a disservice. Even though their impersonation was poor, any non Blacks or non Jamaicans could erroneously categories them as Jamaicans. These men are what some call “Jafakans” i.e. fake Jamaicans. Their imitation of the Jamaican identity would not be so offensive if it did not negatively implicate Jamaicans, but it does! Onlooker seemed genuinely concerned of the affray. I was concerned as well, but for a different reason.

I was worried that non Blacks may not know that Africa is divided into 43 countries and there are approximately 21 Caribbean island territories, so that these men could have come from any one of them! I didn’t like the idea that if the affray was reported and descriptions were requested, “Witnessed” (being none the wiser), could easily say: “they were definitely Jamaican I could tell by their accent!” Hence the rap: “H’enting dat gwann a foreign, de yardie get the blame”. A Jamaican cannot be defined nor categorized. Jamaicans include Lord Ouseley, who is a member of the House of Lords; Delroy Lindo, who is a famous actor; Lennox Lewis, who is a World Heavy with Champion; Naomi Campbell or Tyson Beckford, who are supermodels; Patrick Ewing and Donovan Bailey, who are sportsmen; Dian Abbot, who is a Politician; Bob Marley, Busta Rhymes, Harry Belafonte, who are musicians to name a few. But for some reason, Jamaicans are seldom associated with high achievers, the famous and the infamous.

Because of biased media coverage that results in stereotyping and bigotry, the un-informed usually think of Jamaicans as trouble maker, aggressors, wear dread locks, smoke weed, sell coke and are gun- proud. As a result Jamaicans get a bad reputation and end up being apprehended (or blamed) for many criminal misdemeanors when the offence could have been committed by someone from another island or country pretending to be Jamaican. I am not sure why non Jamaicans try to implicate Jamaicans by mimicking their accent and their stance. Maybe they don’t realize that they are doing it or maybe, subconsciously, they lack cultural pride. All I can say is that if you from Africa, claim your African-ness. If you are from one of the island territories of the Caribbean- claim your true heritage. If you are born in this country (UK) – maintain your parent’s culture and don’t borrow someone else’s’. Everyone should be proud of tier heritage, their language and their culture and while “playing Jamaican” can be fun, if a non Jamaican is not behaving in a law abiding fashion yet imitation a Jamaican, they are reinforcing the negative stereotypes and making it difficult for Jamaicans to gain respect.

The Winner’s Edge

Written by Janice K. Maxwell

www.JamaicanDiaspora.com

If you’re going to hold someone down, you’re going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by you won repression.

Toni Morrison

US novelist-Nobel prize winner for literature 1993

Being an optimist, I don’t worry about the past; it’s the now and the future that is all we have. Hip hop mogul, Nellie has a song about being number one. It says that two is just a number and three nobody remembers. The Olympics is seen portrayed as an excellent representation of being a winner. We see the tangible of the athlete standing on the podium representing country, the medals and the 15 minutes of fame. Many people believe this as the only way to measure success and being a winner, but it’s not.

True winners posses attribute that are not noticed initially. For quite sometime, I have been receiving the email about the old woman in the purple hat. I’ve even seen the purple hat story expanded in the short story series by Ellen Burstyn and CCH Pounder. For those who have not gotten such a positive email, the following is a summation. It chronicles her life in decades.

As a teenager, she was concerned about her looks; as a woman in twenties, she was concerned about being worthy enough to be approved by her peers, husband ect… Now in her 70’s, she looks in the mirror, smile, puts on the purple hat, goes out to meet the world head on in confidence knowing that people will never stop her. Although we all have it, many of us do not know it: we are all winners. The intangible winner’s edge is measured by how well you do compare to what you could have done, which is to quit.

Persistence is the edge that true winners’ posses. The edge for such winners is giving it your best shot, personal achievement and having the right attitude regardless of the outcome. That edge is in college students who complete their degree on the seven year plan rather that the traditional four year. That edge is in marathon runners who finish dead last. They kept running hours after the race ended; they did not stop because the cameras and crowds were not there to greet them as they crossed the finish line. That edge pushes you to keep going because in the end, the race is with yourself.

The winner’s edge is finding contentment in your current space. Where you are right now is all you have because where you should be may never come. In many cases, the disappointments and unanswered wishes turned out to be some of the greatest blessings. The unplanned pregnancy becomes your only source of unconditional love when both parents died and the child’s father leaves you in a single year. The partner that you dated for three years and just knew you would marry once you got out of college – in four years but it really took seven. Acceptance and always moving forward is the edge.