From very early on in life I have had to deal with rejection, even though I did not necessarily know its name at the time. I was rejected by society from the moment I was born, because I was too black, I was too fat, I was too short, I was deemed not good enough. But I thank God for His love and redemption and for Him restoring in me the person He created wonderfully.
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| Me and big bro rocking nerds |
I remember growing up in a community where my family was rejected because we were said to think we were better than others. But see, all my family did was their best efforts to be better than the system that told them they were not good enough. My family never tried to be better than anyone else, instead, I have a recollection of my grandmother always having people come to cry to her and she did all she could to make them better. All we were even interested in was beating the odds that enforced worthlessness onto a black person. We strived to pull ourselves out of a mentality of blaming the world for what happened or didn't happen for us or to us.
As much as I was young, I imagine that my family hoped that the rest of the neighbourhood would join in and pull together, but the exact opposite happened.
Be assured my community, our efforts have never been about you, we did not go to "good schools" to make you feel small, we did not live in a bigger house because of anything else but the fact that there were 15 of us living in the same house. If you knew anything about us, you would have known that there was room enough for you too in our "mall" as you choose to call it.
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| Mother Hen |
If there was any group of people that was raised to uphold humility, it was my family. See, my grandmother used to wake up at 4 every morning to bake fish and get kids ready for school. As soon as her 5 children (plus extras in the form of nieces/nephew), that she was raising alone left for school, she would clean the house and soon start making her way to her first school where she would sell her fish so that her children would have food in their stomach. After school, they knew they could not go play with other children, because they had to help granny buy more fish and clean it for the next day, others had to walk around the neighbourhood selling some more fish. Tell me then, how could such a people have a complete disregard or think they were better than others?
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Love abounds
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The rejection that me and my family suffered did us great though, because it has kept us together as a unit and taught us that there are times when all we have is each other. I value my family and as cliché as it may sound, if I had a choice, I would choose them over and again.
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| Dinner with the family |
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| Fun times |
I don't know where I am getting with this post, but I will say this, I thank my grandmother for teaching us unity and humanity, I thank God that we are eating the fruits of her humility. As for rejection, she taught us to live with what we had, people included, and to look beyond hurts and commit ourselves to what mattered, FAMILY. To other people, family is mother/father/brother/sister, but I have a family of 20, and that blesses my heart all the time.
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| The brotherhood |
It is your choice what you will do when people reject you, you can choose to retaliate or you can allow the rejection in one place push you towards a better place. Because of the rejection I mentioned at the beginning, I spent most of my time reading and getting to know myself, and if I could love myself anymore than I do, it would be conceit, haha. I made a choice that the rejection and what people thought of me or did not think of me, would not define how I would turn out. Let rejection be a teacher, do not wallow in pity when rejected, find the treasure that others have not seen and embrace it.
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| For generations to come... |
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| Until the 10th generation |
These are only but my #LoudThoughts
Lovely!!!
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