Iyanifa. @iyanifa - Tumblr Blog

END SARS

END POLICE BRUTALITY IN NIGERIA

“I’ve had horrible luck finding a husband. Most marriages in this country are traditional, and I have a middleman who arranges interviews with potential suitors. He probably thinks I’m a snob. Because I either turn the men down or scare them off. But you should hear the questions they ask me. Nothing about personality. Nothing about character. Everything is about money: ‘What is your salary?’, ‘Do you have a car?, ‘Is this your only apartment?’ I used to answer these questions, but I’m much harsher now. I’ll dismiss them right away. I’ve had men ask me to stop working. I had a professor ask me to stop studying because I have more degrees than him. Another man ended the interview when he learned that my ‘doctorate’ did not mean I was a medical doctor. It’s ridiculous. Some friends and family want me to settle for the sake of having children. But I have a viewpoint, and I’m not going to sacrifice that viewpoint just because I’m getting older. I believe in marriage. And I’d like children. But if it means I have to accept anything, maybe it’s best to not get married at all.” (Alexandria, Egypt)

apocryphalstories

I like drinking coffee alone and reading alone. I like riding the bus alone and walking home alone. It gives me time to think and set my mind free. I like eating alone and listening to music alone. But when I see a mother with her child, a girl with her lover, or a friend laughing with their best friend, I realize that even though I like being alone, I don’t fancy being lonely.

Unknown (via apocryphalstories)

humansofnewyork

“It was early in the morning when the military came. I woke up to a big sound that sounded like a bomb blast. Then the shooting started and everyone was screaming. We ran for our lives. It was dark and there were people running all around us. It only took us thirty minutes to get to safety because our village is close to the border. But then some of us decided to go back. There were five of us. We were curious. We wanted to see what happened to the others. We crawled on our stomachs to the top of a hill, and looked down at our village. There were so many dead bodies. Some of them were my cousins. I saw a girl from school with three soldiers kneeling on top of her. They were covering her mouth so she wouldn’t scream. I felt so dizzy. I couldn’t stand up. I used to have a dream that I was going to grow up and help my family. I was studying hard. Now I don’t even know why I’d want to live in this world.” ————————————– This week I’m sharing a series of first hand accounts from Rohingya refugees. The Rohingya are a persecuted ethnic minority who have been violently evicted from Myanmar by Buddhist extremists. Over the past year, nearly 700,000 Rohingya have been driven from their homes and are now residing in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Their living conditions are already dire, and monsoon season is approaching. As we share their stories, we are raising money to help build inexpensive bamboo houses for these refugees. We’ve raised enough for 30 houses so far. Please consider donating: http://bit.ly/2H0w5lm

archive95205-blog

shaniae

Reblog in 10 seconds and $1700 will come your way

trainhardrunfast

I have nothing to lose and 1700$ to gain

ohemgeeitsstephaniemarie-deacti

Same

voidlorddabombcom

CASH

Iyanifa. turned 7 today!

#tumblr birthday #tumblr milestone

kushandwizdom

thelovejournals

And when you choose a life partner, you’re choosing a lot of things, including your parenting partner and someone who will deeply influence your children, your eating companion for about 20,000 meals, your travel companion for about 100 vacations, your primary leisure time and retirement friend, your career therapist, and someone whose day you’ll hear about 18,000 times.

Tim Urban, Wait But Why - How to Pick Your Life Partner (via thelovejournals)

biscuitsarenice

Actress, Miriam Margolyes: When you know your worth, you know your worth.

auroranibley

She is beautiful and I love her.

iyanifa

Alone

Days when I’m drunk on life

and my spirit is full.

When I’m all laughter

I use those days to chase after dreams.

My spirit is strong and I am full of life.

- Tides (vs 1), Tapiwa Mugabe

The last two days have been a gift from heaven - actually, every day is a gift from heaven. What I mean is that I’ve experienced a lightness in the last two days that could only have been possible because of love. I have read, so often, how we dread being alone and how we ought to learn to live with our aloneness. I have been alone - far too often, and have learned to live with it, but in the past week I am sure that I got thrown off into a mild depression because I was alone. Perhaps not because I was alone, but because I did not want to be. My sadness, in hindsight, came from a place of resistance. I tried to resist being alone, when that failed, I tried to resist the sadness which followed. I was miserable. I didn’t have to be, but I was and from where I was, there was no way out. Asides from sucking it up and seeing it through.

After that episode, perhaps as a result of it, the Universe aligned itself so beautifully for me. I was, within a short while, in the midst of a lot of the people I love and who love me. The after effects of which I am still experiencing, and have been in the last two days.

I believe that the realization to come out of this is that I’d much rather be surrounded by my people than be alone. However when it happens that I can’t be with the people I love, for whatever reason, I’ll need to take a deep breath and settle into the discomfort that might come from that. It doesn’t mean that I am not loved. It doesn’t mean that they’d rather not be with me. It probably just means what it is; that it is not a convenient time for them.

#being alone

If I sound adamant it is because I am speaking from personal experience. When I came to New York I was in pieces, and though it sounds perverse, the way I recovered a sense of wholeness was not by meeting someone or by falling in love, but rather by handling the things that other people had made, slowly absorbing by way of this contact the fact that loneliness, longing, does not mean one has failed, but simply that one is alive.

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, Olivia Laing

#loneliness

In all cases where it can be made to serve the interests of the men controlling church and state, downward self-transcendence by means of herd-intoxication is treated as something legitimate and even highly desirable… When crowd delirium is exploited for the benefit of governments and orthodox churches, the exploiters are always very careful not to allow the intoxication to go too far. The ruling minorities make use of their subjects’ craving for downward self-transcendence in order, first, to amuse and distract them, and second, to get them into a subpersonal state of heightened suggestibility. Religious and political ceremonials are welcomed by the masses as opportunities for getting drunk on herd-poison, and by their rulers as opportunities for planting suggestions in minds which have momentarily ceased to be capable of reason or free will

The Devils of Loudun, Aldous Huxley

#self transcendence #herd mentality

The Kingdom of God comes on earth and through the perception of the earth as it is in itself, and not as it appears to a will distorted by self-centered cravings and revulsions, to an intellect distorted by ready-made beliefs

The Devils of Loudun, Aldous Huxley

Coming Home To Myself

I fucked around and forgot how to be by my self. I only realized how far along (from me) I’d drifted when I found myself craving empty whispers and holding on to half-assed encounters which only left me craving for something deeper. perhaps, wider...?

I found that I was crying without actually shedding any tears and in between my growing contempt (which I could have sworn was love) for the object of my desire(s), I was growing bitter and the spillover of my bitterness was spreading towards innocent souls, one in particular, whom I felt the most pity for.

I begrudgingly carried out my selfless acts, but there was in fact nothing selfless about my morning messages; my afternoon messages; or my calls at night to check on what kind of day they had. I wanted something in return and I wasn’t even honest to myself about it.

When life has a lesson to teach you, you will learn it one way or the other. I read that somewhere, or something that implied the same thing. Anyway, I was looking to overcome this overbearing sense of ‘aloneness’, maybe not initially. But I got so comfortable that I forgot how to cater to myself and make myself feel all the love I was beginning to desperately reach out of my being for.

Perhaps it wasn’t so bad because through this I was able to listen for my intuition and guidance, and my oh my, I heard MySelf crystal clear as I sat in meditation. It was beautiful. And now I have something to look forward to.

Dear Self, this is not a promise to not seek fulfillment outside of you (and all your amazingness). This is however a promise to always find my way back to your warm and loving embrace which is constantly there and unconditional and accepting of me and all my fuck ups.

This is to coming back home - to Myself, which is where I belong.

Your children are not your children. They are sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For thir souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the make upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness. For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He also loves the bow that is stable.

Khalil Gibran

#parenting #children