The Unexpected Lesson I Learned at My First Rave

This past weekend, I learned a very valuable lesson about perspective. And accountability.

It came at an unexpected time, in an even more unexpected place: Beach Club Fest 2015.

Thousands of Toronto’s hottest party animals descended on Muzik Nightclub Saturday afternoon for an all-day, all-night party. Women wearing bikinis and stilettos walked past muscular, shirtless men.

There I was in the midst of it all, wondering what I had been doing there. I had never been into electronic dance music, but when my two friends insisted I would have a good time, I felt compelled to accept the invite.

I lay there in my yellow bikini under a tree, taking in the sun. I realized a long time ago that I have an abnormal obsession and love for the feeling of the sun on my skin, and not for the tan. I just love feeling the warmth of the sun on me. So much so that whenever the sun got trapped in the big tree ahead of me, my smile turned upside down.

I had been laying there for about half an hour when I realized that the sun was diminishing. It was moving very gradually away from me and was almost completely hidden behind the tree.

My friends had suggested moving to the pool where there was more sun. But I insisted on staying where we were. I knew that after a short while, the sun would be back in the open sky and I would feel that warmth again.

Another half hour passed and the sun was still hiding behind the tree. While it had indeed moved, it still had a long way to go before it was out in the clear sky again. Fed up, my friends said, “Stephanie, there is sun at the pool, we just have to move there.”

The idea of getting up, gathering all my belongings, and trying to find comfort at the pool seemed daunting. But I wanted the warmth of the sun more than I wanted to stay where I was. And so I picked myself up, gathered my belongings, and walked over to the pool.

When we got to the pool, I couldn’t believe how warm it was there. The sun was directly on me! People were dancing. Heck, I was dancing. There were beach balls everywhere. But more importantly, there was sun. There wasn’t a cloud-or a tree-in sight.

I was crushed that I hadn’t moved here earlier. I could’ve been feeling the comfort of the sun all this time. Mid-dance move I asked myself what had been stopping me the whole time I was laying by the tree.

Truthfully, I just didn’t want to move. I was comfortable. I knew the sun was going to come back in due time. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to do anything. I was being lazy. I just wanted to lay there and feel the sun.

Then it hit me.

Constantly, easily, and unforgivingly do we make excuses for ourselves to stay in whatever situation we might be in at the time. We get comfortable, we tell ourselves it will happen later, or next time, when really, those are grounds for it, whatever it might be, to not happen at all.

How could I have possibly laid there under that tree for almost an hour waiting for the sun to come back when there was sun elsewhere the entire time? It’s like I was standing in a dark room complaining there was no light and there had been a switch in front of me the whole time. All I had to do was reach for it.

That tree had represented every piece of adversity I had ever faced. It represented the word no. It represented every excuse I had ever made for myself, and every excuse I made for others.

We get so familiar with the darkness that we forget what the warmth of light feels like. We forget how to remind ourselves to look elsewhere when our current circumstance isn't good enough for us. We forget what good enough is.

It is so easy to stumble across mediocrity, unhappiness, or complacency. It’s so easy to fall into a rut and decorate it and call it home. But just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s okay.

This weekend I learned that in life, there is only so much sunlight before the darkness comes. And you’re going to want as much of it as you can get, not only because it feels good but because you deserve it. You have to be willing to get up and move sometimes.

As I stood there on the side of the pool, looking all around me and feeling kissed by the sun, I learned two very valuable lessons. The first is that if you want it, whatever it might be, you have to go after it. The second is that the music of life really isn't so bad once you start dancing.

A Letter From a "Skinny Bitch"

• 

Few things are more frustrating than annoying songs that are hauntingly catchy.

So you can imagine why I nearly jumped out the window recently after a car ride with my mom when she turned Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass” all the way up on the way to our destination.

My mom, a proud plus-sized woman always loves a song that encourages women to feel comfortable in their skin. But as the lyrics marched their way into my ears, I was slightly frustrated at how this artist, who I’ve never heard of before, went about doing that.

The song refers to slim women as “skinny bitches”. Trainor determines that skinny women think they’re fat. She also assumes that skinny women don’t have booties, can’t shake them, and a few other pieces of nonsense not worth repeating, but certainly worth discussing.

I love a cold hard case of irony. But this is the type of irony really gets me questioning society. The same society, in fact, that people seem to be so hell-bent on fixing, despite contributing to the issues while on their quest for change.

Here’s a little anecdote:

Growing up, I had to drink nutritional supplements in addition to my meals because I was what Trainor called, a skinny bitch, even in my adolescence. I ate a fair portion of meat, vegetables, and every other food group, often in excess. Truthfully, I still do. But I am constantly told that I am envied, disliked, and even hated (yes, really) for my body’s ability to ingest food and not suffer typical consequences of weight gain.

The sad part of the story is that during my transition into teenage-hood, I had heard that I was “too boney”, “too scrawny” and “too mawga” (a name for skinny in West Indian culture) so often that I did actually believe that something was wrong with me. I actually believed that I needed to gain pounds and have curves and that I was ugly.

So when I heard this song, I just got fed up with it all. I guess I just thought society was past referring to excess fat as “junk”, be it in the trunk or any other part of the vehicle. I also assumed, perhaps wrongly, that not all skinny women need to be likened to Barbie dolls. Are we still on that? And lastly, I was really hoping that after the word skinny, did not come the word bitch.

But sadly, women as a whole are on our way to being society’s bitch, if we’re not already there. We do exactly what we’re told. Collectively, women spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on breast implants, Botox, medications to slow the natural process of aging, and diet pills. And we just keep going in whichever direction society’s wind blows when they tell us that big boobs are sexy, but not too big of course, that’s gross. Or skinny is sexy, but if you’re too skinny, you’re anorexic. Or short hair is sexy, but only if it’s styled a certain way…

I imagine that there are readers wondering who I think I am to be criticizing this emerging phenomenon of skinny-bashing. In fact, discussing this blog idea with a few friends yesterday, one of them said:

“Ugh, fat people have been bashed by skinny people for like, ever. Nicki Minaj came out with her song calling skinny girls bitches and now everyone’s upset.”

In a weird way, she made the exact point I was trying to.

Do we have to get even before we can stand as a united front against the real enemy?

I mean, who wins when women hate each other based on these differences? Certainly it can’t be our sisterhood, which is more crucial than ever in fighting off the opposition we face from in our domestic lives, the workplace, and in the public sphere. Better yet, who causes this disconnection amongst women? How have we, for years and years, let men dictate what and who is beautiful? How have we relinquished control on how we appear naturally, and furthermore, how that is perceived and accepted by society?

But most importantly, how long is this going to go on?

The same friend also said, "I still think anyone that takes offence to skinny-bashing is extremely ridiculous."

And from that came a point I wasn't expecting to make, but certainly need to.

What determines how a person is entitled to feel about how they are made to feel by society? Are my feelings automatically excluded from this discourse because I'm skinny? If so, I find that type of silencing method to be very tragic.

I got to a point where I, like many plus-sized women have at one point in their lives or another and said screw it, this is who I am.

My question is: why is that such a bad thing?

I cannot train my body any differently than the average person can on what to do with what it is fed. I cannot dictate to my metabolism what pace to digest the food I eat at. And I cannot for the life of me pack on pounds any faster than you can shed them.

I have interesting and very old news for everyone that assumes the same thing Meghan Trainor or Nicki Minaj does.

1. We do not think we're fat.

2. We are not all anorexic Barbie wannabes.

3. We are not all bitches.

Ultimately, it’s getting harder and harder to feel beautiful. Not to be beautiful, but to really and truly feel that we are. And to every woman out there who can still look in the mirror and find something she doesn’t feel the need to fix, I applaud you.

But for all the people, men and women, who in some way contribute to the never ending list of why women aren’t good enough no matter what they do with their bodies and themselves, and to everyone that ever told me I was “too this” or “too that”, in similar words to Tyra Banks:

Kiss my skinny ass.

  

Trying To Move On? Read This.

Once, in an anti-smoking ad, producers sent kids to the streets on a smoke break.

They smoked faked cigarettes around adults that were on a smoke break as well. Nearly every single adult was bewildered by what they were seeing, and told them to stop. When the kids asked why they should stop, the adults said, “Because it’s bad for you.” And the kids responded, “Then why do you do it?”

Now that is a good ad. It gets the message across clearly and very effectively, but more importantly, it illustrates a very familiar human concept:

That many things are easier said than done.

Not swearing in fits of rage, not eating food we know is bad for us but tastes so, so good, and lastly, walking away from something we know is bad for us.

One thing I’ve been hearing about since my entrance into womanhood, and a thing that I have certainly experienced for myself at one time or another, is how hard it can be to move on from someone that does us no good whatsoever.

The tough part of this whole thing is that once someone enters into your life, it is next to impossible to imagine a life without them. Not everyone can be so easily dismissed.

What if the smoker never picked up the first cigarette?

A lot of people think that moving on is the part where you’re just over someone. You’re over their ways, your over their words, and you’re just so fed up. But that, simply, is just being over someone.

Moving on is different because you get to a place where you genuinely wish the best for this person. It might even mean smiling at them finding love with someone other than you. But most of all, it’s being at peace.  Peace with the past, peace with the present, and peace within yourself.

How does one find peace?

The best, and sometimes the only way to find peace, is to give it time. It is the most dramatic and cliché saying and suggestion, but that’s because it is deeply rooted in truth.

In many ways, a broken heart is like a wound. Sometimes it’s so deep and so internal you don’t even know it’s there. But after a while, the pain becomes unbearable, and you finally realize it. It then turns into a scar or a cut, and while it can be so present for the first little while, time passes and it slowly starts to fade away...

And even after it’s almost fully gone, you’ll see the little mark, the little difference between who you were then and who you are now.

Don’t be afraid to be changed by your experiences. Don’t apologize for being more careful. And don’t apologize for the steps you took to grow. You are the result of your life experiences.

But being bitter about the past is perhaps one of the most toxic ways to be. It disables us from truly basking in the greatness that is our present, even if it doesn’t feel so great at times, or ever. Because greatness doesn’t come from what we have. It doesn’t come from our luxuries or our ability to fulfill our materialistic desires.

Instead, greatness comes from being at peace. It comes from knowing that even if you were stripped of all that you had, you would still be at peace because of the greatness that lives within you.

So, if the greatness lies within us, why are we so caught up with people who only seem to take it away?

Simple.

We have not realized our greatness yet.

And to you, I say that you are worth the discovery of your greatness. And you’re certainly worth the discovery of your peace. You do not need to exhaust yourself with the process of trying to extract blood from a stone or assign meaning to things you know will mean nothing in the end.

You’re better than empty words and broken promises and repeated mistakes.

The good news is that you can still love a person and get over them, and you can still love someone and move on. But hate fits nowhere. Because all hate means is that a part of you is angry at the person, the situation, or yourself. And frankly, all three things go hand in hand.

Fill yourself with love. Look for love and light in everything that you do and everyone that you meet. Smile when you want to frown and be thankful when you feel there is nothing left.

I know it sounds like the most abstract and indirect route to getting to the place you know you need to arrive at, but there really is no final destination. Just a journey. And you ought to keep an eye out for the beautiful things you’ll see along the way.

So what if the smoker never picked up the first cigarette?

They would not have learned the beautiful lesson in finding the strength within themselves to conquer something they once felt they couldn’t.

Asking (and Answering) This Simple Question Can Really Change Your Life

When I moved into my sister’s room almost a year ago, I hadn’t done much to personalize the space other than smother the walls in posters and paintings I had brought with me from my old room.

After sitting in it for months and months trying to decide what the space was missing, I came to the conclusion that a fresh coat of paint was just what it needed.

I knew that choosing the paint color would be the first hurdle because the last time I painted my room I spent $75.00 on paint, and an entire day painting only for the walls to go not even one shade darker than what they were before. But I knew the wonders a change of scenery could do for my aching psyche that had been promised an update for the new year.

So I called my two friends, Rebekah and Jasmine, and they agreed to help me get the job done.

I went in there with a pretty clear picture of what I wanted in my head. I wanted some sort of beige, not too light, not too dark.

But warm. The most important thing was that the color be warm.

But as I stood in the paint section of Home Depot, with about 1000 different shades in front of me, it became increasingly difficult to stick to my original vision.

Rebekah and Jasmine looked diligently through each paint swatch, bringing them to me in hopes of approval, selling each color to me as if it were a car.

Rebekah, who I personally believed missed her calling to be on the HGTV network, talked about “tones” and “shades” and “accent walls” and stuff. Jasmine on the other hand simply kept saying, “What about this one?”

It seemed that the more they talked, the less I knew.

Half an hour passed by before I felt myself losing hope. I wanted to call off Operation Paint.

Until…

Jasmine and Rebekah were off to the side looking at another brand of paint, getting ready to collect a handful of swatches and pitch their ideas to me, yet again.

But in their absence, I decided to ask myself:

“What do I want?”

I looked at the wall of colors and picked up a swatch, looking directly at one color. It was called Sand Motif. It was nice. It was beige. It was dark but not too dark. And it was warm. I put it back down and looked at the wall again. I saw a color similar to the one I had just picked up and grabbed the swatch. It was 

Sand Motif again.

When the girls came back over to me, each with about 15 swatches in their hands, I said:

“Wait. I’m gonna look at the wall, and whatever color I see and like will be the color I choose.”

A silent two minutes passed by. The Jeopardy theme song played in my head for the entire time. My eyes passed by a few colors that I liked from a distance, but nothing enough to pick up.

I caught my eyes wandering back to the same swatch over and over again, and decided to pick it up.

Sand Motif.

I looked at the swatch silently. And as the seconds passed by, I felt myself falling more and more in love with the color.

“Guys. This is it. This is the color!” I exclaimed, not realizing how excited I really was to finally decide on a paint color.

“Are you sure?” Rebekah asked.

“I went back to it three times without even knowing it was the same swatch. This is it. I know it. I feel it,” I replied.

The three of us jumped up and down and gave each other some sloppy high fives before excitedly approaching the counter to order a gallon of paint.

The moral of the story is that sometimes, no matter where we are or what we’re doing, everyone will be telling us what to do and how to do it. It’s up to us, particularly in those instances to be able to step outside ourselves, turn everyone else’s voices down, or off completely, and turn ours all the way up and ask ourselves:

What do I want?

Even if they’re our best friends, it’s us that has to make the final call. Nevermind what they want. Nevermind what they want us to want. Nevermind what they think.

When we were all done painting and the girls left. I put my furniture back in its place. And when it came time to hang up my posters again, I only chose a few. Because for once, I wasn’t so concerned with covering things up, but perhaps more interested in baring it all.

See, when you follow your heart and you trust your instincts, you have nothing to cover up. Or maybe you do but you don’t even feel the need to. Because you know that maybe it isn’t right for Rebekah or Jasmine, maybe it isn’t right for anyone else in the world.

But it’s right for you.

And it makes you look around before you turn your light off at night.

Or smile at the uncrowded spaces that were once filled on your walls.

It makes you feel warm.    

When I was in high school, I knew I wanted to be a journalist. But when it came time to apply to university, I didn’t listen to myself and enrolled in the history program instead. It took me two years to find out how unhappy I could be. I should've stuck to my original vision.

I’ll never forget the day my aunt asked me,

“Stephanie, what do you want?”

The words seemed like they were in another language as I repeated them to myself.

When I asked myself what I wanted, the answer was journalism, just as the paint kept reappearing before my eyes. I didn’t know how at home I was until I entered my lecture that first day, the same way I didn’t know how much I loved the color until it was all over my walls, good enough without the posters and the paintings.

So what is it that you want?

Is it a new job? A new paint job? A new car? A new life?

Sit down and figure it out. Make your way there. It might take a lot; it might be a few minor adjustments. But if it’s a process of moving mountains, stone by stone will eventually get the job done.

Whatever the case is, I can make a personal promise to each and every person reading this right now that asking yourself what you want, and then actually going after it will change your life.

Don’t believe me?

Just watch. 

The Power of Choice

Driving home last night to my favorite radio program called “Intelligence for Your Life”, I heard something remarkable. It went like this:

“The more choices we have, the more likely we are to sample more things.”

The host had been talking about a study that was conducted that proved that people ate up to 40% more at restaurants with longer menus.

This got me thinking about the place I used to be in my life where I felt that, for some reason, I had no choices. And I surely didn’t only mean food. Romantically, I felt my choices were limited. I felt that my options for my future were limited. I felt that financially, I would be stuck where I was. I felt very confined.

Over time, I opened myself up to the reality that the world is pretty big, and that the world is pretty much mine and I grew to realize and understand that there are choices everywhere.

When I first started dating, my logic was that if I always dated someone who was not as smart as me, not as good looking as me, and not as accomplished as I was, that I wouldn’t have to compete against other women and my position in his life would be secured.

For the longest time, I would date guys with criminal records, guys that already had a kid, and guys who didn’t work. I felt that because I had what they didn’t (except for the children), that they would appreciate me more.

The funny thing about men and humans in general, is that we are not programmed like that.

In fact, things worked the opposite way.

Because I was a little farther ahead than them, they used me and my resources to try and catch up. They weren’t trying to better themselves, they just wanted to reap the rewards of things they might not ever see without doing the work I had done. They wanted to be driven around in my car without having one of their own, use my money for things because they had none, have me babysit their child while they would do I don’t know what.

At some point in time, I got sick of it all.

I didn’t throw my hands up in the air and hate the rest of the world. I didn’t look at it as time wasted, or money wasted, even though there were times the money I spent on them would have come in handy. I didn’t hate these men, and I surely didn’t hate myself.

I realized there was more out there for me.

So I heightened my standards. I raised the bar so high that it may have been a little bit above me.

The thing is, if you don’t acknowledge your worth, and state that over and over again relentlessly, whether it’s out loud or in your head or to your friends or your potential partners, you will always get less than 

what you deserve.

The worst part is that you’ll be living in this crazy mental state where you can actually convince yourself you’re happy, but deep down inside the honest part of you is wondering why you’re selling yourself short.

I know there are a ton of people, young and old, black and white, who have either been in my situation, or are still in my situation. And I know that you wake up in the morning and feel a disparity between the love you have in your heart for your partner, and the love you want to have for your partner, that not even the crazy mental state can fake.

I know that you hear your own voice in your head saying, “I deserve better” everytime you get in an argument and they say something a little too mean, or slam the door in your face yet again.

And you know what? That voice in your head is right.

But for some reason, you won’t leave. You can’t leave. You feel like you’re in too deep. You have too many pictures together on social media and you don’t want everyone to know you broke up. Or, quite simply, you feel like you’re better off semi-happy with this person because you’re not sure there is more out there for you.

Please rethink that.

Ultimately, every second of your life is a time to be critical and a time to evaluate your choices. Because every second of your life you spend pleasing someone else at the cost of your own happiness is detrimental to your overall well-being and your overall experience of what it means to truly live.

The more you open yourself up to love, the more abundantly it comes to you.

What that means is, when you open your mind, heart, and soul up to love, it comes in your direction and flows through your body because you are able to receive it. It’s more than someone just saying, “I love you” just enough to get you to believe it, but letting their actions create doubt and fear in your mind and heart that it isn’t true.

Actions speak louder than words.

The thing is…we have this idea that the only love that exists is romantic love. So not true.

There is love everywhere.

Have you ever seen the greeting an owner gets from their dog after a long day at work? That's love. Have you ever seen the way a newborn looks at their mother while being breastfed? That's love.

All of these things are reminders that love exists, love is real, and love is waiting for you. But the kind of love you desire won’t come until you’re ready, and maybe even a bit after. Because you still need to spend time loving yourself. And over time you will.

Not in a narcissistic way, but in a way that you truly grow to understand why that voice in your head was telling you that you deserve better. You will even grow to believe that. And in time, you will respect yourself so much more for gathering the strength to walk away.

Ironically enough, sometimes the kind of love we experience can hold us back from the kind of love we should experience. Instead of opening the world up, it closes it, and leaves us with nowhere to turn, and no beautiful scenery to look at.

As short as life is, it’s also very long. And you don’t want the balcony that overlooks the garbage dumps at the bottom of your run-down apartment building. You want to overlook the water and have a city view. Don’t just settle for the unit because the landlord tells you there are no other units available.

You tell that landlord that you’ll find another building.

Having an abundance of choices does nothing if you do not have the strength to choose something other than what you've always chosen, or date someone different than who you've always dated. And you will never, ever know how good something on the menu tastes if you are too afraid to order it.

But the best part of all of this is that if you don't like it, you can send it back to the kitchen and order something else. You can ask the chef to make your dish a special way. And even then, if that chef says no, you can leave the restaurant and cook your own damn dish...

In your apartment that overlooks the water and has the city view.