MY TWO YEARS JOURNEY

It’s been two years since I started bunchup.WordPress.com and I’ve not looked back since that beautiful Sunday afternoon.

Writing has given me the platform to express myself and share my thought on love and relationship.

While growing up, I didn’t have anyone to mentor or counsel me on relationship and life in general. I was quite naive and I was easily intimidated.

What really kept me going during those period was my outlook to life and my ability to decipher, right from wrong.

Not having a mentor while I was much younger, drove me to become a counselor. So that, I can counsel others who have no one to seek guidance from.

I’ve made my own share of mistakes and I do have some regrets especially with my friendship and relationship. Nevertheless life has been fair to me and I’m happy for the woman I have become. I am also not doing badly in my chosen field.

I want to use this forum to thank my dear friend, Klaus Peter, (Guten tag!) you’re always awesome. Dozie Nwubani, I appreciate you.

I want to also thank my co-bloggers for their support and encouragement. Tom and Audrey you make me blush with your beautiful comment, I love you both. My dear Jennifer Juneau, near or far you remain special.

Dave Gardner, Frank Solanki, Nderi Sarah, Ron Walker, Jing Sebastian, Supreet, Ted Campbell, Paul Sunstone, Cristian Mihai, Nistur Anadi, Elisabeth, designwithflair, Jay Colby, Subhash Chatterji.

My great chef Hang, I love your recipes. Jerri Peri, crazyloveparents, Ruchi, Megala, dfriend1991, KR, Archana and many others too numerous to mention. You are all doing a wonderful job. Wish I can visit your blogs often. WordPress is a family and I’m happy to be part of you guys.

To my readers, I owe you a depth of gratitude for reading my post even though it’s not perfect. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. Keep encouraging me by reading my post and my co- bloggers post as well. Your comments and criticism will be most appreciated.

I am leaving everyone with this words and it is one of my favourite quote. “It is not over, until it’s over’ This is just the beginning of the good things to come to everyone one of us. Amen to that.

A DEEP SECRET

I was astonished when a friend told me she is going to her grave with a secret she has kept deep in her heart for fifteen years. She had told no one about it but she had to open up to me because she needed my advice.

Why ask me for an advice when she has already made up her mind to die with her secret. I believe her reason for telling me this secret is not to seek for my counsel. I think she felt the need to unburden her overloaded mind.

She was four months pregnant, before she realised it. There were no signs nor symptoms. As she said, everything was normal with her in the early months of her pregnancy and that made it difficult for her to know she was with a child.

She only knew something was amiss, when her stomach started protruding and that made her to visit the hospital where the news was broken to her.

Sadly her partner was no longer in the picture. They broke up three months earlier and she learnt, he has since travelled abroad when she went looking for him to break the shocking news of her pregnancy to him.

Determined not to terminate the pregnancy, she went on with it to term and had a beautiful baby girl who will be fifteen years old in november.

Somewhere along the way, she met someone new and they got married.

To this day, her daughter thinks her stepfather is her real father. Only my friend knows who her biological father is.

Her ex partner who is the real father of her daughter is now back in her life.

They met again through Facebook and he wants to be fully involved with my friend but she has continued to avoid him because she does not want him to meet his daughter. In her words, “I don’t want to rock the boat”.

I know it’s a tricky situation to open up to the two other people involved in this life drama, especially her daughter because she will feel betrayed and deceived by her mother for making her think someone else was her biological father.

In such a situation, I will take my chances and tell both of them. Get the whole damn secret out of my mind and be at peace within me.

I don’t see any reason to hide such secrets. It is too much a burden for someone like me to carry. Moreover I won’t deny my child the right to know her father.

She will be doing herself a favour if she tells those involved and live with whatever happens afterwards, instead of going to her grave with it.

I bet, she will sleep better at night if the secret is out.

Would you advice she tells them both or continue to live a life of deceit?

LIVING LIFE AND ENJOYING IT

Are you living your life to the fullest or are you waiting for things to fall in the right places before you enjoy it?

Well I don’t think it is worth waiting for things to fall in the right places before we enjoy life.

We can live with the situations we find ourselves, positive or negative and still enjoy life as long as we are hopeful things will get better someday.

Some of us want to marry the right partner, buy a dream car, save enough to buy or build a home, become a college graduate, get a great job, succeed in our businesses, etc before we can live.

We believe we cannot enjoy life without achieving most of our goals or fulfilIing most of our needs. We live miserably because we haven’t attained what we perceive as the arriving point of our lives.

Things may not necessarily workout for you, as planned. Will you continue to wait till thy kingdom come for it to happen before you start to live.

I’ve been guilty of not living my life to the fullest for many years, until I decide to change.

I was waiting to build my own house and live comfortably before I could concentrate on living.

It really feels refreshing to live life without been stagnant or waiting for the perfect time to kick start my life.

I live for now and I enjoy every moment of it, without too much anticipation.

Life is too short to be waiting for it to happen before we can enjoy it.

Take the bull by the horn and stop waiting for everything to be rosy or else life will pass you by.

Live life and enjoy it.

KEEPING UP WITH THE FAMILY TRADITION

Easter is here again and I can’t believe I am laid back and not running around trying to cook the best meal to fete friends and people around me. I’m at home watching movies and sleeping intermittently. Enjoying my holiday alone.

Easter celebrations was a big thing with my parents. We had an Easter tradition which we strictly adhere to. It was about church activities, cooking, baking and sharing.

There are different traditional easter meals we cooked and gave out to everyone we knew. It was always a big funfare and I was happy to help my mother in the kitchen despite always being covered in flour while mixing the dough.

Many years down the line with my parents long gone, I haven’t been able to maintain that tradition. My siblings had carried on with it, with their own individual families but I couldn’t. Not because I don’t want to, but it is too much work for me.

Back then, we had dishes that took us three days to prepare and my older siblings were there to help. (By the way, I am the youngest of them.)

We had this beans meal made with coconut milk. We had to crack and grate a large number of coconut for long hours because of the quantity of milk we needed.

Baking and cooking starts from Holy Thursday till Saturday and we continued on Easter Sunday after church service. Easter Monday was used as a resting day after attending church activities.

Some of my siblings have continued to lovingly scold me for not keeping up with our Easter family tradition.

I honestly don’t see it as a big deal but they always like to make me feel guilty.

They don’t want to understand my schedule and I have no helping hand. Especially to crack and grate the coconut. I dare not buy aIready made coconut milk, my sisters will not let me be, if they knew it was not home made.

I can cook other simple meals but no, it has to be my mother’s traditional food or nothing else. My siblings think, it’s a way of honouring her memory during the Easter festivities.

They figured if they can do it, why can’t I.

There are so many people who haven’t been able to continue with one family tradition or another. Even the ones that are more serious than mine.

Things are different when we become adults, faced with life challenges. We may not be able to continue in our family footsteps.

I don’t think people should see that as being irresponsible. Some people are so engrossed with their own lives that they can not maintain a family tradition, keep a family heirloom or continue with a generational family business. It is not selfishness to me, it is called living.

I do not have anything against family traditions but there should be room for flexibility. Nothing is constant in life, except change.

If you can continue with your family tradition, please do. Play your part but don’t criticise your partner or other people for not keeping up with their own neither should you make them feel irresponsible.

May we find our way, all through our journey in life with joy and happiness. Happy Easter.

MY REGRET

I hear people say they have no regret, they are living their lives the way they planned and dreamed it. The much older ones said, they have lived a fulfilling life with no regret.

People live fulfilling lives that I agree, but that doesn’t mean they have no regret.

Well I don’t believe an adult has no regret. So it’s up to those who choose to see it differently to decide if their life is flawless.

No one has a perfect life, we all make mistakes. We must have taken one or two decisions in our lives that we regretted or taken a turn that derailed our dreams, left us disappointed and full of regrets.

I have taken decisions that I regretted and I’m not ashamed to own up to it or accept the entire blame.

It’s my life and it’s my problem. So I accept every blame that comes with it but to say I have no regret, is a lie.

I’ve spent unwisely before and I’ve also invested in businesses that didn’t yield any fruit. Money issues doesn’t really bother me much because each time I failed in business, I got back up through the grace of God with hardwork.

Moreover materialism is not a big deal to me but in hindsight, I wished I did things differently.

That said, my major regret is the choices I made in my relationships with friends, my partner and family.

Most times I took the wrong decisions out of naivety. I was too trusting and overly empathetic. I took in so much, made sacrifices for people that don’t really deserve it.

Nevertheless, it is one thing to make mistakes and bravely own up to it without dwelling on the past and not beating up yourself for it.

It is another thing to blame people for your mistakes and not accept it. Living in denial.

I have chosen to admit my mistakes and not blame anyone for it. Admitting to it, doesn’t mean I’m dwelling on the past or beating up myself.

I am only evaluating how far, I’ve come with all my mistakes and how much I’ve learnt from it.

It took so long for me to get to where I am now but I got here anyway and I’m better for it.

In essence, owning up to your life mistakes doesn’t make you a failure and it doesn’t make your life any less fulfilling. It only shows you’re a conqueror. Who fell and rose again. To me, that is a badge of honour.

A FRESH START

It’s the first day of the year and I feel so lucky to be alive. To witness a new year and a new beginning.

In retrospect, 2016 wasn’t bad for me and it was neither fantastic. I went through some pain especially emotionally but in every situation, I am always thankful for the gift of life.

Every year I gain new experiences and I learnt alot this past year. It was really an eye opener for me. In all my years on earth, I was blinded by love for family, friends and humanity. It took a big betrayal for me to understand a little more about life and people. I was all along naive and overly emotional. Trusted people so much and only saw the good side of them.

Don’t blame me for seeing only the good side of people and closing my eyes to their bad side. I am equally not perfect and I was raised to love my neighbour as myself. To be honest and kind because you attract good karma if you’re genuinely kind and caring. My mother always tell me that, “What goes around comes around” Good for good, evil for evil. I’ve tried to live by this principle to be kind and just. It does work for me most times but I’ve now realised the world does not work that way.

People are generally selfish, we live in the world of “I” not “WE”. Some people thrive at the expense of others not caring whose horse is gored. Loyalty has long been thrown in the waste bin of history.

I have always been about ” WE” I still am, but now with caution. This is the lesson I took from 2016. “Caution” Caution in everything I do.

I always try to help everyone that cross my part and be everyone’s mother, sometimes going out of my way but life just don’t seems to work that way.

If you’re too kind and affectionate, people will even think you have an ulterior motive. I honestly don’t give favours to get anything in return but I expect loyalty from people close to me. All the same, I’ve realised I can’t solve everyone’s problem and people will always be people.

Once beaten twice shy they say but I’ve been fifty times beaten but never shy until now. Well l am once beaten now, several times shy. When you have been bashed in and hurt so much by people, caution will be your watchword.

Without bitterness or regret, I’ve left the past behind me. It has gone with 2016 and I am moving on to better things with caution. Taking things with a pinch of salt and insulating myself with patience. I took patience in 2015 and I am adding it to the caution I took from 2016. I’m sure it will be a good combination to guide me through 2017.

This is a new year and we all have an opportunity to start afresh. Let us put the past behind us, have a new beginning with hope of getting it right and staying happy. It is never too late for a fresh start.

I wish you all a Happy New Year.🎆