Seeing the Glass as Half Full Dictates That I CAN, I WILL, I AM

The holiday season often brings about an array of emotions in between the highs and the lows. However, much of what you experience and what you deal with or don’t deal with emotionally has more to do with how you perceive situations, as well as how you act or react to them. Often, what we see is what we believe, resulting in what we get. 

If you see the glass as half-empty, it will take much more to fill the glass to a level of full. However, when you see the glass as half-full, you will realize that it takes less to fill the glass to its fullest level. The problem is, too many of you see the glass as half-empty, causing much anguish, despair, and anxiety; all because you see less in the glass, and you believe that you will have to work two to three times as hard to fill the glass.

Your life is like a glass. How you look at your life, whether with lack or with fullness, your view of your life will determine how you will handle your life’s situations and circumstances. Sometimes you make dire decisions based on the cloud of circumstances and situations that seem to loom over your life, believing that life is much more difficult than it seems, based on what you see, instead of the reality of what God has ordered as your destiny. However, if you continue to view your negative circumstances as conditions, you have decided that you are stuck in the manure and can’t get out. When you begin to view your negative circumstances as situations, you have already initiated an, ‘I can’ attitude, putting forth a plethora of ‘I will’ efforts, declaring an, ‘I am’ reality of achievement.

In order for you to change your view and your vision of your life’s glass, you must begin to possess a sense of optimism, allowing you to gain or maintain a sense of hope. The hope you possess simply means that you have a positive outlook, you have faith, you believe in a higher power, you have positive expectations, you possesses an inner sense of assuredness, you are encouraged, you are confident, and there is no doubt as to where you are going in life or how you will get there…the glass is half-full!  

When you see your life’s glass as half-full, you possess an optimistic attitude, you believe in a higher power, you are spiritually connected, you are not shaken by what seems to be, but you anticipate what can be, and you believe beyond a shadow of doubt that the outcome of any and all of your negative situations will be positive. As a matter of fact, you will think, feel, and speak with an authority of favorable outcomes. You have an “I can” attitude, as you exhibit behaviors and actions that can and will lead to favorable outcomes. You awake every morning with a song in your heart, you see a light at the end of every tunnel in the midst of all of the darkness, and you believe in what can be rather than what things seem to be. You also begin see and believe in what will be!

In my opinion, it is extremely important for you to be optimistic each and every day of the year, especially during today’s tumultuous times. It allows you to hold on, to keep moving forward, to keep the faith, to laugh instead of crying, to keep looking up, to not give up, to manage yourself as well as your life circumstances, and to believe that the sunshine does come after the rain. All of this is what happens when you see your glass of life as half-full.  

When you view your life’s glass as half-empty, you will not be prepared for, and you will also miss out on the blessings that are waiting for your arrival.  Being optimistic allows for positive expectations, where as pessimism causes you to hold your head down with little or no expectations. Optimism dictates that you hold your head up, in preparation to behold and receive expected positive outcomes.   

Holding onto and seeing the half-empty glass of pessimism becomes the controller of your attitude on a daily basis, with you running the risk of exhibiting negative behaviors, experiencing anxiety, feelings of hopelessness, depression, fear, stress, insomnia, paranoia, addictive behaviors, loss of control, withdrawal from life, thoughts and feelings of giving up on life, suicide, homicide, and seeing no way out of your current negative situation.  

And you wonder why your social life is in the pits! Your vision of your life is in the pits with your half-full pessimistic view of your ability to engage with PPPG’s-Positive People Going Places, © causing you to seek relationships with somebody, winding up with anybody, who turns out to be nobody. Seeing your life’s glass as half-full positively affects your social health. Your interpersonal relations are strengthened, communication skills are strengthened, and intimate relationships are more readily found, developed, and sustained. 

You will never be able to enjoy yourself as an individual, as long as you behold your life’s glass with a pessimistic half-empty vision. As a matter of fact, with your half-full optimistic life’s glass, your mental health is more stable, allowing for an increased healthy love for self, high self-esteem along with increased self-confidence and self-acceptance. Your increased confidence fosters the belief that “I can, I will, and I am!” And with those daily affirmations, your worry about outcomes of your life situations and life circumstances will dissipate, providing you with more of a quest and thirst for inner peace and emotional stability.

Seeing your life’s glass as optimistically half-full allows your spiritual health to become more solidified and stable.  Your belief in a higher power that is greater than you and your negative situations and circumstances allows for increased faith, less doubt, less worry and less fear. Your life will more certainly not only seem to be filled more with sunshine than rain it will actually be filled with more sunshine than rain.

If you have difficulty moving out of and beyond your negative, pessimistic, half-empty glass syndrome, it is imperative that you engage in psychotherapy with a licensed mental health professional who practices from a positive perspective and uses tried, true, and tested activities to increase your self-esteem. Because there is truly no life understanding and no life answers, you must practice seeing your life’s glass as half-full, with positivity and optimism on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. 

Remember, life will deal you many hands.  However, it is not so much the hands that you are dealt as it is how you view and feel about the hands that are dealt to you, as well as how you play them.  If you see your life hands that are dealt to you as having possibilities or opportunities (half-full optimism), you will play to win. However, if you see your life hands dealt to you as not having possibilities or lacking opportunities (half-empty pessimism), you won’t play at all.  Why play a losing hand?

The half-empty glass dictates, I CAN’T, I WON’T, and I’M NOT! As a result, you don’t! You must see life as a glass half-full, rather than a glass half-empty.  It will take less to fill your half-full glass, fostering encouragement, hope, and expectations.  The half-full glass dictates I CAN, I WILL, and I AM! Starting today…YOU ARE and YOU HAVE accomplish all you set out to accomplish!

Here are a few tips to help you to practice the half-full glass life style, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly:

1.    Engage in daily prayer.

2.    Practice daily oral positive self-talk.

3.    Engage in daily meditation for 20-30 minutes.

4.    Engage in daily journaling, documenting your feelings and thoughts at the end of the day, recognizing the half-empty pessimistic patterns, as opposed to the optimistic half-full patterns.

5.    Practice letting go of negative thoughts & negative beliefs on a daily basis (negate the negative).

6.    Develop realistic, attainable, and measurable weekly and monthly goals with objectives, timelines, and contingency plans.

7.    Take life in small chunks, instead of big hunks.

8.    Learn to appreciate life and live it one day at time, letting the sunshine in and appreciating the rain whenever it enters into her life, but not allowing it to determine her life.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Happy Kwanza, and Happy Holidays!!!

©2019; J. Morley Productions, Inc.; P.O. Box 1745; Decatur, GA 30031; (770) 808-6570; www.doctorjoyce.com

How to Deal with Your Relationship When One of You is More Successful than the Other

As one of the partners in a relationship filled with disparities based on the success of one partner or the lack thereof of the other, it is imperative that at some point, issues related to the identified disparities are dealt with, preferably by both, but most certainly by you. In order for you to have a healthy and positive relationship, feelings and thoughts regarding the disparities surrounding the fact that one of you is more successful than the other must be addressed. In all actuality, the issues of disparity surrounding success in your relationship should have been dealt with prior to your commitment to solidify your relationship with each other. But since it wasn’t dealt with prior to your commitment, it is now the right time for you to do so.

How you deal with the disparities that exist within your relationship, as a result of one-sided success will probably differ based on your maleness or femaleness. The definition of ‘success’ must be factored in when considering the real or imagined disparities you and your mate are currently facing and have been facing for quite sometime. However, the reality is that although one of you in your relationship had already attained a greater level of success than the other, prior to your involvement with each other, you all ignored the red flags that often come with the disparities, hoping and sometimes believing that they would go away. 

As a male, it is promoted, expected, respected, and accepted that you should be more successful than your female partner. However, on the other hand, when your female partner is more successful in the relationship, your male ego sometimes seems to get in the way. Sadly, society still espouses a lack of respect, a lack of acceptance, and a lack of expectations for relationships with successful females to positively exist. 

One of the major problems that usually ends a relationship sooner, rather than later, is the fact that many couples ignore the larger picture containing red flags and focus on the feel good aspects of the relationship, such as sex, outward appearances, and lust. They ignore the fact of the unequal level of accomplishments in the relationship. If the disparities in levels of success are not already prevalent when you enter a relationship, as one of you excels beyond the other, the disparities will eventually rise out of the ashes. Hence, it is important to be proactive. 

When one partner in the relationship is more successful than the other, it is imperative that the two of you sit together and talk honestly and openly with each other about your feelings, thoughts, insecurities, and concerns. It is also important for the two of you to discuss the current and anticipated impacts that the disparities of unequal success are having or might have within the relationship. This conversation will also be a great time for the two of you to clarify your expectations of each other, as well as your expectations of the relationship, and set written goals, especially when one of you is more successful than the other. It is best to have these conversations before you become too involved in the relationship. It is always easier to prevent issues than it is to intervene later, once they have raised their ugly heads.

Positive, healthy, and respectful conversations with each other can relieve a lot of stress and anxiety, as well as possibly save your relationship. And if you cannot discuss and deal with these feelings together, civilly as a couple, it is time to for you and your mate to visit a marriage and family therapist to help you to sort through the divisive feelings and thoughts that exist as a result of one of you being more successful than the other. Destruction of the relationship and destruction of each other are the only outcomes of harboring feelings of insecurity, resentment, anger, and sometimes jealousy.

Discussing the disparities that exist within your relationship of one being more successful than the other is only one of the major steps necessary to allow you and your mate to live happily ever after. And just in case your love grows stale in the relationship and the fire stops burning, and as you anticipate future disparities that might arise in your relationship, it is important to engage in a verbal and written agreement to not allow your differences in accomplishments to interfere with your relationship, as well as the consequences of such. A WRITTENand legally ratified prenuptial agreement is always a great way to bring some stability to your relationship when one of you is more successful than the other. It helps to take a lot of worry out of the way, so that you can focus on loving each other. 

Too often, the non-successful partner takes and takes from the successful partner, without any investment, until he/she takes all and runs to someone else. This doesn’t just happen with very successful people such as Mary J. Blige, Sherrie Shepard, Melba Moore, and Jill Scott; it also happens to successful women that the world has not discovered as of yet. It’s just realizing the fact that there are real opportunists and real vultures waiting to prey on unsuspecting people, especially women looking for love.   

Even in relationships with disparities of levels of success, you must learn to focus on the positive aspects and commonalities that exist within your relationship, instead of focusing on the disparities in your levels of success. In other words, you must focus on what you have in common, rather than your differences. You must allow your commonalities to be connectors and not dividers, using the success of one in the couple to guide the success of the couple as a whole. You must learn to give each other compliments, as well as tell and show each other how proud you are of the accomplishments of each, not just based on levels of success, but on the fact that God has blessed the two of you to have and be with each other.  

Celebrating the accomplishments of each other removes the focus from the disparities associated with your different levels of success, and keeps you from competing with each other. You will come to not worry about or focus on what others might think, believe, or say about your respective roles as the man or woman in the relationship, as well as how your relationship should be, or how it looks, because one of you is more successful than the other. You will come to recognize that external success cannot and will never outlast internal success and eternal love. 

  

The two of you are partners, not competitors. As the successful partner in the relationship, you must learn to see your level of success as an inflator for both of you, instead of seeing it as a deflator for you. Your success should be seen as a compliment and an enhancement to you and your relationship, rather than a disgrace or disparity between you and your mate.  And if you are not considered the successful partner in your relationship, it’s time for you to find your own self-worth through having a life of your own, by identifying and focusing on what makes you “successful” in your own right, without separating yourself from your mate. You must engage with your mate without competing with him/her, and without trying to overshadow his/her level of success. Engage in public activities with him/her without shame or guilt. You have nothing to feel guilty or shameful about. Find your own shadow and walk in it! 

No matter what the level of success and who is considered the ‘successful’ one in your relationship, it’s a matter of loving and respecting each other, no matter how successful or unsuccessful you are…you are in it together! Walk in it, and act like it!   

©2019; J. Morley Productions, Inc; P.O. Box 1745, Decatur, GA 30031; 770-808-6570; www.doctorjoyce.com

Putting Up with Domestic Violence in Your Relationships is Never An Option!

Incidents of domestic violence in America are at an all time high. More and more, violence and abuse against women are occurring at an alarming rate in the United States. According to the CDC, one out of three women are abused in domestic relationships and one out of ten men are abused. Whatever the figures, abuse is NEVER okay in any relationship!

 The air of disrespect for women has grown by mass proportion, perpetuated by so many men in the highest realms of government in this country. I am sure you have heard quite a bit about the admitted abuse by so many athletes and other men in powerful positions. Sadly and unfortunately, many people (including a preponderance of men) believe that the abuse lodged by these men against women was right, appropriate, and ‘the way men should treat women who don’t know when to keep their mouths shut,’ or women who ‘can’t be controlled.’ Ironically, the NFL seems to agree with these supporters of abuse of women by men, with the actions they have taken against these men.

The negative comments made about African-American women have been even more distasteful and downright disgusting. To add insult to injury, African-American men whose mothers and sisters are African-American, have made many of these disparaging comments, viewing African-American women has less worthy than any other group of women. 

There should be no situation that warrants any type of violence or abuse against another. If the relationship is not in your best interest or it becomes toxic, you must recognize that you have a choice and you have options. If you are being abused, you can choose to continue to drink from the abuse bottle with the skull and crossbones, or you can demand changes in how you are being treated. And if you are not being treated the way you believe you should be treated, like the human being, man or woman that you are…you have options, and one of the options is to end the situation. Being abused does not constitute a relationship; violence indicates a situation.

Women, the longer you stay in an abusive and violent situation, the weaker you become. Staying stuck in the mud of abuse does not make your relationship stronger. All you are doing is enabling your abuser and engaging in codependent behaviors with him. If he hit you once, he will hit you again. A shove, doesn’t make it any worse. Many women have lost their lives, believing their abusive and violent mates will change; they don’t!!! IT’S IN HIS DNA!!!

It’s time for you to stop blaming yourself for being abused and stop making excuses for his abusive behaviors. ‘I should have been quiet’; ‘I made him angry’; ‘it’s all my fault’; ‘he was drinking’; ‘the kids were making too much noise’; ‘I made him do it.’ You are in denial…Don’t Even kNowIt’s All ALie! You want him to man up? WHY DON’T YOU WOMAN UP and stop participating in the madness and cancel your membership in the club of insanity! And if you have to try to make a boy into a man, you have greater issues than he has! He won’t and he doesn’t love you any more because you are his punching bag, physically, verbally, mentally, spiritually, financially, etc. As a matter of fact, for a man to engage in abusive and violent behaviors against you is an indication that he doesn’t love you at all; if he ever did! 

As men and women, you must come to recognize that hands are made for holding, helping, and hugging, and they were never made for hitting or hurting! Further, if you expect dignity ad respect from your children, it is time for you to model these characteristics for them. Abuse and violence are learned behaviors, especially against women. You can then throw out the old adage, ‘do as I say and not as I do.’ You should be congruent in what you say and what you do…stop trying to control your mate and others with your abuse and violence. Don’t be afraid to speak out against such destructive behaviors! 

Abuse has been used as a form of control for too long, at home and in the workplace. When you come to realize that the only person you have control over is yourself, you will stop trying to control others. And not having things go your way in your relationship doesn’t give you permission or the right to abuse your mate in any way. Being a man of physical strength doesn’t make you stronger when you abuse women of lesser strength. As a matter of fact, as an abuser, you display your weaknesses. Here is your opportunity to STAND UP and MAN UP! Stop the violence and stop abusing your mate and other women! And if you are not an abuser, take a stand against abuse by calling your boys out when they engage in abusive behaviors. Let them see how big you truly are.

Doormats are made for walking on; not people. Light switches are made for flicking on and off…not people. Doorknobs are made for turning; not people; drums are made for beating on…NOT PEOPLE! Clearly, if you are an abuser or use violence to control your relationships, you have much deeper problems than you know or are willing to admit. And then, if you are constantly submitting yourself to abuse, as a man or woman, you also have deep problems within yourself. For both the abuser and the abused, self-esteem is a serious issue, but it is never an excuse for abuse, as a giver or receiver!

Men, it is time for you to take a stand against abuse of any kind, especially abuse against women. Just as there are men (and a few women) who condone abuse committed by athletes and other men of power, there were many men and women who condemn these behaviors. I commend you! To those men who have stood or stand against abuse and domestic violence against women, kudos to you! Always remember, your mother was/is a woman. When you show disrespect and hatred toward the woman you sleep with (or don’t sleep with), you are showing an extension of disrespect to and for the woman who carried you for nine months and made the decision to bring you into this world. Even if she did not rear you, she gave you life. Either way, whatever happened between you and your mother, it’s not your mate’s fault or her responsibility to take the blame for or to try to fix the situation. Get some professional help and get over it!

To the women who raise your hands against your mates, and hurt with your words, because you feel emotionally bankrupt and don’t believe you can harm with your hands (which is not an option), there is no right in your wrong actions and violence and abuse have never healed hurt or mended a broken heart. Self-love is the start and love toward others is the next step. When you come to love yourself, you will see that you don’t have to fight in order to be loved. Love attracts love! Hurt people hurt! 

Recognize that there are many forms of abuse. Here is your opportunity to become aware of them, gain insight about them, understand them, and take a stand against them!

·     Domestic abuse/violence—Abuse and violence committed against your mate in order for you to control him/her. More often than not, domestic abuse/violence is committed by men against women and children. Domestic violence usually encompasses all of the abuses below, but focuses more on physical abuse. It occurs in cycles. He beats the hell of you and then he wants to have sex, after he has given a false apology, cries, begs for forgiveness, and makes you, as a woman believe everything is alright after the sex…until the next time, the next out break. During domestic abuse/violence, more women are killed by physical violence, including guns.   

·     Economic abuse--Stripping your mate of financial means for her to effectively care for herself and the children. Withholding credit cards, taking money from accounts to deny her access; forcing her and children out of the home, especially after a divorce; depriving your mate of the basic needs for daily survival, causing her to struggle to stay afloat and to get ahead in life through financial and material means and needs

·     Emotional abuse—Saying or doing things to and/or against your mate, which affect his/her mood; deflating him/her, causing low emotions, depressed moods, stress, and distraught. Usually coupled with other forms of abuse, physical, verbal, spiritual, etc.

·     Financial abuse—Withholding money in order to deflate and/or control your mate. Forcing your mate to give you money or forcibly taking money from your mate, rending her financially impaired or devastated.

·      Physical abuse—Violence and abuse on your mate’s body by beating, hitting, shoving, slapping, cutting, scratching, or any other form of physical harm. This harm can be done with your hand, fist, or other material instrument or weapon.

·     Psychological abuse—Affecting the mind of your mate through physical, emotional, spiritual, and other forms of abuse. Your mate begins to believe she is ‘going crazy,’ with erratic thinking, confusion, forgetfulness, distress, etc.

·     Social abuse—Using verbal, physical and/or spiritual forms of abuse to embarrass your mate in front of others, in public, or through social media; denigrating her in public; putting her down in front of others, especially at parties or other social engagements.

·     Spiritual abuse—Using the Bible and spiritual approaches to control your mate. Making him/her believe that he/she is headed for damnation; quoting scriptures to embarrass your mate, embarrassing in front of church members, having a Bible in your hands with horns on your hand and a tail sticking out of your behind. Making yourself seem self-righteous, while condemning your mate.  

·     Verbal abuse —Using your words to hurt your mate; entails name-calling, yelling & screaming, cursing, abusive language, denigrating, and embarrassing in front of others with words; using put downs, deflating your mate as you inflate yourself. Public humiliation with your words.

For your sake and the sake of your children, remember, abuse and violence kills! Women, if there was a way into the situation, there is always a way out…you must be ready to see it. You also must begin to love yourself, accept yourself, and above all respect yourself. And don’t be afraid to get psychotherapy to help yourself. When the situation is too rough and too toxic, don’t feel embarrassed about the abuse, reach out to family and friends to help you to get out of the situation. 

Never stay in an abusive and violent situation ‘for the children.’ This is an unhealthy situation. Your children are better off in a healthy home with one parent than they are in an unhealthy, abusive, and violent house with two parents; one abusive and violent and the other afraid. Men, you are more likely to kill your mate, your children, other family members, and yourself, in order to control and seek revenge or because you believe you lost control some where along the way. And guess what? You blame everyone except you for your problems, especially your mate and your children!  

Women, you are more likely to kill yourself and sometimes your children in order to escape the control, the abuse, and the violence. You see no way out and you have often lost hope. There is hope, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Run…and run as fast as you can to save YOU and your children.

WHEN PEOPLE SHOW YOU WHO THEY ARE, BELIEVE THEM!! You can live with someone and still not truly know him/her. It is better to live with embarrassment than it is to not live at all!! There is help for you; GO GET IT!

Resources:

The Women’s Resource Center reads the names of women in Georgia who have died since 1990 due to domestic violence in October in the Decatur Square—over 100

Women’s Resource Center Crisis Line—404-688-9436

Men Stopping Violence—404-270-9894

National Domestic Violence Hotline—1-800-79-SAFE (1-800-797-7233—1-800-787-3224-TTY)

©2019; J. Morley Productions, Inc.; P.O. Box 1745; Decatur, GA 30031; 770-808-6570; www.doctorjoyce.com

Being a Single Parent is Not a Crime

So you’re all alone, without a partner, and you have one or more children. You’re not married,; you have never been married or you are divorced and there doesn’t seem to be the possibility of a potential mate on the horizon for you to eventually link with and tie the knot, for the first time or once again. 

Society has for far too long made single parents feel as if they are criminals, especially single mothers. The children of single parents have been considered troublemakers, social deviants, and delinquents, especially if there is no father in the home. There has been pity, empathy, and sometimes anger toward women who are single parents. And those women who continue to birth babies without being married, have a hard road to travel in the eyes of society. There has also been much criticism of these women, especially if they are women of color, who struggle to be financially self-sufficient.

It has been a long held fallacy that children coming out of single-parent households, those with only a mother in the home, and more specifically those form African-American families are prone to failure, destruction, and pose a threat to society. Single mothers are many times told that they cannot rear their young sons to be men. And that’s not what they should be doing; they should be rearing them and preparing them to be strong, positive, and successful contributors to and in society, as they allow positive male role models to help mold their sons into strong, positive, and healthy men. Mothers can most certainly help teach their sons how to treat and respect females as boys and as men, and they can prepare them to be the type of man suitable for marriage and procreating.

The reality is that there are many children, male and female, who emanated from single parent homes, which have become successful and positive contributors to society as a whole. They have contributed to and continue to contribute to the healthcare and medical industry, the field of education, athletics, the arts, the financial industry, the clothing industry, etc. 

Ironically, unmarried men who father children are seen as freely expressing their sexual prowess, sowing their wild oats, boasting their manhood, as well as their machismo. They are hailed and praised for making baby after baby. They are revered as great guys, with their power being in their penis. Their power is also in the number of babies they can produce. And sadly, too many of these men are not taking care of the many children that they help to create. And although many of these men are making many babies, they are rarely single parents; they can walk away at any time, without regret or consequences, whether single or divorced. Now, there are some men who elect to rear their children alone or are forced to do so by default. 

While women are denigrated for birthing baby after baby,they didn’t conceive them all by themselves And for the women who fit the role of the single parent, there are often negative names and many more negative acronyms associated with them, while men are praised and hailed as towers of strength. On the other hand, many of you as women, allow the fathers of your children to abate their responsibilities as fathers and they are not held accountable for their contribution to the conception of their children. Women who have the audacity to abandon their children are scorned, held responsible, and often thrown in jail.

Either way, America has frowned on singlehood, especially when it leads to single motherhood. However, it comes to bear that there are many married women who are still single parents. I am sure that many of you can identify with being in a marriage or a relationship of convenience, without having physical, spiritual, and financial support from your mate. You might be married or in a committed relationship, but as a parent, in all actuality, you are still a single parent. As a matter of fact, you might as well be a single parent; you are doing everything by yourself. You work, you bring home the bacon, put in the pan, cook it, take care of your children, meet with teachers, clean your house, pay bills, etc., etc., etc.; and where is your husband/wife? I would prefer having children living in healthy and positive single-parent households, rather than having them living in unhealthy two-parent households. However, due to much of the ignorance put forth by society regarding single parents, mothers without partners are often treated inferiorly. 

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, a disproportionate number of Black children under the age of 18 live in single parent households.  Only 38.7% of Black children live in two-parent households, as opposed to 74.3% of White children. Instead of single parenthood being considered a crime, it is time for each of us to realistically and honestly examine, develop, and engage in efforts to impact and rectify the economic, social, political, emotional, educational, and health disparities that exist for single parents and single-parent households. The crime isn’t in being a single parent n the United States; the crime is how single parents fair in an industrialized nation, by being at the bottom economically, socially, politically, emotionally, educationally, and health wise. And the greatest crime of being a single parent is that there is an administration that sees nothing wrong in the inequities presented to single parents. Single parents struggle and battle their have not status on a daily basis, as they come against those who have and seem to keep having.

And then there are many more two-parent households who are perpetrating a fraud of wholeness and happiness, when there is a cycle of misuse and abuse of the children, as well as misuse and abuse of their parents. Although these children and their mothers do not have everything they want and sometimes they don’t have everything they need, who’s to say that they don’t have one of the greatest things that can supplant lack…LOVE?! 

As a matter of fact, the single parent household rate in America has increased, even for Whites. There are privileged White woman who have come to realize that single parenthood doesn’t diminish the character, wisdom, knowledge, abilities, integrity, love, and over all value of single mothers or their children. As a matter of fact, these privileged White women have decided that they will now not only accept single parenthood, they will become single parents themselves. 

For the African-American woman, her expertise in single parenthood has span hundreds of years, from the plantation to her apartment. She watched her husband or mate be whipped, stolen, sold, and traded. She held the line through slavery as she carried and reared her children through acts of rape, disparity, cruelty, ignorance, racism, sexism, and many other isms. She weathered the public welfare system in the fifties and sixties as it became a crime for her to receive financial and other assistance if she had the father of her children in her home. She still fights the good fight as she fights a society in which she is the least respected and least protected, but she perseveres, as a woman and as a single parent.

“It is Not a Crime to be a Single Parent!” However, it should be a crime for single parents to be singled out and not supported. We never know who her children might become, because we don’t know who they are currently. There is a plan and a promise for the single mother, as there is a plan and a promise for her children. To ALL single parents; keep your head high, keep your heart lifted, keep praying, and keep believing! You are a strong presence! Neither you, nor your children are mistakes; God doesn’t make mistakes and  He doesn’t make junk! You are awesome!

 ©2019; J. Morley Productions, Inc.; P.O. Box 1745; Decatur, GA 30031; (770) 808-6570; www.doctorjoyce.com