Big City Moon Woman: Releasing: Geaux Me! Its Me Its Me

2014 has been a year of great loss for me, not only burying my mother back in March but from Jan-Oct, news of 29 people friends, family,colleagues & acquaintances' deaths. Others shifted out of my life, some remained and others have re-entered after a long absence. Not necessarily out of anything bad, just life ebb and flow.

Eleanor Hughes Mooney: June 19th,1914-March, 2014

I thought the losses would never end...it appeared whenever I caught a breath, here comes another blow...like it would never end. Just 2 weeks after returning home after burying my mother came:

Dr. Maya Angelou

I'm still sorting that out. I also came to the realization that on one hand, some folks never were going to, at least in this system, see me other then the stories they've created in their hear to fit whatever story or song they wanted to tell. It was an exercise in futility to expect any more (or any less) of them.

Looking back to this years as it is taking the last breath what has clarity for me has been how much my weight gain tied into the losses: not just in death but other kinds of deaths. I could see it, even more so feel it, but didn't act on it.

There comes a point when you have to, no doubt about it.

For me this is not the typical end of the year half hearted promises people make to ignore it a few weeks later. I say that because there has been, such as life can be, especially in the intervals of loss, there's been some regains, restarts, renewals & rewards.

I had been having a significant, powerful reocurring dream... and the last time it was the most poignant and with great clarity. I will not elaborate here, leaving it for another time perhaps. Less just say it was quite reassuring as my sub-conscious spoke to me, that I am very ready to do to be what is going to be.

Some people re-entered much to my joy! I see a recharge/a Renaissance, slow but steady, of my phoenix rising out of the ashes. My 6 yrs "sabbatical" now over.

Ironically, although one may puzzle, the departure of some toxicity that consciously I did not, in retrospect, want to see as such. Its not a loss, but with ease organically gone. A brief sting & pouf!

Gone, gone, gone!

I've posted a few pictures of me in 2014 noticing that I had avoided full pictures of myself as I did not want to see all of me and what I had allowed myself to become. Make no doubt I am not ashamed of my size. I have never had been. What I did not want to see was the physical manifestation of the toxicity that I carried needlessly.

My first breakout camed when I moved out of a very toxic, emotionally unhealthy place where I felt trapped among a lot of folks who were in a far more perilous prison then I. But I do think it was significant that I spent 19 long months in that trap. It isn't about how bad I thought people were as they were not bad. Caged like I was without bars, but not the core them. It was an eye opening time for me.

Some were willing or had given up think that wallowing was their life sentence although it did not have to be. And that was the lesso I too, had to grasp hard, in the core. My release came in August 2014.

But even that wasn't going to be the end of it all. In my new place although the amount is far smaller then before there are some here who are caged in a prison of their (and life) doing.

For many folks:

So here I am

February 2014-Gus Bennett,Jr photographer

April 2014

May 2014

June 2014

Late August 2014 prior to the dedication of the Maraist Street Senior Apts

Speaking for the Tenants at the Opening of the Marais Street Senior Apts. The CEO of HRI,Inc in background that asked me to speak 10 minutes before I did.