SeasonedSistah

Week One: Mindful Monday – Healthy Living

Thanks to Colleen over at Silver Threading for hosting Mindful Monday – Healthy Living . Joining her and other bloggers on this life changing journey is the incentive I need to start the new year.

I am in desperate need of a comeback following a healthy living setback from Thanksgiving through the Christmas holidays.

My Healthy Lifestyle Plan

Preparing for a healthier new year, I explored a number of options. Finally, I chose to re-start a program I had tried back in 2010. Even though I completed the eight-week Creation Health seminar, “God’s Eight Principles for Living Life to the Fullest,” I never fully lived up to the eight principles:

C = Choice
R = Rest
E = Environment
A = Activity
T = Trust
I = Interpersonal
O = Outlook
N = Nutrition

Setting weekly INTENTIONS for each CREATION principles is the path I choose to follow on this journey to live a healthy lifestyle.

WEEK ONE – INTENTIONS

CHOICE – take time to stop and breathe deeply throughout the day to improve decision-making skills.
REST – between 7-8 hours nightly and pace my daily activities.
ENVIRONMENT – visit a local park or botanical garden.
ACTIVITY exercise the mind, body and spirit by taking time for mindfulness/meditation practices, workout at my fitness center, yoga, photography, adult coloring and painting projects.
TRUST – through stillness and silence there will be a resolution to conflicts that may enter my space..
INTERPERSONAL – reconnect with a friend and/or extended family member.
OUTLOOK – daily record five things that I am grateful for in my online Gratitude Journal App.

NUTRITION – follow a healthy diet and prepare a meal using a recipe from one of the healthy eating cookbooks gathering dust in a closet under the stairs.

Journeying Toward a Healthy New Year

I look forward to this healthy living journey and the opportunity to share both my challenges and successes in a weekly post.

Weekly Photo Challenge – Alphabet 01/15/2016

Alphabet Sculpture – Winter Park, Florida

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/alphabet/

Blog-A-Versary

January 12, 2013, after weeks of struggling to set up this blog website, I published the first post, “My Final Season: How I Choose to Live It.”

Today, I began this post with what I wrote three years ago:

“As a 70-year-old, I faced reality. Approaching my final season, it’s time to make a choice. My final season, as defined by ME, is the time to focus on ME. My inner voice spoke to ME. I listened. God wants to direct me down a new path. A new journey. A new venture. A time to explore and discover ME. In this final season of life, I plan to open new doors.”

Beginning this blog opened my space up to new people, places and things. I have gone far beyond my own expectations in this discovery of ME.

Blogging took ME down a path to connect with other bloggers who, many without knowing, inspired ME to expand my world. With confidence, I went outside of my comfort zone, explored and discovered:

Yoga

Photography

Container Gardening

Mindfulness – Adult Coloring Books for Stress Relief

Ancestry Research – Maternal Family History

I also want to express gratitude to those bloggers who shared information and thoughts about:

meditation;
mindfulness;
positive affirmations;
random acts of kindness;
expressions of gratitude and thankfulness;
exercise;
spiritual uplifting; and
healthy eating.

Motivated by these bloggers, I expanded and/or incorporated healthy practices into my lifestyle. This has improved the overall quality of my life; and, I am on a path to build a healthy mind, body and spirit.

As I continue down this journey to define ME, expressing gratitude for the doors that have opened and the new doors to open.

Happy Blog-A-Versary to ME

Six-Week Blog Hiatus

I am so, so happy to reconnect with the Blogosphere World after taking a 6-week hiatus in mid-November. During my absence, Hubby and I traveled to Wisconsin. We enjoyed the face-to-face time with the children, grands and friends over the Thanksgiving Holiday.

We came back home to face the monumental task of decorating the inside and outside of our home for Xmas. It was not an easy task for two people on the other side of 70 to:

dig out Xmas decorations and lights stored randomly in closets when space ran out in the garage. I so miss my Wisconsin basement and attic space;
separate tangled lights, haphazardly pulled down and thrown in red containers when the season ended last year;
setup the 5-year-old artificial Xmas tree, which is becoming more difficult as we age and it ages; and
figure out how to work the new fangled laser lights purchased to heighten our holiday visual experience when focused properly. We were not able to get the proper focus.

In between these tasks we readied the house and shopped for enough food to host our three children, five grandchildren, two cousins and one nephew for eight days.

When everyone arrived, seeing them and knowing that I would be in their presence for more than a week was the greatest Christmas gift. The preparation tiredness disappeared and in its place happiness and joy entered my space.

Rested, Relaxed, Restored and Ready to Re-Start Blogging!

Wordless Wednesday – November 18, 2015

From Whence I Came: Gilbert and Mary

Thus far, in searching out information to learn more about “From Whence I Came,” I have relied on records from the United States Federal Census, Illinois Death Records, U.S. Social Security Death Index, and U.S. World War I Draft Registration forms.

I am not sure what, if anything, I will find out about my ancestors who were born into, married and/or died during slavery. Since enslaved African-American men, women, and children were not recorded in Census Reports until 1870. My enslaved family, though identified in Census Reports, were recorded under their slaveholders’ name. They were listed by their first name or nameless along with race, height, and weight.

At this stage in my research, I have not been able to find out when my great-great-grandparents, Gilbert and Mary Shegog, married. However, I feel confident they were married for more than forty years given the:

1900 Census report their oldest children as twins, Thomas and Minerva, age 13.
1990 Census report Gilbert’s and Mary’s age as 34 and 25, respectively.
1930 Census report the youngest child, Josie, is living in the home with her two young children.

It appears that Mary passed away sometime after the 1930 Census Report as the:

1940 Census reports Gilbert living in the home of his youngest, son, Robert and wife, Edna. His marital status was recorded as widowed.

Since I found the record of Gilbert’s death in the Illinois, Deaths and Stillbirths, Index, I assume he was either visiting or living with his children who migrated from Mississippi to Chicago, Illinois, in the late 1930s or early 1940s. Gilbert was laid to rest in his hometown, Clarksdale, Coahoma County, Mississippi on November 30, 1947.

Gilbert and Mary’s children were the great-grand aunts and uncles who loved and embraced me from my childhood until their death. A strong family commitment brought them together to fill the void left by my grandmother and great-grandmother who died before I was born.

There is no doubt “From Whence I Came —

“I am the descendent of a slave family. We were captured and lost our identity. Yet, we have survived and thrived despite the obstacles placed in our paths.”

In coming weeks, I hope to uncover information and write about my great, great-grandmother, Mary, as well as the 13 children born into this union.

Wordless Wednesday – November 11, 2015

Wordless Wednesday – November 4, 2015

Family History: New Information, New Questions

As I continue to uncover New Information about my maternal family history, New Questions arise.

New Information

A recent Ancestry.com query by my paternal niece revealed this unknown information about my maternal great-grandmother, Minerva. She was born about 1888, in Mississippi, and was one of 13 children, seven brothers and six sisters. Her father, Gilbert, was 22 and her mother, Mary, was 13.

Minerva had one child, a daughter named Minnie, born in 1905.

New Questions

I know about five sisters, Roxy, Sally, Willie, Minerva, and Josie. What happened to the sixth sister?
I know about three brothers, Thomas, Robert and Johnny. What happened to the other four brothers?
When and where did Gilbert and Mary get married?
When and where were Gilbert and Mary born?
When and where did Gilbert and Mary die?
When and where were the siblings born?
When and where did the siblings die?
The name of my grandmother, Minnie’s, father.

Answers to these questions will provide New Information, leading to New Questions and my maternal family search to “know from whence we came” will continue.