Be Your Own Best Role Model – & – Guest Blog Post: “Learning to make homes,” in Elizabeth Semende’s exact words

da-AL Africa, Authors, Blogging, Boundaries, Children, Compassion, Decision-making, Depression, Girls, Guest Posts, Happiness, Heroine, Joy, Love, Mindfulness, Modeling, Modern Life, Motherhood, Mothers, Parenting, Poetry, Reblog, Recovery, Self Image, Spirit, Strength, Teachers, Teaching, Uncategorized, Women, Zimbabwe

Thank you, Ryan McGuire.

Role models can be great. They provide wisdom for how to get where we’d like to be.

Take care, though.

In our eagerness, we risk blindness and deafness to how sometimes they’re better examples of what not to do. Of the ones we love, those who are closest to us, their familiarity can feel like normalcy.

The amazing poem posted by afroliz of Zimbabwe that follows illustrates what I’m trying to say.

I believe we must all continually work to be our own best role models. Let us be lighthearted in working toward that goal. Let us be as serious as happiness when it comes to understanding which role models we might already have unwittingly chosen.

flowers and poems 🌼

In these places where women come to die

My mother’s words take turns to hit my ears:

“When you find a man, carve a home beneath his pride and

learn to make homes from nothing.”
Then I screamed: Mother this is not my home!

This is not a home!

It carries the weight of a man’s pride

the same way corpses carry the weight of tombstones​

In silence.

Mother did not listen.
She too found a home

In these places where nothing remains

but a swam of men urinating on the flame of our souls

She said: that is how we make homes out of nothing

By carrying the weight of a man’s pride

In silence.

© Elizabeth Semende

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25 thoughts on “Be Your Own Best Role Model – & – Guest Blog Post: “Learning to make homes,” in Elizabeth Semende’s exact words”

  4. I am sure many things my Mom said to me taught me a lot. I’m glad to say my grandmother and mother were “liberated” and married to men who respected their minds. I was lucky, I guess.
    I have accidentally chosen friends who did not have a good influence on me. So, I do agree, be cautious and listen to your mind when a friend is speaking. Examine people who try to influence you. They may have ulterior motives.

    Liked by 3 people

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