Updated: Dec 15, 2024
I can’t say exactly how many times I have written about "the slap-down." More than a dozen times including comments on social. The story consumes us. From my lens as an integral coach, I see Will's lack of life integration, front and foremost — he is compartmentalized: his career and marriage, at odds. I hope these parts of life get better for him in the future.
Let's face it. The Oscar incident demonstrates that Will, like many of us, has never been "all together."
I am not condoning what Will did when he had his very public, human, broken moment. Under pressure, Will Smith unraveled.
Our society purports that money and accomplishments mitigate human failings. Band-Aids them, maybe. But heals them, almost never. The work to heal your trauma is your work.
So where do we go from here? We focus on our collective selves and why this incident has garnered so much attention in a post-pandemic, divided, war-torn world. Perhaps, we are drawn to the story because we understand what it is like to be under pressure. More importantly, we know what it feels like when pressure no longer holds us together.
Want to read more by Delia:
Rants + Ramblings on Life and Wellness: A book of general wisdom on topics that make you think outside the box.|⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "The book is called "Rants and Ramblings" but as you read it is clear the author is weaving together a series of thoughts related to health that led you to one conclusion - no one can advocate for your health and your care like you can, so get to it.
Updated: Feb 19, 2022
If you have one of these small animals living with you, such as a dog, cat, etc. You know that they have their signals, they read yours, and many can build up a vocabulary of spoken human words. Just like we come to know a particular bark or yawn to have meaning.
Training this pup is a form of meditation in what feels like a topsy-turvy world. The effort everyone in our family is putting into finding a way to peacefully coexist with our new little buddy, reminds us all that even when the shared vocabulary is limited there is a way to come to an understanding.
It's not a perfect world and we evolve our approach when things don't seem to connect. We are in constant conversation with our trainer. But, we recognize failure as an event, not "something Louis (like Armstrong) did wrong." We just keep our focus on rewarding what we want to continue, ignoring what is irrelevant, and talking through what we want to change.
For our family, the value of integrating a pet has been in the need to constantly evolve our approach. Life is dynamic and as we learn more, we ground and grow at the same time.
Updated: Feb 19, 2022
Lately, I've been working on marriages and piecing together relationships. There are a lot of repeat names. But as you look through the slave owning history. You see that a slave owner owned several farms. And every enslaved laborer was likely to have the name of the plantation or its owner as their documented surname.
It gets messy that is for sure. Especially if you don't understand the history. It's not that 10 sibling pairs have married. It's that 10 pairs of people who were the descendants of captives have married.
In today's world, it's like you picking 10 of your closest coupled-off friends and giving them all your last name. Then giving their partners all your neighbor's last name. All of a sudden there are 10 pairs of Smith Jones' on paper. None of them blood relations. What a mess to sort out.
And now, you understand the difficulties that institutionalized human trafficking and the legalized ownership of people creates from family tree point of view.
The DNA IS helping. In our family, we can begin to parse out one of those 10 couples that is a connected to all of us. But finding the one couple is like a needle in a haystack. It is a lot of collaborative work.
Right now, many of us are working together tirelessly on breaking a knot. I don't know all my DNA cousins directly but our desire to understand who we are bonds us.
My older relatives stories are helping. We believe we have a split generation playing mayhem in our sorting by names. One in which parents were still having children as their older sons started their families. All, giving family names like James, John, to the elder boys.
It's intriguing, historical, messy and poignant.