Even then, I was never the same.
Since I had a Caesarian section, there was a pouch of skin on my stomach that never went away no matter what I did. That pouch of fat and skin on my stomach bugged me so much, that finally, I had liposuction. I guess it helped, but in hindsight, I wish I hadn’t done it because of the marks, the scars, it left on my body. My stomach is flatter, but now I have scars and stretch marks.
Oh well.
Just because you have lipo doesn’t mean you get to stop exercising. I don’t work out every day, but I do work out as often as I can. I do cardio and squats to keep my legs strong and get my heart rate up. I’ve been working on my arms (because I think they’re kind of flabby) by using weight machines to get more definition. Reginae and I try to stay active by going on walks or bike rides together, fun things like that. I want to set a good example of fitness for her by doing things that are so much fun they don’t feel like exercise, such as skating, dancing and bowling.
What I don’t do is water. I’m afraid of water. Well, it’s not really water that I’m afraid of, it’s drowning. Although I’m working on overcoming that fear, I haven’t completely beat it yet. I recently started taking swimming lessons, and while they’ve helped some, I’m still pretty scared. I think it may have started when I was kid, when my uncle used to throw me in the water. He meant it as fun, but it scared me. I wouldn’t say I’m a fan of swimming and I don’t see it as something I’ll ever really like to do, but I don’t want to be afraid of the water anymore and I don’t want my daughter to be afraid of it. I’d like to be able to keep myself from drowning if it came to that. I don’t think I’m quite there yet. I need some more lessons, but I hope I’ll get there.
As important as exercise is, it’s only part of taking care of your body. You have to try to eat right, too.
I’ll be honest--eating healthy is hard for me. I like junk food of all kinds, and I grew up eating really heavy Southern foods, like macaroni and cheese and fried chicken. There weren’t many vegetables on the plates I remember from my childhood, and the ones I do remember, I didn’t like. It’s only now that I’m older that I’ve begun to really like vegetables and make more of an effort to eat them every day. Even though I’m really trying hard to eat better, my favorite things are still ice cream, brownies and other sweets. I don’t have much willpower. If they are around me, I’m probably going to eat them!
That’s why I’m starting to buy different things and to think about what I’m eating differently. I’d rather have ice cream and brownies but I try to substitute fruit. I’d rather have bread, potatoes and butter, but I’m making room for more vegetables. Reginae hates them, but I know that fruits and vegetables are better for both us. I want to be around a long time, and I want her to have healthy habits as she gets older. She gives me a hard time about it, but whatever. She’s a kid.
Even kids are struggling with obesity these days. When my daughter was around seven or eight years old, she started to get really chunky. Her friends were teasing her and saying things like “You need to diet” and other stuff. She was really upset by it. She didn’t want to eat and her self-esteem was really suffering. It reminded me of when the kids at school used to tease me because I had a gap between my two front teeth. It wasn’t until after I got braces and the gap was gone that I felt better about my smile. Years went by with me feeling like I had a messed up mouth, and kids picking on me and teasing me, first about the gap and then about the metal in my mouth.
Reginae was going through the same kind of thing, but instead of her teeth, it was her weight. Finally, I just sat her down and told her, “You’re a growing girl. You are not fat. You don’t need to diet. Don’t let these kids get to you.”
As she got older, Reginae’s body changed and she outgrew that chunkiness. Unfortunately, like I did at that age, she’s going to need some braces soon, so there might be some new teasing. As she gets older, Reginae gets better about ignoring the mean things some kids say. I tell her she’s beautiful every day, and we work together to take care of ourselves.
I learned about make-up from watching people put it on. As I’ve said, I used to hang out with older friends and I’d watch what they did when they wanted to look really good. Though I like make-up, I don’t wear much of it. I didn’t wear it at all until two or three years ago. I’m not really a product junkie, and I don’t buy a whole lot of different things for my hair or my skin, so there’s no “miracle cream” that I swear by. In my daily life, I might just put on a little lip gloss and run out the door. Sometimes, I don’t even do the lip gloss! When I’m doing TV interviews, though, I have to wear a lot of makeup. One of the only products I use faithfully is a makeup remover to make sure I get all of that stuff off!
It amazes me that the girls at Reginae’s middle school are already wearing blush and mascara and lipstick. I think that’s unnecessary. These girls are twelve years old! Some of them are so “grown” they even wear high heeled shoes! What are their mothers thinking? Poor Reginae--her mother won’t even let her get the boots with the wedge heel. And makeup? No. You have a few more years, buddy. Sorry!
The thing that I do to take care of my skin is drink plenty of water. I drink water all day long, and not much else most days. I know it helps because my skin rarely breaks out.
The other thing I try to do to keep my skin healthy is get my full hours of sleep. I know some people have insomnia and can’t sleep, but I’m lucky. I don’t usually have any trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, unless there’s a death in the family or of someone close to me. Death messes me up and keeps me awake. If someone close to me passes, I’m awake for weeks. I just can’t sleep. I get scared. I start thinking all kinds of crazy stuff, worrying that I’ll be next and that my time is up. It’s a shame really. I pray every night, and I believe in God. I know that when it’s my time, it’s just going to be my time, but still, I’m afraid of dying. This is one of the reasons I’m really working hard to exercise, eat good, drink my water and sleep. I want to live a long, long life!
Mind
“Never let anyone dictate your happiness; find your peace within yourself.” I don’t know who said it, but it’s a quote that I say to myself every single day. I memorized it a long time ago and whenever I’m feeling sad or down, or like I can’t keep on going, I say it to myself over and over again. I have a lot of reasons to be happy, and I’m working every day to find greater peace inside myself. No one is responsible for my happiness but me!
I didn’t always understand that.
I’ve always been afraid of failure. Most of my life I’ve been scared, terrified actually, to try new things because I didn’t want to fail and look like a fool. Being scared of failing kept me from doing lots of things for a long time, even things I really wanted to do, like open a boutique or offer my services as a styling consultant. It was like there was this voice in my head saying “You can’t do that” or “You don’t have the right background to try that” or “Everyone’s gonna laugh at you” or some other negative thought. I was miserable, scared and doing nothing much with my life other complaining and wishing.
Then, I had a long conversation with someone about how to beat back the fear of failure.
“Nothing beats failure but a try,” they said to me.
Nothing beats failure but a try. I have forgotten who I had that conversation with, but I’m never going to forget the words. I live by them now. Whatever it is that you want to do, whatever it is that you hope to be, you can’t get there if you don’t try. You can’t get there if you don’t take the first step. No matter how scared you are, no matter what the fears are, you’ve got to give it a shot. Nothing beats failure but a try.
These days, I keep myself busy trying all kinds of things. I fail sometimes, and sometimes I don’t reach the goals I set for myself, but I never feel as bad as I used to feel when I let self-doubt keep me from even trying. A lot of the time when I try something new, even if I fail, something good comes out of it, or the failu
re opens up a new possibility for me. So, even failure has turned out to be a learning experience that led to a new opportunity for me. Trying almost always leaves me with something good in the end.
Trying new things helps me to stay positive and it keeps me focused on what I can accomplish and what I can learn, instead of sitting around thinking about what I don’t have. I know you can relate. When you have something new and exciting that you’re working on, doing, or preparing for, you just feel better, right? So for me, keeping my mind healthy and my self-esteem high means always having something new and exciting to work on.
If you’re feeling down, I’d really encourage you to seek out a new experience. Take the first step to a dream you’ve always had. Just try one small step, and when the fears or the negative thoughts start in your mind, tell them “Nothing beats failure but a try.”
If you want to keep your mind healthy and positive, it also helps to surround yourself with positive people who will encourage you along the way, offer support and help you to see every new effort as a good step in a fresh direction. Some of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in my life have been made even worse by spending time with people who love negativity. I finally learned my lesson about that. Being around negative people just drags me down and I don’t want that any more. I’m determined to keep my circle positive, and motivated. The more positive and motivated people I have in my life, the more energy I’m going to have to try new things and reach for higher goals.
If you’re going to keep your mind healthy and positive, you need to make sure your circle is full of healthy and positive people. There’s a saying that goes “Water seeks its own level” and it means that things that are alike find their way to each other. You want to make sure that your friends are positive people? First take a hard look at yourself. Are you a positive person? Are you working on making yourself better? Are you trying new things and making your dreams come true? If you aren’t, don’t worry about finding new friends first. Take care of your own house, and the friendships will take care of themselves. You’ll find, like I did, that when you change, your friends change. The old negative relationships end up fading away one at a time.
Spirit
When I was growing up in New Orleans, I used to go to church almost every week. I was raised a Catholic and when I was a child my relatives would take me to Mass on Sundays. The older I got, the more I realized that I didn’t really understand the religion at all. Nothing against Catholics or the Catholic faith, but I guess I didn’t get enough education about the religion when I was younger and I felt disconnected in the services. By the time Reginae was born, I really needed my faith more than ever, but I was looking for a different way to celebrate it. I converted and became a Baptist in my late teens.
When I was still living in New Orleans, I would take my daughter and my little brother (he was living with me by then) to the Baptist church every Sunday. When Dream was in town, I would try to get him to go, too. Sometimes that worked, but most of the time, it didn’t.
Later, when I moved to Atlanta, I started going to a different Baptist church, a mega church led by a very, very well-known minister. I stopped going there when I started to feel that the congregation worshipped the pastor, and not God. It really bothered me that they didn’t seem to know the difference! It wasn’t just that. It was also that being in a crowd of 20,000 people made me feel like I was at a concert, and not like I was in church. Once again, I decided I needed a change.
I started looking around for another church, a smaller one, and a place that could become my church home. I tried a bunch of churches, but I never found what I was looking for, so eventually I stopped looking. However, I didn’t stop praying and I’ve never stopped thanking and praising God.
I pray every night before I go to bed, but it’s more than that. I pray all the time. I’ll be my car, having conversations with God. I ask for guidance and help. I ask for wisdom and courage. I ask for more faith. I ask for forgiveness. Mostly, I thank Him. I thank Him for my many, many blessings. I thank Him for waking me up to another day. I thank Him for my family and good friends and for all the positive people in my life who motivate me to do better. I thank Him for everything. Sometimes, when I’m driving around I just speak whatever’s on my heart and thank Him and praise Him. I’m blessed. I’ve been blessed since I was kid. When I’m just riding along running errands or whatever, I’m praying. I’ll just be feeling so good and grateful that I just have to start thanking Him. If it weren’t for God, I don’t know where I would be, or what my life would look like. I’m not just talking about material things. I’m talking about my good health, and my daughter’s good health. I’m talking about having all my senses. I’m talking about having a new man, my love, beside me. I thank God for bringing someone like him into my life and for all the things that have nothing to do with money or possessions that make life so wonderful.
I am truly, truly, blessed.
I used to feel like you couldn’t have it all. I thought you couldn’t be both successful and happy. I didn’t think you could have both money and true love. I tried to make the best of what was missing in my life. I had married a rapper and had an extravagant lifestyle, and I wasn’t happy. I thought that was just the way it had to be--you’re either happy in love and struggling financially, or you have it made financially, but the love is lacking.
I was wrong.
You can have it all. I know because I feel like I really do have it all. I have my own nice things, I have good man who I love and who loves me, and I have a healthy, talented daughter. I guess it’s all about the timing, and when God is ready for you to have those things, you have those things.
Or maybe, when your mind is ready to really receive those things, and to accept them with gratitude, God provides them.
Even if all of the good things in my life were taken away tomorrow, I would still pray and still thank God. I believe absolutely that He is in control of my life, and this helps me to feel spiritually healthy and spiritually at peace. Praying reminds me that not everything is up to me, and I have to accept that in the end, God is the master and I am the servant. Knowing that His Will is done eliminates a lot of the stress in life, and stress isn’t healthy at all.
The Mistake I Made That You Shouldn’t
As I’ve said, appearance is important to me. I like to look good, and I try hard to stay in shape. I regret that I let the video girl image get me feeling so bad about myself that I had the liposuction. I wouldn’t do that again. It’s really easy to get sucked into trying to look like someone else instead of celebrating and taking care of the body that you have right now.
Don’t make that mistake. The best thing you can do is continue to make good, healthy choices that really add up, like eating fruits and vegetables, drinking lots of water, trying to get some kind of exercise every day and getting your full sleep. Fill your life with positive people and new experiences, and don’t be afraid to fail, like I was. Also, don’t forget to thank God for everything in your life. Counting your blessings makes you appreciate them that much more.
Toya’s Priceless Gem: Whatever your size or shape, find ways to take care of your body, mind and spirit. Even small changes can add up to a big difference!
TRUST AND REAL LOVE
They say you can’t really love someone if you don’t trust them, and I believe it. I’ve learned the hard way that you can say you love someone and you can have a lot of deep feelings for them, but if you’re worrying about what he’s doing and who he’s with all the time, then you don’t really trust him. If you don’t trust him, the love you have isn’t true. Real love and real trust go hand in hand.
Trusting people isn’t easy, especially if you’ve had your heart broken into tiny pieces like I have. Betrayal makes you feel like the whole world is full of liars, cheaters and people out to do you harm. Betrayal makes you doubt that anyone is really what they say they are, or that they’ll do what you hope they’ll do. Your guard goes up real high, so high that ha
rdly anyone can get past it, and that’s the way you want it. I know I felt like I needed to keep my guard up after my marriage ended. It felt like the only way to take care of myself was to raise my guard and never, ever let it down again.
Don’t get me wrong--being cautious isn’t always a bad thing, especially when it comes to men. There are dangerous guys out there, there are guys who just want to play, and there are guys who are users. It’s just smart to hesitate and to step back a bit and make sure everything is cool before you decide to start kicking it with someone. If you’re really looking for someone to share your life with, at some point you have to find a way to balance being cautious with being open enough to find love again.
For the longest time, I knew I wanted to be in love again, but I was afraid. I was afraid that I’d fall deeply in love with someone who might take advantage of my feelings and treat me bad. I was afraid I’d be back on that painful roller coaster of loving and fighting and loving and breaking up. I was afraid I’d be the one waiting and wondering again, while he moved from girl to girl.
When I thought about all the negative things that might happen if I got serious in a new relationship, it seemed easier to just leave the whole business alone. You’ve heard that saying “I can do bad by myself?” It was sort of like the opposite of that for me. It wasn’t that I was doing bad. It was that I was doing good, putting my life together step by step, and finding a place where I was truly happy with myself and what was going on around me. I was afraid that falling in love again would only mess it all up.
I wanted love and I didn’t. I wanted a new relationship, and I didn’t.
You feel me? Have you ever been in that situation where you both want something and you don’t want it, and you don’t know what to do about it? I don’t think I understood at the time that my fears about love were the same things as my fears about trust. I definitely didn’t realize that the person I most needed to trust was myself. Trusting the guy wasn’t nearly as important as learning to trust myself to pick the right one.
Priceless Inspirations Page 12