Blessed & Curvy

Learning the inevitable.  Scared all my life that I would lose loved ones one by one to cancer. It's the scarlet letter . The awful crest that each wears. Cancer! So on this particular day when I am summoned to my eldest sister's home upon her return home from the hospital.  A place she was only supposed to be for a couple of days that lasted weeks. There was in the air that made it difficult to breathe.  She looked weak laying on top of the bed. Told to sit by her feet. Siblings coming into the room. One standing behind me, one in the door and my brother across from me. She had problem looking me into the eyes and stared at the ceiling as the words slowly came out of her mouth. She has been diagnosed with cancer and it wasn't in her lungs. She was a lung cancer survivor and this time is was in her liver spreading. She was determined to fight and she was going to beat it! In shock,  the tears flowed, collapsing into the sibling arms who was behind me.  Questions...

During the pandemic I have heard from so many people going through life's struggles. I wanted to revisit my fifth book  There Is Sunshine After the Rain   that I wrote that is a memoir that covers the darkest moments in my life and the paths that I had to travel to get to my sunshine. This book has poetry sprinkled throughout the chapters because it was my first love. Since I was a child I was writing my feelings that I hadn't even understood the meaning of what was going on. From having the first crush, facing death, and the stages that life had planned that I had to navigate through. A lot of times we get caught up being in our personal storms that we feel like the world has let us down. We don't see the end in sight and unfortunately there are some who decide to take matters into their own hands and commit suicide. Not realizing that there is support no matter if it is friends, family, or support groups.  We forget that there will be sunshine after the rain and we...

Not Needing Your Acceptance Powerful words Letting them roll off of my lips like dew drops As a child we do everything to appease our parents Then it become peer pressure when we are teenagers Then it's someone else that we are trying to please At some point it stops! When I was younger I was told I was beautiful That all that matters is that you're beautiful So as I aged, life challenges presented itself ,  as most men and women I found  myself with a few extra pounds Now I was still beautiful but society had labels  I had family members who love me say " You dress cute for a big girl" It would sting because why wasn't I thought of as someone who dressed nice I hit 50 years old and there was a feeling of liberation. I was letting friends go who were negative I was letting relationships go that were toxic I was letting jobs go that were killing me Again the same family member would say " You know companies won't ...

Like an Onion Slowly peeling back the layers Trust issues Past relationships Hurt Broken promises Abuse Each layer coming off Self esteem issues Walls protecting my heart Lack of communication Another layer is taken off Until I am bare Vulnerable Sweet at the core Exposed I look at you for acceptance You’re crying (c)2018 There Is Sunshine After The Rain About the Author Self Published Author, Patricia A. Saunders was born and raised in Connecticut before relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area nearly 24 years ago. She received her Master’s in Management from the University of Phoenix in 2011. After the passing of her mother who had Alzheimer’s, Patricia decided that all the words that she kept to herself were to be released. Saunders has released her fifth book an autobiography memoir infused with poetry (December 2017) with BookBaby Publishing called There Is Sunshine After The Rain : Making It Through L...

The other day I got into a conversation with other women at work about relationships. The topic went into so many directions. There were secrets revealed, tears shed, and at the end we realized that we were all vulnerable to love. One woman shared that she had been married for 17 years and her husband was loyal to her for only 4 years. That she allowed her spouse to come in and out of her life even when they divorced, hoping he would come back and wanting to be a family for her kids. She finally met another man, falls in love, and recently married him after she allowed herself to be loved. Her kids say they never saw her smile while she was with their father. They see what love now looks like. It resonates with another woman sitting on the other side of the table. Her parents were married but her mother was verbally and physically abusive to her father so they divorced.   Their divorced impacted from the child respective. The point of being divorced bu...