Relationships - you make it or break it!

For a human being to be fully functional in daily activities, he or she has to be sound in all 8 dimensions of wellness: physical, social, financial, vocational, emotional, spiritual, intellectual and environmental. Some human beings are functional in their day-to-day activities without being sound in all areas of wellness. When these dimensions of wellness in a person are not well maintained, such individual run on fumes like a car that has not had an oil change in a long time. The fast-paced nature of the world today makes it hard to maintain all those dimensions of wellness especially right now with the pandemic of coronavirus which currently has affected over 15 million people globally. Though this pandemic seems a significant issue that affects humanity, there is also another pandemic that has been a chronic terror in the black community. That is police brutality on black men and women. Police brutality and other effects of racism on black people for so long has crippled our prog...

A little over a week ago, Anthony Bourdain, a famous chef and well traveled lover of diverse cultures and food took his own life. He lived and struggled with depression with little knowledge to the general public.  Days before his death, it was Kate Spade, a designer and business mogul who had taken her life while struggling and living with depression.  Depression is a chronic condition that plays heavily on an individual's mood and behavior. In most cases, depression is coined, the silent killer, because it slowly kills those who live with it till they eventually take their own lives. And mostly, all these take place with little or no knowledge to close friends and family members. Depression knows no race, no social class, gender, religion etc. The passing of Bourdain raised an intimate discussion between my mom and I where she learned that I had struggled with suicidal ideations that stemmed from a depressed state during my teen years.  I had multiple times when I had...