How will you define your legacy?

Keke Wyatt (L) at pregnancy photo shoot; Diddy (R) with his children: Chance, adopted son Quincy, D’Lila, Jessie, Justin and Christian Combs.

How will you define your legacy? Many will denote their legacy by their personal accomplishments, while others categorize it by their philanthropic efforts to charities that they were either affiliated with or donate to. Most categorize their legacy by their familial roots through ancestors or their children, and their children’s children, etc. On behalf of my paternal grandfather, who was polygamous, I can say on behalf of his children and the grandchildren that are alive, myself included, that he definitely left a legacy in terms of familial ties even though he is not alive to witness all that has manifested.

On behalf of celebrities that I admire and try to keep up with in the Black community, to equally represent a man and woman, these two hold the throne in terms of numbers when it comes to their familial legacy. Say what you want about their numerous relationships to have this many children, but one thing you can’t argue about is how vested these celebrities are on behalf of the lives of their children. The celebrities I choose to highlight are Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and Keke Wyatt.

Earlier this week, Keke Wyatt announced through a baby/pregnancy photoshoot that she is pregnant with her 10th child (WOW)!!!! As a woman in this day and age, more than 2 is a burden to some, if you are fortunate enough to bear a child, and how pregnancy can take a toll on your body I commend Keke, as a woman, for bearing her 10th pregnancy.  Of course she is a celebrity and has the means to financially provide for 10 children aside from her career endeavors and personal life.  I pray for a safe remainder of time being pregnant and delivery of her baby-to-be, that he or she is as healthy as can be.  To follow Keke Wyatt on Instagram: @keke_wyatt

The male celebrity I’ve chosen is Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, who has created a foundation and legacy of himself through his accomplishments career-wise and through his children.  When you catch him primarily on his Instagram, if you don’t catch him with videos of him in the music studio, his outside endeavors, his musicians/artists, you will definitely catch him with classic pictures and videos of his children.  Three of his children are to the late Kim Porter, his oldest adopted son Quincy, as well as Justin and Chance Combs, who is in similar age to the twins.  Overall, his children are doing exceedingly well: Quincy is a musician/actor, King Christian Combs is a rapper, Justin is an actor and former college football athlete at UCLA, the twins recently graduated from their prep school to middle school, while Chance is highlighted frequently on his social media.  I look forward to seeing how all of Diddy’s children will carry on his legacy and how they will build upon the foundation that has been laid out for them.  You can follow Diddy on Instagram: @diddy

I’m not saying having many children determines your success. Many of us can not afford that, but for the ones who choose that route of having more than 3 kids, allow yourself to properly invest in that child so that no opportunity is missed. Your legacy is what you build, but in return what you realize will take care of you in your older years and after you are gone.

Whether you choose to define your legacy by accomplishments, career, charity, and or family….again I ask, HOW WILL YOU DEFINE YOUR LEGACY??

“The great use of life is to spent it for something that will outlast it.” –William James

evalinanoteveLeave a comment

Wealth: Finding your inner-millionaire

I was inspired by one the people I follow on Instagram, my baby numba and soror Krystal who put up this post: “6 figures is only $274/day”.

I sat back and with that realization, and was pondering at the fact, some of you spend $200+ on shoes, extravagant dinners in one sitting, clothes, and the like. Some of you spend this amount even when you don’t have. Six figures sounds like a lot, but when you break it down into a daily rate, it sounds attainable.

This quote, which can be a reminder to us can bring a lot of inspiration. It also makes the dream more reachable when you learn how to break it down. If 6 figures sounds too big of a dream, lets work halfway….lets start at $137/day. This goal can be achieved by having side ventures and hobbies that can bring you residual income. What are some of your side hobbies? What could you do continuously without getting tired? What are your interests/passions? Figure these things out and seek advice on how you can build residual income from it, so that your goal of reaching $137, $274 or whatever limit you set can be reached on a daily basis.

Food for thought.

evalinanoteveLeave a comment

JOKER: a thriller with the depiction of mental illness

This past weekend I went with my cousins to go see the movie, Joker, a highly anticipated and well-reviewed thriller/drama. At first, based off of the image of the movie release and my prior knowledge of the role of the Joker from Batman movies, I instantly thought that the movie would depict horror all through. NEVER would I have thought that backstory of the Joker was depicted from mental health conditions and his upbringing from child to adulthood.

Coming from a mental health background as an advocate and someone who used to primarily associate with a mental health condition, I empathized a lot with the actor Joaquin Phoenix, who played the lead role as Arthur Fleck, who later transcended into ‘the Joker’. I also felt that the depiction of a mental health patient and the broken system was accurate: the local mental health facilities, the unconcerned staff, the numerous prescriptions that do not help, and the overworked and underpaid social worker. Let me repeat, THIS IS A BROKEN SYSTEM, and if you do not find your way out of it, you will be suctioned into the vicious cycle for the rest of your life.

Without giving out any spoilers for the ones who have not seen it yet, Arthur suffers from numerous mental health conditions, but his main condition is a neurological condition of uncontrollable laughter. He utilizes his condition by getting a job as an advertising clown and is also a main caregiver to his ailing mother. For the ones who watch the movie and can tolerate some horror, please pay specific attention to the mother, his condition, and how it all came to pass. I’ll leave you with that.

At the end of the day, society created the Joker, not Arthur.

evalinanoteveLeave a comment

Transparency in Relationships… where do we draw the line??

This most recent episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians has sparked controversy and conversation primarily on my Instagram with people I follow and my followers I gist with. I’m rooting for every couple to succeed, and it is harder when couples sort out their differences amongst themselves, but becomes more difficult when its showcased on television. In this scene Kanye and Kim have a disagreement about her look for the MET Gala in New York this past May. He expresses his distaste for her ‘look’, that Kim is his wife, and how her sexy pictures affects him. Kim also expressed her conflicting issue with the look, questioned Kanye on his intentions when in the past he’s always encouraged her to bring out her sex appeal, and had to reaffirm to him that she is not in the same place he is currently in with his transformation in music and life in general.

Both Kim and Kanye have been vocal to each other and the outside world on their stance, which has probably been the foundation of their relationship and a reason to the bond that they have. I admire their transparency to each other, which can take a lot of courage given each of their backgrounds.

However, many people are taking different sides. There are men and women that I’ve spoken to about the situation who strictly side with Kanye, and his priority of opinion as a husband. That the roles have changed. There are also some of my women friends who feel extremely bad for Kim and feel that Kanye is a narcissist. There are also some with an ‘in between’ view where they agree that Kanye and Kim aren’t in the same viewpoint and how can you express to someone who gained her fame off of her sex appeal, to immediately just stop what the foundation of her existence to the world is.

Where do we draw the line? How can you be transparent with your partner, especially when your views conflict?

I would love to hear your thoughts.

evalinanoteveLeave a comment

Does perpetrators of mass shootings = more mental institutions???

Within the past month, we dealt with back-to-back mass shootings in El Paso, TX, Dayton, OH, and near Odessa, TX.

In February of 2018, when we dealt with the Parkland High School shooting that left 17 people dead, Donald Trump quickly turned his thoughts to creating more mental institutions. That was his solution to the shooting.

Fast-forward to present 2019, a year where we have dealt with several mass shootings, Congress/The Senate has not increased gun laws, background checks are not as intensive, and Donald Trump again speaks of building new facilities for the mentally ill as a way to reduce mass shootings.

Now the White House staff members are looking for ways to incorporate the president’s desire for more institutions into a long list of other measures aimed at reducing gun violence.

The Trump Administration is using Indiana as a ‘model’, where this past March, Indiana opened up a new 159-bed psychiatric hospital, which focuses on treating patients with the most challenging psychiatric illnesses and then moving them into treatment settings with the community or state mental health system. This was initiated by Mike Pence, who stated that “our prisons have become the state’s largest mental health provider.”

Not everyone is in agreement with this notion that Trump proposes. Many mental health professionals say this proposal of building more mental facilities reflect outdated thinking on the treatment of mental illness. They feel Trump’s support for new mental institutions would do little to reduce mass shootings in the U.S. and incorrectly associates mental illness with violence.

Let’s look at some factors discerning mental illness, funding, and violence:

  • The number of state hospital beds that serve the nation’s most seriously ill patients has fallen from more than 550,000 in the 1950s to fewer than 38,000 in the first half of 2016, according to a Survey from the Treatment Advocacy Center
  • It is recommended that Congress add $35 million for a block grant program to help states provide more community-based care to people in a mental health crisis
  • Issues as a result to psychiatric facilities that need to be addressed
    1. Not enough hospital beds
    2. Huge number of people in jails
    3. Homelessness
    4. High treatment costs
  • NAMI estimates 1 in 5 American adults are living with a mental illness: Research has shown that only a very small percentage of violent acts are committed by people who are diagnosed with, or in treatment for mental illness
  • Most people living with serious mental illnesses are never violent
  • According to the American Psychiatric Association, people with mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators of violence
  • In order to execute Trump’s consideration of more mental institutions, it would require more federal money and loosening Medicaid’s restrictions on mental health funding. PROBLEM: this is impossible to achieve as the government is expected to run a $1 trillion deficit in the next fiscal year

Now how does mental institutions relate to mass shootings and acts of violence?? In all honesty, it DOES NOT. The problem does not lie with people’s mental capacity but the access to lethal weapons that are being used in these crimes.

Let’s play devil’s advocate for a minute. Let’s try to understand why Trump may be coming to his conclusion of more mental institutions, without delving deeper into the effect of the mentally ill and violence. According to a 2018 study of 63 active shooters, only 25 percent had been diagnosed with a mental illness. That may be considered small, but the percentage extracted from the study is actually higher than the percentage of the general population, 18 percent.

Now lets look at the mass shooters of this past month:

  • El Paso, TX shooter: had no mental illness
  • Dayton, OH shooter: had evidence of mental health illness (was caught with mental health receipts and was found with mental health drugs in his system/autopsy)
  • Odessa, TX shooter: had mental illness (bought gun in private sale, after ban due to mental illness)

If we examine just these three cases, 2/3 or 66.6 percent were associated with a mental health illness. So this example would support Trump’s solution of creating more mental institutions. HOWEVER, could these perpetrators have shown enough warning signs that would have put them in a mental institution before committing the act?

Yes, I agree that mental health needs more attention, but YES I also feel we need to fix the broken system of our psychiatric institutions and their recidivism rates that have the same patients returning with the same or new diagnoses or committing more heinous crimes.

I’ll close with a saying by Marvin Swartz: “even if society were to cure serious mental illness, total violence would decline by only about 4 percent.”

It is up to us as a society to act, see the warning signs and red flags, and find more holistic solutions to addressing issues that are presented as mental health concerns, and maybe, just maybe the violence can be diminished with time.

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS???

evalinanoteveLeave a comment

I’m ‘LOCKED’ Up, {they} won’t let {us} OUT: The issue on Immigration, Detention Centers, and the bylaw of ‘one nation, under ALL’

According to the LA Times, there are two core elements of Trump’s administration’s policies and actions governing immigrants:

  1. There is a strong desire to limit new residents from abroad
  2. There is a blind disregard for whatever cruelty might be inflicted in service of that goal

The overall message being broadcasted to families primarily in Central America is: DON’T EVEN BOTHER.

Some examples of the actions of the policies administered by the Trump administration are as followed:

  • A plan to end a program that deferred deportation for migrants suffering from debilitating illness
  • Pulling children away from their migrant parents for the ‘crime’ of seeking asylum
  • Opening of federal family detention centers to hold arriving families until their fate gets decided on in immigration court. There is a backlog of 1+ million cases, with some cases pending on average for 705 days
  • ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy: Trump administration has sent at least 35,000 people with a legal right to seek asylum in the United States to wait in a completely separate country while their applications are being processed
  • ‘Public charge’ rule: The denying of green cards to immigrants living legally in the United States if they use or are deemed likely by the government to use certain safety net programs for more than 12 months within a 36-month period
    • This has led to countless migrants to drop out of programs they are entitled to participate in for fear of jeopardizing their legal status

The most striking aspect of the immigration issue that really doesn’t get told is the relation to mental health.

Psychologists warn that incarcerating children even for short periods of time, with or without their parents, can lead to mental health issues. A report by the Inspector General of Department of Human and Health Services concluded that the government has failed to address mental health issues faced by minors who arrived unaccompanied after fleeing violence, or who were forcibly separated from their parents at the border.

This is the most excruciating effect aside from children being separated from their parents. If the treatment of the mental health system is partially broken, and we do not effectively combat mental health with our citizens, let alone asylees, how do make sure we maintain the well-being of our migrants? Both infants, children, and adults?

What are your thoughts on the immigration issue? Do you feel there is a solution?

Would love to hear your thoughts!!

evalinanoteveLeave a comment

The Birther Issue…here we go again…

I thought I would not have to discuss this in 2019, but here we go again…

Towards the end of June, politics took a return to something that some people may have thought we would not revisit…

The ‘Birther’ Issue

The term ‘birtherism’ is defined as the idea that Obama was not born in the United States, but this term has now transpired to some of our current Presidential candidates. Some people thought it was funny when Donald Trump, Sr. was referring to candidate Elizabeth Warren as ‘Pocahontas’, as a way to make fun and create merit to his many conspiracy theories

Now Donald Trump, Jr. has taken merit to these theories as he had retweeted one of Ali Alexander that later got deleted for fear that people were misreading what his overall message. The tweet state:

“Kamala Harris is implying she is descended from American Black slaves, she’s not. She comes from Jamaican Slave owners. That’s fine. She’s not an American Black. Period.”

This tweet was in response to Kamala Harris speaking on the issue of race when she addressed VP Joe Biden on an anti-discrimination policy he lobbied against in his youth.

Support for Kamala Harris has come from most of the Presidential Democratic candidates and some from the right-wing. Kamala has expressed herself on the Breakfast Club by saying:

“This is the same thing they did to Barack. This is not new to us– we know what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to do what has been happening the last two years, which is powerful voices trying to sow hate and division among us. We need to recognize when we’re being played.”

There have been other conspiracy theories brought up by Trump and his administration on several other members of Congress and candidates, but it seems that as long as Donald Trump and his entourage have some sort of executive power, these types of allegations will not cease.

What are your thoughts on the birther issue? How do you feel conspiracy theories, such as this and future ones can be avoided? Do you feel like the birther issue will hinder Kamala Harris’ success as a presidential candidate?

evalinanoteveLeave a comment