

My Friendships Taught Me Loving Women Is Good For The Soul
Miki Howard sang, "Experience is a good teacher, takes someone like me to know."
She understood the ups and downs of love and the need for a mindset upgrade. More than a mere bystander, her lyrics were life-tested and time-approved. Thus, she was a 'knower'. True statement: What is known in one season may need rejecting in the next.
It takes a mature 'knower' to admit when an original point of view is skewed. Maturity compels us to evaluate, eliminate, and realign our thoughts and values to ensure that life is being lived to its fullest potential. Times change; seasons shift. I thought I knew what was best for me until my plan went out the window. My vision recalibrated and my faith blossomed. As the landscape of my life changed, so did the narrative. With the transformation of me came an evolution of my needs.
It's a man's world, but it would be nothing without a woman or a girl.
The contentment of my younger years was found being nestled in a man's world. Both platonic and intimately, I LOVED the fellas! Quite honestly, I still do. My first ever best friend was a boy and even now entering my thirty-third year of life, some of my most valued friendships are with men. But a man cannot meet all of my relational needs.
The lesson of experience has taught me that men will listen to my words and present solutions, but women will listen intently to my life to discover and meet the needs of the inner me.
My paradigm has shifted. Once upon a time, my view was that girls could not be loyal to one another. From playground quarrels to middle school fallouts to high school blow ups, observation taught me that females, more often than not, were foes against which my heart should be guarded. Girls. Females. Anatomy vs. Actuality. Facts vs. Truth. Girls will be girls but, truthfully, women will be what the moment necessitates. It has been I – the very one convinced that my maid of honor would be a "man of honor" – who now cherishes the firsthand experience of having strong, faith-fueled women to rally around me.
What happened? Life happened.
In choosing to exchange my self-centered aspirations for a more purposeful plan, I have come to realize that control is not always in my grasp. I am still navigating the waters of having shifted from dreams of a career in dentistry to now creating life-giving content for women of faith. Women? Me? But I'm a guys' kind of girl! "Not so," says the One who created me for the task at hand. I am truly destined to help tear down the very lies that my early years reinforced. Not only can women be loyal friends to one another, we must befriend one another. We need each other.
A man cannot love you like a woman can because he cannot fully assess the heaviness of the load you bear.
That's no shade to the men I love or those whom you love – they have their place and we have ours. The nurturing needed to pull out the greatest pieces of you and me come from those who were divinely fashioned to function like you and me.
Loving women works because being loved by women pours life into our lives.
At times, it is the weight of the call to which I am summoned that causes my knees to buckle. Being pulled by this person and tugged by that person daily would have left me depleted if it had not been for the women (and the Lord, of course) who were on my side. As I pour into others, my tribe pours into me. As I build up others, they build me. If my flesh kicks in and I need to ride out, one or two in my crew are down for that too! We live, laugh, cry, and battle… together.
Eddie and Chris are constants in my corner, always willing to offer the male perspective. My dad, as he puts it, would kill a rock for me. Of that I have no doubt. However, it is ShaRonda that will ask the hard questions that force an introspective look at my heart.
Brittany is my listening ear and sounding board. Lindsey intercedes on my behalf. Ariel and Audrey walk with me daily. It was my grandmother who taught me to walk by faith rather than sight. Proudly, I declare I am her legacy. My mom has sown support time and time again, even when she didn't fully understand how things would unfold. For that I am forever grateful. Ms. Treva's calm, steady voice speaks peace into my every storm. I love these women with no hesitation, and they love me back.
I thought I had it all figured out only to conclude that my vision was clouded. My assessment was faulty. I had no idea how much I needed these ladies until I needed these ladies. I love my guys, but the 'knower' in me is fully persuaded that the love of these women continues to empower me to be the woman I am.
What will loving and being loved by women do for you?
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Smile, Sis! These Five Improvements Can Upgrade Your Oral Hygiene Instantly
This article is in partnership with Sensodyne.
Our teeth are connected to so many things - our nutrition, our confidence, and our overall mood. We often take for granted how important healthy teeth are, until issues like tooth sensitivity or gum recession come to remind us. Like most things related to our bodies, prevention is the best medicine. Here are five things you can do immediately to improve your oral hygiene, prevent tooth sensitivity, and avoid dental issues down the road.
1) Go Easy On the Rough Brushing: Brushing your teeth is and always will be priority number one in the oral hygiene department. No surprises there! However, there is such a thing as applying too much pressure when brushing…and that can lead to problems over time. Use a toothbrush with soft bristles and brush in smooth, circular motions. It may seem counterintuitive, but a gentle approach to brushing is the most effective way to clean those pearly whites without wearing away enamel and exposing sensitive areas of the teeth.
2) Use A Desensitizing Toothpaste: As everyone knows, mouth pain can be highly uncomfortable; but tooth sensitivity is a whole different beast. Hot weather favorites like ice cream and popsicles have the ability to trigger tooth sensitivity, which might make you want to stay away from icy foods altogether. But as always, prevention is the best medicine here. Switching to a toothpaste like Sensodyne’s Sensitivity & Gum toothpaste specifically designed for sensitive teeth will help build a protective layer over sensitive areas of the tooth. Over time, those sharp sensations that occur with extremely cold foods will subside, and you’ll be back to treating yourself to your icy faves like this one!
3) Floss, Rinse, Brush. (And In That Order!): Have you ever heard the saying, “It’s not what you do, but how you do it”? Well, the same thing applies to taking care of your teeth. Even if you are flossing and brushing religiously, you could be missing out on some of the benefits simply because you aren’t doing so in the right order. Flossing is best to do before brushing because it removes food particles and plaque from places your toothbrush can’t reach. After a proper flossing sesh, it is important to rinse out your mouth with water after. Finally, you can whip out your toothbrush and get to brushing. Though many of us commonly rinse with water after brushing to remove excess toothpaste, it may not be the best thing for our teeth. That’s because fluoride, the active ingredient in toothpaste that protects your enamel, works best when it gets to sit on the teeth and continue working its magic. Rinsing with water after brushing doesn’t let the toothpaste go to work like it really can. Changing up your order may take some getting used to, but over time, you’ll see the difference.
4) Stay Hydrated: Upping your water supply is a no-fail way to level up your health overall, and your teeth are no exception to this rule. Drinking water not only helps maintain a healthy pH balance in your mouth, but it also washes away residue and acids that can cause enamel erosion. It also helps you steer clear of dry mouth, which is a gateway to bad breath. And who needs that?
5) Show Your Gums Some Love: When it comes to improving your smile, you may be laser-focused on getting your teeth whiter, straighter, and overall healthier. Rightfully so, as these are all attributes of a megawatt smile; but you certainly don’t want to leave gum health out of the equation. If you neglect your gums, you’ll start to notice the effects of plaque buildup, which can irritate the gums and cause gingivitis, the earliest stage of gum disease. Seeing blood while brushing and flossing is a tell-tale sign that your gums are suffering. You may also experience gum recession — a condition where the gum tissue surrounding your teeth pulls back, exposing more of your tooth. Brushing at least twice a day with a gum-protecting toothpaste like Sensodyne Sensitivity and Gum, coupled with regular dentist visits, will keep your gums shining as bright as those pearly whites.
Why Do Millennials & Gen-Zers Still Feel Like Teenagers? The Pandemic Might Be The Reason.
There’s nothing quite as humbling as navigating adulthood with no instruction manual. Since the turn of the decade, it seems like everything in our society that could go wrong has, inevitably, gone wrong. From the global pandemic, our crippling student debt problem, the loneliness crisis, layoffs, global warming, recession, and not to mention figuring out what to eat for dinner every night. This constant state of uncertainty has many of us wondering, when are the grown-ups coming to fix all of this?
But the catch is, we are the new grown-ups.
As if it happened without our permission, we became the new adults. We are the members of society who are paying taxes, having children, getting married, and keeping our communities afloat, one iced latte at a time. Still, there’s something about doing all these grown-up duties that feel unnaturally grown-up. Enter the #teenagegirlinher20s.
If there’s one hashtag to give you the state of the next cohort of adults, it’s this one. Of the videos that have garnered over 3.9M views, you’ll find a collection of users who are overwhelmed by life’s pressing existential responsibilities, clung to nostalgia, and reminiscent of the days when their mom and dad took care of their insurance plans.
@charlies444ngel no like i cant explain to her why i had to buy multiple tank air dupes from aritzia #teenagegirlinher20s #fyp
The concept of being a 20-something or 30-something teenager is linked to the sentiment of not feeling “grown up enough” to do grown-up things while feeling underprepared and even nihilistic about whether that preparation even matters.
It’s our generation’s version of when we ask our grandmothers how old they are and they simply reply with, “I still feel 45,” all while being every bit of 76 years old. In this, we share a warped concept of time while clinging to a desire for infantilization.
Granted, the pandemic did a number on our concept of time. Many of us who started the pandemic in our early or mid-20s missed out on three fundamental years of socialization, career development, and personal milestones that traditionally help to mark our growth.
Our time to figure out and plan our next steps through fumbling yet active participation was put on pause indefinitely and then resumed provisionally. This in turn has left many of us hanging in the balance of uncertainty as we try to make sense of the disconnect between our minds and bodies in this missing gap of time.
Because we’re all still figuring out what the ramifications of being locked away and frozen in time by a global pandemic will have on us as a society, there really is no “right” way of making up for lost time. Feeling unprepared for any new chapter of life is a natural rite of passage, pandemic or not. However, it’s important to not stay stuck in the last age or period of life that made sense to us because self-growth is the truest evidence of personal progress.
So whether you’re leaning on your inner child, teenager, or 20-something for guidance as you fill the gap between your real age and pandemic age, know that it’s okay to grieve the person you thought you would be and the milestones you thought you’d hit before you ever knew what a pandemic was. If there’s anything that the pandemic taught us, it’s that we have the power to reimagine a better world and life for ourselves. And if we tap into our inner teenager as a compass, we can piece together our next chapter with a fresh outlook.
Sure, we’ve lost a couple of years, but there are still some really amazing ones ahead.
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