For the first time possibly in the history of the world, we have everything we could possibly want. We have achieved the American Dream - to be healthy, wealthy and wise - but are we truly happy? Beyond that, are we really free?

Warning: This is not meant to be discouraging, just to be a wake up call to help you reclaim your life. The point is for you to be YOU, not me or anyone else and to set you free from the slave drivers of society's status quo. Don't take my personal pet peeves too personally. Just be FREE to be all you were meant to be! I welcome comments, constructive criticisms and tomatoes. Just e-mail through eBay (you can send the tomatoes in the mail, I prefer canned, not frozen.)

America the Beautiful - We have clothes in any array of colors and styles, fancy homes and apartments to choose from. We have medicine, vitamins and cure-alls for all our aches and pains, plus insurance to help us pay for them. We own cars, ride in trains and airplanes, traverse the globe in much less time than ever imagined by our forefathers. We all live like kings and queens with the variety of food we can daily choose from (instead of, say, a daily meal of rice and beans or fish.) We should be the happiest, most content people in the world.  Um-huh.

Being raised in the inner city of Brooklyn, NY, I was fortunate enough to have much teaching on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  To say I admire his passion and courage would be an understatement. He was not ashamed of who he was and knew a secret that many know and few live - ALL people were meant to be free to be ALL they were created to be. No one should look down on another because of color, race or religion. His standard was high and not only did he intend to live up to it, but he yearned and had a passionate desire to bring others to see the truth of each individual's uniqueness and special place of honor in God's world. (Oops, did I just say the G -word?  But Dr. King was passionate about his faith and it fueled the fire for his fight for freedom.) Dr. King was most definitely NOT politically correct, but he held a secret that our ever so "prosperous" culture seems to be losing - he knew the definition of true love* and he knew it was meant to be lived, not just talked about.

This simple guide is meant to assist you as you shop the many stores looking for just the right item. It is my deepest hope to disconnect you from what in completely unimportant in your life and to reconnect you with makes you live and breathe, so that you can actually ENJOY your life. Perhaps you've forgotten what it is to be truly satisfied and happy in life. Worse still, perhaps you've never known true joy and are desperately seeking to fill the empty loneliness with things - with more and more things. But they never will fill you, dear one. There is only one gift that can bring you happiness and it is true Love. It is to be loved for who you are, in spite of your faults and failings. You want desperately to know someone to say how very valuable and special you are. To see past your mistakes, and maybe even past your stubborn pride and to see the good in you, the kernel of wheat in your heart that makes you completely special and unique from anyone else.

So many people today think that if they are made outwardly beautiful through make-up and skin care, etc., etc, that then they will be more accepted and loved, but nothing can be farther from the truth. When you are loved and you truly believe it and revel in it, you become beautiful. When you are able to lift up your fears and shove them out from your heart into the cold, dark world and defy the world and say, "Here I am! This is the real me, freckles, size 16, skin problems and all!" and someone tells you, "I love you! THEN you know you are loved and you (and I) can tear off the Hollywood shackles and chains from our wrists and stop believing so very many lies about ourselves. One thing I've seen that has been a pleasure to see is that FINALLY the media is beginning to admit to the beautiful full-figured women out there. Finally we've dropped the 5' 8" and 100 puny pounds image and begun to throw off our fetters made to shackle us with lie upon lie (hey, SOMEone's gotta make money off of the make-up and diet pills, but couldn't we put our time and efforts into something strange, like knocking out world poverty). Truth is (shhhhh, they don't want you to know this,) very few people, if any, are always going to have perfect skin and perfect features all of the time.  And the truth is it's better to love and be loved - to put your efforts and focus and time into that - than to have a whole ton of people say how physically atractive you are - yet your family and kids can't stand you.  Just a perspective here.  I'm not saying not to use make up, or not to loose weight, or not to feel good about yourself, but who told you that your current look (sans Cover Girl) was less than beautiful in the first place? Yes, I wear makeup sometimes, but usually it's for your sake, not mine, because I KNOW I'm beautiful - my husband tells me daily, see he's a bit of a rebel like me and not about to become a programmed personality by the slave drivers of modern day media. 

FREEDOM.  An awesome concept. Worth fighting for. An awesome responsibility.   In most generations in this world, freedom has required a giving up of oneself to attain or perhaps to retain.  What have you given up for your freedom, for others freedom?  Note here:  A VERY special thanks to all civil servants, army, navy, etc out there.  Thanks for putting your life on the line for my family and my baby girls.  And thank you to their families as well.  Nothing we could ever say or do can make up for the love you have shown; may the rest of us live our daily lives in such a fashion as to remember the price paid daily for our freedom.

Ok, here’s the 3 steps I promised:

Are you Ready to Change your thinking?

1. Think about all the people who care about you and love you. If you need help there, e-mail me and I'll send you a list. - Know that YOU - the real you, not the mask - are LOVED.

2. Tell yourself "I don't need any more stuff. I've got enough already." Put your time and effort into loving your kids, family and friends, not working more hours, cleaning more stuff (and then buying more stuff that needs to be cleaned because you don‘t have time to clean your stuff....) Find someone who is less fortunate than you and give some of your stuff to them.

3. Find someone to love. The scary thing is that true love is not based on emotions. It's a choice. You CHOOSE to love someone for who they are. When you CHOOSE to truly love someone, defects and flaws don't matter, because you've chosen to love them. If you can't do this, go back to step one and e-mail me. You've got to have love secured in yourself before you can give it away. Where do you get it from? I’ve never known a thistle seed to produce apples and oranges. Love must be sown in you, dear one, before it can be grown and produce the fruit for others to enjoy.

If you don't have family or friends (yes, I've been there, too, but seasons change,) there are lots of people out there who need a friend. In our media picture perfect world, we've come to expect others to be perfect or close to perfect if they are going to be our friends. Then we cover up all of our own huge imperfections with deceptions and lies, or worse with a mental attitude that says those things don't really matter anyway. It doesn't matter if I'm a liar, or a coward, just cover those gaping pimples in my personality up a bit - just a little more powder here - and no one will notice the difference. We've become lazy, cowardly and self-centered. (I say "we", I'm not just pointing my fingers at you, because most people who do that have 4 pointing back at them). Where our forefathers stood up and chose to fight for our freedoms, we're often afraid to even offend our boss or our friends, let alone fight and give up something for what we believe in. Freedom.

But freedom to do what?  Freedom to cheat? Freedom to lie? Freedom to become a coward and to be selfish and turn our eyes away from the three quarters of the world that despairs under conditions that make America's poorest look like kings. I cringe at the talk of those who can't give to anyone because, their standard of living (fingers pointed at me again) can't possibly be lowered to allow for someone else's benefit.  Rosa Parks gave.  Gave of her very life to make a change.  Gave in love, not hatred nor, worse, in evil pride.  It is one thing to stand up for who you are, knowing that you are equal as a human with other humans around the world.  It is another to be proud and think that in so standing you are better than your slave drivers (today, in my eyes, it is much of the media that drives man to become slaves to greed, lust, pride and selfishness).    How self-centered we have become; dear America, so very loved, but we need to once again admit that life can be very hard and not be quite so content to pull the covers over our head while the world outside screams for help.

What would happen today if all the money motivated by lust and greed (for example, gambling, magazines advertising unsatisfying sex (if they are satisfied, why are they still looking all over the place?), what if for just one year we all stopped living to achieve our own goals - yes, even the "good" ones - college for the kids, while others' kids are dying of starvation - and made a point of living JUST ONE YEAR of our life for someone else totally unrelated to us. What if we all agreed that for just one year Hollywood would take a break and all the money spent on sports and advertising and alcohol and even food - no one here will starve for lack of advertising, what if we gave up EVERYTHING for just one year and gave to others less fortunate (or do we deem them less deserving?) than ourselves?

Where our great-grandmothers may have carefully sewn delicate clothes and linen for her family, we can pick from hundreds of well designed items in any array of colors in style, fashioned for us by multitudes of peoples from across the world. Where our great-grandfather might have taken time to build his house over 5 to 10 years in the hopes that one day his son might inherit it and add on to it, young people 20 years old pick their choice of houses in any style, location and color. Perhaps our grandfather fought in a war to bring freedom to people regardless of race or religion. These people knew and know the pain, the toil, the sweat and tears that go not only into just putting bread on the table, but they understand that love is not a passive thing, it is a passionate thing and it's cost is often everything you are and have for the one that is loved. But sometimes, as I watch the T.V. desperately scanning 800 cable stations to possibly find one movie reflecting true love, it seems we live in a society that has almost forgotten the meaning of true love, let alone willing to pay the sacrificial price to walk in it.

It's not wealth that makes a person happy, neither is it "poverty" (in the American sense) that makes one sad. Health is good, but even good health can not solely bring about contentment in life. When you are no longer going from party to party, from one shopping spree to the next in a desparate attempt to cover up the pain of your daily living; when you have discovered what it is to be joyful doing dishes and enjoy your nine to five, not just because of the paycheck it brings, but because you've simply trained yourself to be content instead of becoming the slave to discontentment; in the moment you can let go of that great lead or deal that would bring in $5000, because a little someone you love has just requested your complete undivided attention at her doll's tea party, then you've learned the secret that so many have missed. Then you've won your own war and defied and defeated your slavedrivers of fear, selfishness and greed. Then you can rejoice in the freedoms paid for with the blood of many valient men and women in this most wonderful country we call America. When you know YOU - the real you - are loved; When you choose to let go of the modern mentality of materialism and forgo pride and all of that stuff; When you make a CHOICE to love and be loved - flaws, faults, failings and all - then you've successfully broken through the modern day American curse to re-discover the original American Dream. Then you have truly learned how to simply be prosperous.

I'd rather be truly loved than be "beautiful" in others' eyes. I would rather be loved than rich and famous. I would rather be loved than hold on to the many, many things I've accumulated in the past five years. I would rather be loved than be a success in my business. Now reverse it: I would rather love (my beloved, my babies) than be beautiful in others' eyes (though my beloved and my children think I'm gorgegous!) I would rather love than be rich and famous, not that it's wrong to rich or famous, but if you're not willing to drop those things immediately for the one loved, then you are the slave to your money and fame. I would rather love than cling to my many possessions (my slave drivers?) which take far too long to clean anyway - I've got to get rid of most of my junk so I spend less time cleaning and organizing things and more time cuddling and loving two babies and one perfect (just ask me!) husband.  Ok, so we're not really perfect, but we're perfect for each other. Beyond that, we've made a decision to tear off the fetters of the American Curse with it's focus on so much STUFF and getting to the next tier or level. We've decided to just say "no" to the slave drivers of greed and lust and to very simply, BE FREE and (truly) LOVE and be LOVED.