A Woman's Cry

AuthorHouse

Contents

Acknowledgements...............................viiThe Heart of a Woman...........................1My Love Is Your Love...........................7I Am Your Queen................................17Natural Beauty vs. Plastic.....................21Listen: Do You Hear Me?........................33Our Children...................................39Our Insecurities...............................45Jealousy.......................................51Prison Love....................................57Good Girls Gone Bad............................69Judge Me Not...................................75Finances.......................................79Happiness Is Within............................87When a Man Finds a Wife........................93Prayer Has Changed Things......................97Transforming Your Mind.........................101The Act of Forgiveness.........................107My Life as a Testimony.........................111Conclusion.....................................115

Chapter One

The heart of a woman can be a safe place, or it can be a scary place, depending on her mood and her situations at a particular time. Our hearts are like the brains of our emotions. It might seem that we women would use our brains first, but unfortunately, we use our hearts first and brains later when it comes to the choices we make about our relationships. I can honestly say that that type of reversal happens for a man also. He may think with his penis before he ever thinks with his head. I believe that if we could see things in their appropriate order, we possibly could avoid a lot of the drama that we go through on a daily basis. As women, our hearts bleed with so much emotion that often, no one seems to understand or want to understand what we are going though. Sometimes we get so emotional that we can't even tell anyone what is wrong with us. All we know is that love hurts like hell sometimes.

We can love a man, even when he does not love us in return. We think that if we keep doing stuff for him and giving him great sex that he eventually will love us. But some of us do not realize that if he does fall for us, it may be for the stuff we do and not for us. Some of us are okay with this, and some of us know better than to expect more from a man. A man has to realize that he can't have only part of us. He needs to have all of us and our baggage. When I speak of baggage, I am referring to everything we have been through from childhood through adulthood. It is not just the physical me; it's the things that he does not see. Men must be willing to accept these things if he is going to be truly there with us. I admit it is a challenge, but we all must learn about the person with whom you are going to spend time.

I once was in a relationship with a young man. He knew I was head over hills in love with him, but he did not care. He took my love—and me—for granted, but he made me feel anything less than a human being but yet I continued to stay with him, trying to convince him that I was the one for him. Even so, he would just laugh and make fun of me. He knew that I was sick with love for him, so it was easy for him to treat me like shit—and I was willing to accept that, just so that I could say that I had a man.

For anyone who was on the outside looking in, we seemed like the perfect couple, but I went through hell with this man. It was like he had three personalities, all rolled up into one. He was a mad man, and I think he thought he was a porn star—maybe that is why he thought I was beneath him. He often had a thing for strippers, which is cool, but a man must realize that a woman has issues when it comes to matters of the heart—and most of those issues are with a man. If you don't believe me, just look around at your mothers, sisters, friends, daughters.

I once heard a preacher say that a man is responsible for the flow of his family. I understood this to mean that any problems that arise in the family are because of the man. This is because man was created first and woman second. I know this may be pretty hard for some of you to hear, but this fact seems to be true. A man is supposed to make sure that he takes care of his woman and his children, not the other way around. I do not know how all of this got started and reversed itself so that the woman takes care of the man. Maybe one day a man decided that he was tired of being responsible and got lazy and told the woman she was going to take over his role. But how can a woman be a man when she was created to be a woman?

I have to admit that we women have done a pretty good job of taking on both roles. It has not been easy, but we have taken on the challenge of playing both mama and daddy. This double role is hard to bear at times, because we know that if we have a son, there will come a time when he will need a positive male in his life to give him a sense of direction. I am not saying that we can't raise a son into a grown man, but it helps if his father or some other positive male role model is in his life. My son has become a wonderful young man, even though his biological father left his side when he was two months old. As a matter of fact, now that I think about it, his father said he was going to look for a job and that he would be right back. It's been twenty-six years, and I guess his father is still looking for that job, because he hasn't returned. Still, I must give thanks to the heavenly Father for sending a wonderful stepfather for my son, someone who stepped in to take over the daddy role.

I often wonder if we will ever see my son's father again. Did he disappear in the Bermuda Triangle? I am not sure where he went, but he surely will regret running from his responsibility one day. I think that he will appear again when our son becomes famous. That is the darndest thing that happens when a child becomes famous—the father magically appears. Has anybody else ever felt like this? Have you ever wondered where the other parent has disappeared too? Maybe months or years have passed and you still have not heard from him/her. I cannot understand how a parent can walk away from his own offspring. In the end, it is his loss.

My Love Is Your Love

I love this chapter because now I truly know what it means to Love yourself and accept all of the things you were created to be. It took many years to realize that I needed to love myself first, and then love someone else. I used to think it was the other way around. I thought that if you loved someone first that they would in turn love you back. I had always wondered why I kept ending up in the same type of relationships that I was in. I could never put my finger on why was my dating men was so extreme. I finally figured it out. One day I just made up my mind that I needed to step back and look over my life and study what exactly was going on and why was I accepting not being loved by the hands of another. I found out that I was not being proactive in my relationships. I was just letting a man tell me how to do things such as, how to dress, how to wear my hair, when to go to bed, when to go to school, when to work, when to exist. I was depending on men to teach me how to be Shelle. I thought they were trying to help me be a better person, but what I found out was they were only trying to make me into someone I was not. I also found out that I was being controlled every minute of the day. I could no longer hand out with my family and...