I am awake, I am alive, and this morning I am giggling as I look around and see … no cages whatsoever!

Remember those “Freedom 55” commercials of ages ago? (Am I the only one who thought those were definitely directed at men?). Well, I am fully embracing Freedom 57 and it has little to do with financial freedom and everything to do with emotional, spiritual, physical, and mental freedom.

In other words, I now consciously choose to take up space!

And boy, does that catch some off guard! It is truly amazing how many white men I meet in the business world who are still trying to impose rules. How others should speak or think. How others should behave. What is and isn’t allowed or what shouldn’t be.
And this is me, dancing in their faces as I chant, “Not playing!”

I am not a man, so please men of the world, stop telling me what I should think or say or do. I am not a child and you are not a woman, so how the heck would you know?!

I am not a Christian, so please Christians of the world, stop telling me what facts are not true, what holidays I should observe, or what I can or cannot say. You did not grow up with a Mother in fear that the government would one day take her children. You do not work daily with the effects of those schools, with the survivors and survivor descendants. You are not Indigenous so again, how would you know what I should do as a Kwe in this world?

In all cases, you don’t. In all cases, you should stick to your lane because if settlers had left us alone when they first arrived, if they had honoured the Two Row Wampum, if they had run their communities as they saw fit LEAVING US TO RUN OURS we wouldn’t be here.

But so many still cross the line, still believing they know what is best for others different than themselves, those living completely different realities and they don’t. They just don’t.

But the best part, the mind-blowing part … I didn’t need them to change to have this freedom. All I had to do … is quit playing.

Food for thought my friend. Are you living in someone else’s cage? Perhaps it is time, time to join me, time to simply … stop playing.
 

I love you!
HUGSSSSSSSSSS
Sandi