Life is a journey where the only pack we all want to take is what we gives us pleasure. Unfortunately whether we like it or not each pack of what we love is filled with so little packages among them are those with painful experiences we wish not to have. Meaning a pack of love is made up of pages of unloved for us to learn to leave or love to have in order to enjoy the loved.

We each have dreams, though it is said “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams” but getting to the future is not as easy as the dream. It involves a treacherous journey that are often painful and discouraging especially as you watch those on the same trip, track and treek move faster in a seemingly easy mood. Looking at them as you increase your effort sometimes appears to multiple their progress the more with little or no effect to yours.
This is an assumption concluded by our expectations that is born of our imaginations based on the fixation of our mind eye. For example When you seem to live in a “glass house” to most our guests and outsiders, our world is made in glass and ivory towers as everything are great.

Oh, how I wish I am her says Daisy. Not knowing the “not so loving” little packages in our life pack. We mature when we accept to wear our shoe and carry our cross knowing that there’s absolutely no Eldorado in real life but a creation of one by choice. It’s only an acceptance of dream in a make believe, which the only reality is in loving it and being happy. Meaning everything in life is about one chosen by the owner to be grateful.

To loose a spouse, can be seen to be fun by an abused wife; yet I have a widow in her groaning told Lord that he should have left the husband to continue to beat her than to take him away. A well painted face can be a conceal of painful path to which the owner of that face has decided not hear the pain even as he/she feels it.

It will be nice to ask my sisters and brothers, are they truly right of our ivory towers? Do I have it all in place at the best? The answer is, as long as the earth remains seedtime and harvest time will not seize. The book book of Ecclesiastes chapter 3, is the best atlas of life journey that we should read and the only compass is to follow is in Psm 102:3 You will arise and have compassion on Zion, for it is time to show favor to her; the appointed time has come. The pointer is the settime, determine only by GOD in our destiny. As long as the seasons flows, the compass sets of the time is in God’s hand. Every life has a plant and harvest time, even the glass ivory towers.

But the totality of our harvest is Happiness. And until we see it as a choice more than action, we will continue in search of harvest in our plant time with no fulfillment, as we chase desires and dreams that has become more imagined the real. The placement of happiness on the external hard drive is the reason why harvest time seems long and tedious. You want to be happy? Just hear Guillaume Apollinaire “Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy”.

Stop chasing happiness, it is not at the latest car, mansion, long account digit or all other materials that has sent us on rat race. It is inside us each, it is the spirit of God that dwells in us that defines love, to people of my faith Christians we call it Holy Spirit. We all have it irrespective of your faith, the love you must have as spouse, family and brethren. It is in every path we take. It has colours which are roads that leads us to each other. Happiness is the smile of a welcome at home, the smile of a thank you, the smile of a hello to or from that stranger, happiness is the simplest smile that cost you nothing yet cures from within. Happiness is knowing that you are not robbing the downtrodden, happiness is knowing that someone out there is truly saying, he’s a good man, she’s an awesome woman and they are great couple. Not the sycophants, not the “pay-backers” and not the family. It’s the “God-knows” and the God pay-back. The greatest gift you can give is one that goes on a path, that it’s ripe fruit in it’s fall is more unlikely never to roll towards your end.

As we walk out of 2018 and walk into 2019, determine to find happiness in you and simplest way is to give out love, that is the byproduct. Give it to the God pay-back people in your office and business. Determine to use your position to build and make impact not just income. And if you have been low in any area, Isa 60:1 is saying “Arise, Jerusalem! Let your light shine for all to see. For the glory of the lord rises to shine on you. Yes, 2018, has been your planting season, and now it is giving way to your harvest year 2019 in His glory.
This is Christmas; Christ Happiness Rising In Situations through Man and Saints; find it, they are all over you, reach out but reach inward to find the simplest thing that made that smile. This the happiness, the peace that gives us whole.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New.
Hope nwakwesi.

​Financial independence is the key to surviving the hood. When a woman is financially independent, she has the ability to live a life, walk away from further pain and grief of the culture and family without terms.  Irrespective of where you go or who you marry, as a woman you have to stand to be financially independent even if you don’t use it, be assured it will be of great use someday, if not to you directly but to someone dare of it’s need. And as a man you have to tidy your home in terms assets and wish by moments. 

In widowhood, women suffer more suppression their whole lives, as she is faced with many kinds of deprivation: economic, social, cultural and emotional, with worst being when husband did not leave a Will or plan.  Of all these, economic derivation is the most harmful. A widow faced with bills and hunger as the children stares at her is more vulnerable to abuse as she is completely disoriented;
That is why in marriages that are much more shared financially, a widow don’t get the disorientation of suddenly having to manage on her own as is the case of a stay home mother. 
Surviving financially in Widowhood requires total discipline, the variation of this depends on individual previous knowledge and activities. The expectations from women by culture, religions and even her love, have seen to have worsened our situation in widowhood. #Submissive is a word abused, as a woman subjects herself to her detriment most often in marriage and when the unplanned happens she realizes that the planned was not a plan. As a man while exercising the patriarchal authority, take a pause and think of how empowered are your wife, daughters and sisters with policies, culture, economic and social facilities that will strengthen her recovery and survival in case of the unplanned.

Let’s start today, empower yourself and a next woman. The ability is in now, start where you are immediately. While we will live to a very ripe age, let’s plan as if we’re unsure. 

“In my confusion I could not understand “why me”, but standing to me I grabbed His outstretched hand which is my lead”.

In life if you’re in a tough spot don’t just think of a clever way around it, rather look for a clearer way. Though it may be blurred but it is always blunt, refusing to adjust to our melancholy.
You’ll find that a great thing happens when you take up yourself to brave through whatever you’re facing looking up to your strength.

Everything starts turning when you stop the fear seen from without as you decide to take actions to scale your way through using all that is within.

In losing your husband, the world will cloud you with colors beyond your vision in attitude and expectations as you move from denial with the“if and why” stampeding your emotions to the acceptance of the reality. This conquest is by leaving the “how” and “what”  to “when” by focusing on the “now”. It is in managing the moment that you can build up the power to push.

The how it were is past you had, but the what it would have been is only an assumption to you can never have the opportunity of confirming.  The only assured option is in your now, motivated yourself to explore it. Don’t wait to be motivated as Jim Rohn said “Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present. Stop the, when will ever truly be happy,  it makes you loose the happiness that exist in each moment. 

His death is an end yet a beginning, begin to win. We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us – Joseph Campbell. 

https://thewidowsagenda.news.blog/

It took me a while but at last I’ve found out that the secret of getting a holistic empowerment to widows is a collective effort of the following;

Widows; yes, we must brave up and Will out that tiny courage within, with that “something inside so strong” to speak up of all the fear, pain, shame, grief and loneliness as well as the sources of peace, healing, love, grace and comfort so that all can learn and see their contribute to it’s issues.

Government; if the role of government is to provide enabling environment for safety, protection and empowerment for human and businesses to all citizens including widows, why then are it’s issues politicized?

Churches; Isn’t time Churches start an empowerment of mindset reorientation, so that our men and women will imbibe truly the culture of remarriage by using the various bible passages as a text to give sermons and seminars not to the widows but the general public so that in time our society will be more receptive to widows getting married and being “marriageable”?

Culture; since culture is a way of life developed by some set of people and transferred downward generation including widowhood practices and rites, isn’t it time we start a new one in practice by eliminating all humiliating old practices and rites without disrespecting the death knowing that birth and death are the two sure component of life; with women being in the lead?

The widow’s child; how do you expect her sons and daughters to grow up psychologically balance with love and respect to family and society after watching her mom as an young child growing up being molested and abused?

Society and gender equality; How do you manage the ripple effect of widowhood issues on other social issues if we do not provide enabling environment for their offspring to be nurtured rightly?

How can we, women talk about gender equality when a particular set of her; are excluded and segregated by women themselves? Widowhood is in a life evolution of women, while some may escape it, most won’t.

If the church, culture, government, widows, society, her offspring and our economy does not synergies to uproot the stump of widowhood in our society, we will continue to treat the leprosy while spreading it.

After 25years of widowhood from a humble background all I can say is the time is now!!

Watch out for details!!!

Widows inclusion

UNWomen started in it’s journey of truth with
widows 2001 as they addressed her treatment

as“sin of omission”, Lord Loomba called it the
Invisible Calamity, the 2016 World Bank Policy
research talk titled it the Invisible and Excluded
and UN in June 2018 titled it Stigmatized,
shunned and shamed; all these showing that
the status quo is yet to change.
The cultural practices and rites across our
Nigerian culture with Widowhood is an upgrade
degradation of women, with very little plan known for widows in Africa especially in Nigeria as regard government policies and practices. They are so largely hidden from view in all planning expect for political propaganda and philanthropic grandiosity
According to Dominique van de Walle a lead
Economist at the World Bank in the 2016,

Africa Poverty Report; 1 in 10 African women
between 15 and older are widows.
It should be noted that the remaining 9
includes her daughters her product.
Don’t forget we are in a society where marriage
is still considered as basis for women’s access
to social and economic rights, and the culture of remarriage still a big issues as most men, even mothers who are women consider it an abomination or crime to marry a widow who is often perceived as “husband killer”.
The culture in all it’s practices humiliates her,
the family in their expectations exploits her,
the Church in attitudes weakens her, the government in the neglect exposes her to all forms of abuses and the women in all their perception segregates her.
The United Nations calls the abuse of widows
and their children one of the most serious
violations of human rights and obstacles to
development today.” I say abuse of widows is

not just a human rights violation but a nation’s
self economic and social sabotage to self.

Because the exploitation of widows and the ripple effect

not just on gender violence but also to our
national development is something we must
bring to the consciousness of our collective
minds. I therefore being to you here, the widows’

agenda that even the women themselves is so reluctant to consider a part of it’s agenda. If we want gender equality and sustainable development goals in the real sense, here’s a take home; “Widows are windows of women agenda”,
assets in our society that we’ve kept closed
for too long. We must realize that in continuing
the disenfranchisement of widows in women
and girls , we have prepared a recipe for
disaster, diseases, poverty, insecurities,
unemployment and other negative vices
which sure is a big hindrance to Nigeria vision
2020 invariably also the 2030 sustainable
global goals.

There’s need for a holistic empowerment through family, religion, culture, economy, government, her offspring, the society and women.
#widows #inclusion #TheWidowsSummit2018

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton