Category: Wisdom

Chingonas, Encouragement, Iyanla Vanzant, Oprah Winfrey, Wisdom, Yesterday I Cried

Wisdom for the Weekend-Iyanla Vanzant Truisms

Mona Alvarado Frazier


book I own
Ever since I read the book, Yesterday I Cried, I became a fan of Iyanla Vanzant. She has a way of telling it like it is without putting one down, without judgment. 

She uses her experiences, her own brokenness, to show how life’s hardships can be re-envisioned to become lessons that teach us as we learn to heal, grow and love. She is the quintessential Chingona. 

In Sandra Cisneros, “How to be Chingona in 10 easy steps,” these three are fully demonstrated by Iyanla:

  1. What are you using to cover or mask your pain? Address it.
  2. Your only true possessions are your actions.
  3. Seek forgiveness.

For a good while, almost ten years, I hadn’t heard about Iyanla’s new books or seen her on T.V. And then I caught an episode of Oprah and Iyanla together, earlier this year. The discussion centered on their ‘falling out,’ and the beliefs they had operated on, which resulted in a cancelled show. 

So now I understood what happened. Which caused me to seek out Ivanyla’s new show on Oprah’s OWN channel. But life didn’t let me get to her show very easily. My cable provider charges extra for that channel and includes 5 other channels I couldn’t care less for with the package. 

google images/royalty free

Recently, I discovered “On Demand,” on my remote and found I could access “Iyanla-Fix My Life” re-runs. 


I sat up for a few hours watching a couple of episodes and feeling how they resonated with my life. It was emotionally draining. 

The next night I texted my sister and raved about the show before I watched two more episodes. The next day she texted back that she loved the life lessons illustrated on the program. I  know they took the both of us back to painful episodes from our own life. Better still we both felt we had come a long way from that time. 

Iyanla’s books and shows provide plenty of wisdom for growing Chingona’s in training and full fledged Chingona’s (because we never stop learning). So this is the “Wisdom for the Weekend,” my favorite Vanzant quotes:

  1. “Life is about cleaning up the crap and, while you’re doing it, being okay with the fact that you have to do it…. A word of caution. You can’t get caught up in the crap! If you do, you will surely lose sight of the real meaning of life and lose your Self.”
  2. “When you see crazy coming, cross the street,”
  3. “If you don’t have a test, you won’t have a testimony.”
  4. “Words create experiences. Words are things…So when you say ‘I can’t,’ you won’t. When you say ‘I don’t,’ you don’t.”
  5. “Know that if you’re not brave enough to go into love, taking a risk, then what you are doing is bargain shopping.
  6.  “When you honor yourself, every single thing that you do comes from that place…That means when you honor yourself, you protect yourself, you trust yourself, you take care of yourself. And you do things in a way that are going to bring glory to who you are.”
  7. “Your willingness to look at your darkness is what empowers you to change”
  8. “You are never angry for the reason you think you are. There’s an older hurt under that.”
  9. “There are times when we do not recognize that it is time for us to move forward. When life is ready for us to move and we resist, life will move us by any means necessary. What may feel like a disaster is actually a graduation. Remain open to being guided, supported and protected by the universe.”
  10. “Call a thing a thing.”  

google images/royalty free
Enjoy some solitude and feel the grace this weekend. 

Breast cancer, Health, October Breast Cancer Awareness, Pink Ribbons, Strong Women, Wisdom

Why Pink Makes Me Cringe

Mona Alvarado Frazier

It’s not Pink, the singer, that stirs up ambivalent feelings in my soul, it’s the color pink linked to October’s Breast Cancer Awareness month. It’s all the pink stuff beyond the commemorative ribbons. It’s pink deodorant containers, buckets of chicken, yogurt lids, pens, bottles, garden tools, and such. I can’t even look at Pepto-Bismol bottles anymore.

Before sticks and stones are thrown my way, please hear me out.  The end of next month marks the 7thyear from the last chemo session I had. That’s the date I considered myself cancer free. 

There was an eighth session scheduled in mid-December for chemo but I was so friggin’ tired of being tired, having pain, throwing up, (fill in any adjective for miserable) that I skipped it. I wanted to make tamales with my family, as I had since I was a child, and I wanted to celebrate Christmas in my living room, not from my bed. 

So I said “F-K It,” I’m not doing this anymore.


I still don’t know whether I based my decision on fatigue or it was a grasp at self-determination. Maybe it was both. Probably. I do remember feeling particularly powerless at that time. There are the ambivalent feelings of life and death, hair and no hair, sorrow and hope, regrets and plans, hell days and heaven days. Load these into a blender, push the button, and you might get a sense of how I felt.
gettyimages K.Tanier
Pink products and words “Breast Cancer” remind me of this time in my life. This is where my ambivalence comes from; this is when I cringe.

I’m not ungrateful for my life, or breast cancer research, or awareness of breast cancer, 

because I am and so are my three children, but it’s all that dang PINK everywhere in October, when the autumn colors of golden, bronze, pumpkin, and burgundy naturally abounds.


PINK is in my supermarket, the drug store, magazines, T.V., clothing stores, pet stores, bakery, and on my toilet paper wrap. (Now wasn’t that bolded PINK just a little annoying?) That’s what I see in October, flutters of PINK everywhere. ANNOYING.

Breast cancer sucks. Marketing breast cancer double sucks.


My ambivalence also has to do with the fact that in my small world and community I keep encountering numerous cases of breast cancer in women ranging from 28 to 70 years of age. I’m sure you’ve heard of many people battling the disease within your circle of family/friends/acquaintances. 

How can this be after years of research, millions of dollars, and awareness campaigns? Have we been operating on lies? 


I am not saying that we should stop donating to campaigns of our choice (especially my favorite Dr. Susan Love’s research for the cause of breast cancer, thus the cure). 

Au contraire. I’m still going to do my annual Relay for Life for the American Cancer Society. I’m still going to talk with women who are going through BC treatment- if they ask. I’m going to don my khaki hat with the pink ribbon (the one I wore for 6 months on my baldhead) and the black and pink one my sister traded for her own hat on a bus in London.

I will continue to advocate for people to be aware of how to minimize their risk to cancer and find affordable health care. I’m going to do those things and hope you show support by doing these things too. 

I’m just one survivor/thriver trying to communicate my feelings. Maybe a day will come, soon I hope, when Pink no longer stirs up my stuff and becomes just another color, as the lyrics in this video so aptly describes. 

 

                                                    I can hope. 


UPDATE: Jennifer (down there in the comment section) referred me to a site where I met fella sisters who are sick of marketing the “Pink.” Check out Think Before You Pink. They bring up valid points: 

As we head into November’s election, we urge everyone concerned about breast cancer to demand representatives from every state support the 2012 Breast Cancer Action Mandate for Government Action. We need to move beyond “awareness” and pink ribbons to demand candidates and elected officials take real action on breast cancer, by initiating and supporting independent research and strong regulation to turn the tide on this epidemic. 

Thank you for listening.