Dealing With the Disruptive and Dysfunctional Family Member—Or is This Person You?

I just posted to my Breaking Bread blog a prayer and reflection that I felt could also be shared on my other blogs. It doesn’t just focus on our family members who lie, cheat, steal, and get high. It focuses on you, on us, and how we deal with that person. It also focuses on our lives and those frequent moments when we betray God with as much or more intensity and intent as the family member who betrays us. It’s such a crazy cycle.
 
 How do we heal from our self-inflicted “crimes” and how do we heal from heinous acts committed against us? How do we go through the steps needed to forgive ourselves and others? How do we factor in the person who hurt us? Do we disown them or slowly begin to allow them back into our lives? When do you let them back in? After they are “healed” from their “infliction” or during the healing process? Below please read the excerpts from this post and then share your thoughts.
 
 Excerpts from Breaking Bread:
 
 

Has a loved one ever stolen from you? Blatantly lied to you? Been abusive towards you? Coldly disrespected you? Manipulated you into believing that they were a certain type of person, or lived a certain type of way? Have you suspected that they were stealing from you and others but your interventions fell short of any real results?
 
 Do you have a loved one who is abusing drugs and/or alcohol yet you keep ignoring the problem? How many times have you known that this person has been behind the wheel of a car? How many times have you witnessed the aftermath of their binging behavior? How many times have you bailed them out of jail or financial binds?
 
 I just spent the past hour reading forum threads about family members, young children and adult children, who stole from their family, were abusing drugs and/or alcohol, were blatantly disrespectful and sometimes abusive, and their family didn’t know what to do. I read of parents and other family members who just couldn’t take the betrayal any more and they kicked the perpetrator out of their home and forbid their return for any reason. Then I read of instances where people continued to forgive and let “slide” the offenses even when extremely valuable and sentimental items were stolen.
 
 Have you ever experienced this phenomena? Are you experiencing it now? It’s painful to have a stranger steal from or betray you. But it feels like your insides are being gutted when it’s done by a loved one….

 
 

…I think that just like God lovingly allows us to stumble and fall into valleys, yet never completely cutting us off, we too must lovingly let our perpetrator-family member go so that they can stumble and fall—-because we can’t go farther down when our faces are on the ground. We can either stay there or get up, and we can’t get up without God.
 
 Lovingly keep those who are inflicted with the thieving, lying, abusing/abusive “bug” at a safe distance, so that you can allow God to have complete access without your interference. Every time we interfere and think that we can do God’s job and fix something faster, we end up being the victim. There’s a big difference between an intervention with tough love, and trying to “fix” someone. Set and stick by boundaries and rules to protect yourself and other family members, and let God handle the details. The perpetrator will only get and accept help when they want it and see the need for it. Until that time they are like a nonstop tsunami that will destroy anything and anyone in their path.

 
 If YOU are the perpetrator then you will either deny wrongdoing (and continue spiraling out of control until you hit a hard enough force that stops you) or you will get professional and spiritual help, and make right your wrongs.
 
 
 Copyright 2013. All Rights Reserved. Natasha Foreman Bryant.
 
 
 

Join the Fun Run Benefiting Younger Women’s Task Force Atlanta Chapter

As an advisory board member for the Metro Atlanta chapter of the Younger Women’s Task Force (YWTF) I am excited to share with all of you runners, wannabe runners, and walkers (who want to cheer from the sidelines) an awesome event sponsored by The Mile Fly Club.

Bring your running shoes and join us on THURSDAY, October 24th for THE MILE FLY CLUB benefiting Younger Women’s Task Force Atlanta!

Where: BeltLine Eastside Trail – Atlanta Beltline Bicycle; 151 Sampson Street NE, Atlanta.

When: Thursday, October 24th, 6:30pm-8:30pm

Who: Benefits a selected charity partner each month: Younger Women’s Task Force Atlanta!

Details: 

• Register for the fun run! http://www.iwelife.com/iwelife/mile-fly-club/mile-fly-club/
• Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/#!/events/645411732158207/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming
• Donate to the charity partner of the month: Younger Women’s Task Force Atlanta
• Give us your predictor time, awards not to the fastest but to the closest
• Run a certified 1-mile race
• Eat hot dogs
• Drink cold beverages
• Chill with sweaty runners & awesome Do-Gooders
• Groove to sounds (bring your iPod if you have an awesome playlist!)

Each participant will get a race timing chip, a POWER POSE Photo at the finish, and food/drinks provided by our sponsors.

Costs: Cost will be $5/person which covers operation expenses.

100% of donations raised directly goes to support YWTF-ATL!

Join the This is Human Rights Campaign

In honor of the 65th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the Younger Women’s Task Force (YWTF) had launched our #thisisHumanRights Campaign. From September to December, join us in sharing and posting your photos and videos telling us what human rights mean to you!

Official hashtag #thisisHumanRights!

Follow us on our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram @ywtfatl and Blog to share and learn of all of our upcoming events!

 

 

Natasha Foreman Bryant serves as an advisory board member for the Atlanta chapter of the Younger Women’s Task Force.

23rd Annual Georgia Women’s Assembly

It’s that time of year again! The 23rd Annual Georgia Women’s Assembly. This year’s theme is “What Women Want”.

When: Friday, October 18, 2013 from 8:30AM-1:30PM

Where: The Loudermilk Center, 40 Courtland Street Atlanta, GA 30303

For more details and to register:

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/7060561329

The New Yorker Chimes in on ObamaCare

Oooh it’s getting better and better, and now The New Yorker has chimed in on ObamaCare, and its impact on small business and the U.S. As a small business owner I need to know all of the facts because every decision made, and every law passed, ultimately impacts me and the companies I operate. So I decided to quickly summarize their fact checking which you can find here: http://wp.me/p11NVc-6T

Share your thoughts and if you are a small business owner, does this information lessen your stress or confuse you even more?

For those of you who are anti-ObamaCare, does this change your mind or make you dig your heels in deeper?

Let’s have some healthy dialogue!

 

 

Copyright 2013. All Rights Reserved. Natasha Foreman Bryant. Paradigm Life.

Paper Challenge

I just saw an ad by Domtar Paper that shows a boy proudly holding his math assignment where he earned an A-plus grade. The ad says:

“It’s easier to learn on paper”

“Reading on paper is 10-30% faster than reading online, plus reviewing notes and highlights is significantly more effective.”

Hmmm I wonder what the techie community has to say about this?

Source: PAPERbecause.com

Copyright 2013. Some Rights Reserved. Natasha Foreman Bryant. Paradigm Life.

ObamaCare or the Affordable Care Act, Which is Your Preference?

By Natasha Foreman Bryant

First let me start off by thanking my friend and colleague Steve Woodsmall for sharing the video link below with me. I know that the headline of my post has probably left all or most of you scratching your head. I’m hoping that it does and that you have not already voiced an opinion for either Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act.

I say this because they are both one in the same, and oh yeah, so is Health Care Reform.

What is amazing is that there are probably thousands and thousands of people who don’t realize this and they have voiced their opinions strongly within their households and publicly, either for or against ObamaCare, the Affordable Care Act, or Health Care Reform.

Please watch this video so that you can see for yourself how people who seem to be well-educated are also extremely ignorant on this topic, and why we all must take the time to:

1) Increase our level of common sense with as much passion as we pursue our formal education, and

2) Teach people to think for themselves, research, ask questions, and not be so quick to follow the crowds.

To put things bluntly, if the people in this video were cattle they would’ve already been slaughtered, because they allowed themselves to be brainwashed into believing one thing and one thing only, and they naively and ignorantly have followed this belief (and those who preach it) down a rabbit hole of nonsense.

If they don’t know about this, what else are they blindly swayed by? What other topics have they been chiming in on and voting on the last 12+ years? How many of their relatives, neighbors, colleagues, and friends think and vote just like them?

How many voters or potential voters does that add up to?

Now think about this… think about all of the local, state, and federal elections that these individuals and others participate in regularly because they want their voice heard and their vote counted.

I have heard voters over the years admit to simply filling in boxes on the ballot even though they had no clue what the topics and laws meant, or how they would be impacted. They would’ve been better off just voting for the one or two candidates they wanted, and leaving the rest of the ballot blank, but instead they took it upon themselves to cast a vote for things they knew nothing about. We’ve been brainwashed to chime in and ‘fill in the bubble’ on issues with the same carelessness as we do multiple choice exams where you simply fill in a bubble.

How many of you recall teachers and proctors telling you to simply, “answer each question even if you don’t know the right answer, just fill in a bubble with your best guess because you may just get the right answer...” How many of you can admit to randomly filling in C-A-B, A, C, B, and so on, and reciting what you were taught that, “there’s a higher probability of ‘C’ being the correct answer“. Well there seems to be a lot of ‘fill-in-the bubble’ people in this country.

This truly bothers me. Just like this ObamaCare versus Affordable Care Act debate and foolishness.

Come on folks, with all of the technology and resources available to us, take the time to inform and educate yourself about topics, laws, statutes, etc., especially the ones that affect millions of people, and possibly even your own family.

Just because you hear a message repeated multiple times does not mean that the message is accurate. Just because an image is shown to you repeatedly, doesn’t mean that what you see and what you are being told that you see are identical. If someone tells you that the letters G-R-E-E-N represent the color blue and you don’t take the time to research that, you will spend your entire life believing that to be true. A yellow building will always be pink if you never question or triple-check the person telling you that it’s pink. These are the critical thinking skills we claim we are teaching our kids to acquire and use.

If you don’t know about the Affordable Care Act also known as ObamaCare, please visit http://healthcare.gov or call (800) 318-2596.
TTY is (855) 889-4325. Small businesses with 50 or fewer employees can call (800) 706-7893. TTY is (800) 706-7915.

To help better educate the people of this great nation, please share that website and the phone numbers with every person that you know regardless if they have health insurance or not. They need to know the facts. They need to know that:

1) The Affordable Care Act is available for all persons who are uninsured or facing this gloomy fate.

2) It’s an open marketplace that allows citizens to find affordable insurance without the fear and burden of pre-existing condition clauses, and other red tape normally associated with the health insurance game.

3) If they are already insured by their employer or have self-paid insurance then they don’t need to do anything but enjoy their insurance benefits.

4) Those receiving state assistance already have Medicaid (which in California is Medi-Cal). As they transition into jobs and better opportunities, they will have more options afforded by the open marketplace.

5) Children of employees are now covered by their employer-sponsored insurance up to the age of 26, when most insurance carriers traditionally drop dependents from coverage between the ages of 18 and 23.

6) It doesn’t apply to or affect everyone.

There’s so much more information that people need to discover about the Affordable Care Act that they won’t learn by simply watching the news, listening to radio or television programs, or gossiping about it in the barber shop or hair salons—or even on the golf course.

Like or dislike the Affordable Care Act after you have been well-versed and done exhaustive research. We need people to really use their common sense and their critical thinking skills. Let’s think, educate and empower ourselves and our people!

Video Source: http://www.hulu.com/watch/539715
Video Footage: Jimmy Kimmel Live

Copyright 2013. Some Rights Reserved. Natasha Foreman Bryant