31 July 2017

Custodial Jurisdiction & Jealousy

Dear (Avoiding Lawsuits),

Thank you for your assumptions & dedication to crediting yourself for my children's successes. As we have gone down this road 3 years ago over my son, as well as the other kids I have had to remove from your care in order to advance, you are grossly wrong in your approach & desire to make their lives better.
Now you have attempted to do the same with my other two children and I thought you knew what kind of mother you are trying to compete with. You got me last week, thinking that I failed my children & through your deception, you convinced my daughter that I did not have her best of interest in heart. You made my family go through hell.

Because you were afraid of the competition I pose to you and your job, you did everything you could to tear down my budding non-profit, me as a mother, my effectiveness in the community, as well as the attacks you have put on my family in your "concern" that I do not recognize the talent my children possess. I know my children well. I know my work well. I know my community well. And for you to have been in your position as director for so long, you shouldn't need me to point out potential resources & the laws governing your profession. You should have these things already. How do I, a non-professional with no degree have a high success rate with the work we both do? Well because unlike you, I take the time to listen to the voice & concerns of others, and I am willing to work with them on their levels.
You on the other hand, think that your title gives you power and you achieve false success through deception, which explains why every family you have ever worked with has walked away from MHM. This is why your school was downgraded to a regular non-profit. This is why you have the problems you have with your employees. This is why you are always struggling to not lose your job. And yet you continue to target me & my family, to uplift your name.

When you were scrambling not to lose your job, you came to me asking to use my kids to help build your programs. They shared with you how I do it and brought you to the next level of servitude, and now you think you have legal rights to my children? You actually used my kids to build yourself & you are calling out to our mutual community to check on my family? We want NOTHING to do with you. You have bad mouthed me as a parent, to make yourself look good. I didn't ignore my children, you "needed" them to make you look good and I allowed them to go with you so they could learn from the partnerships as well as help you perform your job. I don't "neglect" my children, you changed the schedule so many times that as a single parent, I couldn't continuously change mine to accommodate yours.

And as far as the school topic goes, just because you have $25,000/year to send yours to Waldorf School, and just because you order your employees to be your personal support system to raise your kids, does not mean that my family has the same wants, needs or resources. You doubted me as a mother, as a teacher and you are afraid of me as one professional. If it weren't for the dedication of your remaining 4 staff members, you would fall on your face because let the truth be told, NOBODY wants to work for you. Those remaining in that building are there for the kids & families, to protect them from you. How do I know? Do you think after all these years, we don't talk?

What did you tell me about my son? You said that he was going to end up in jail if he did not go to Job Corps. I told you that my kids were not going there. Places like that are last resorts. So much for my kid failing, he is now in college under full scholarship. You said he'd never go anywhere unless I did what you said. Wrong again.

You now say that I don't see my daughter's potential and you have spread through our mutual community, lies about my family. On Friday, you really had me convinced I was going crazy, a bad mom and you came between me & my kids, lying to them and making them think you had the only answers to their lives.

Thank you for making my family stronger. May you reap what you have sowed as division in so many families. Now I understand what former families & former employees were trying to tell me. And to think that I was actually your friend and that you were just misunderstood..... Stop bringing my name up to other professionals. You must have thought that they didn't have my phone number or that nobody was going to call me. Thank God I didn't commit suicide over your lies. My kids would be sitting here without a mother right now and all those kids whose lives you wrecked, wouldn't have a mentor to help them piece it back together.

30 July 2017

Long Term Stages of Addiction & Suicide

Have you ever thought about committing suicide?  Have you ever tried?  It's definitely not the favored topic to talk about yet it is a necessary conversation for us to have.  

Did you ever know someone who committed suicide? 
Its a heartbreaking wreck for others to cope with.  It leaves those left behind to wonder why, along with so many other unanswered questions. 

People would like to think that the signs can be categorized in statistical boxes, but not even clinical research can handle this one.  I don't care what the experts say, they are still alive so they can't be experts at suicide.  They can only tell you what they see.

Well I'm an eleven attempt survivor.  Apparently I'm no expert either, because at least one of those times I should have succeeded.  Actually, I succeeded twice, found by my baby brother who unfortunately saved my life both times.  I was too young to know how to succeed before that.  Yes, I began trying to die at 7 years old.

  I am 39 years old and contemplating right now as I type.  You just don't know the pain in my heart and nothing you could say could change that.

I'm hoping that in writing this, I can make the awareness make myself feel better or something.  I can't tell you what I'm trying to say, other than if I live to keep writing, this helped, and if I don't make it through this night, then you will know the signs a little bit better.

So many people misjudge someone thinking about suicide and it's so shameful to admit to people, that I never wanted to expose myself. Nobody who commits suicide ever wants to really kill themselves. But they are going to do it anyway because people just don't fuckin listen, do they?  

But when I know there is no one to turn to, when I already know what you're going to say, when I know the clinical labels and approach,  then it all becomes useless.  There's nothing you can say that's going to make it better. I don't have family to talk to.  I'm realizing that I don't really have any friends close enough who care.  I don't really have real friends at all.

What do I do with the pain inside? Do I just go to sleep?  What's the solution to my problem? Is there a solution?  What if its an endless problem? 

Why would I tell you when I'm going to do it? 
Well if I told you, I must not really want to do it.  But if I told you, my life would get wrecked immediately, worse than it is now.  

First thing you would do is to pressure me by calling suicide for cowards.  Then you would resort to calling 9-11 which would put an immediate scene at my front door, which means that if I live, I'm not going to want to come back home, for the embarrassment and attention would make me want to commit suicide anyway.

People are going to patronize me until someone finds an angle.  They are going to talk endlessly until I fall asleep or change my mind.  They're going to jack me up with meds.  It will be great. Then they get to choose whether or not I get to go.  I don't think so. I'd rather commit suicide.  That's not help.  It is extending the problem while adding more problems so that the system can now solve the problems it created by prescribing me a pill.  I don't think so.  I'm suicidal, not stupid.

People want to know how to stop suicide?  Try to wrap your head around this: 
*I will speak in "I" statements to avoid lengthy confusion

1.  I am committing suicide because I have repeatedly told you something about whatever is breaking me down and you refuse to listen or do something about it.

2.  I tried to get help but the system only uses people as guinea pigs and we all know it.  That's not help.  They give pills for the symptoms while I live in misery.

3.  What do you mean its not hopeless?  I just told you the same thing I have been saying for a long time and you still don't listen or try to see what I'm seeing!

4.  I fuckin give up.  Nobody listens.  My life, my heart, my soul is important and nobody sees a thing.  All they see is what they want from me.  They don't even see that I can't do it.  All they know is that at a different time in my life, I could, and they want it now, so do it now.  People only see what they want, what they need.

5.  On second thought, I must not be that important or loved.  It doesn't matter how many times I say it or if I scream it from the roof top.  After they call me crazy & talk their shit, I won't exist to them until they want something from me.  

6.  Oh look, they want more from me than I thought.  But they can't see how their ignorance is killing me. 

7.  I keep telling myself its me, but I have changed myself a thousand times to accommodate them because they told me it was all in my head, and guess what?  It wasn't enough work for me to change everything I am for them, they still don't hear my concerns, they still don't treat me like I matter in their lives and these people are supposed to be the closest people to me, my family or extended family.  And look.  They couldn't give a rats ass about me, but watch how many show up to my funeral crying about how great I was.

8.  This got old last year.  Nothing's changed but me.

9.  I'm tired.  Life has lost its value.  I just want to go to sleep and never wake up.  What am I even here for? Well, besides the pain?

10.  I'd go on vacation, but I can't.  I'd go talk to someone, but I've tried talking to everyone I know.  I went to the doctor, they sent me to the psych.  The psych only wanted to know what pills to give me. I went to the church, they told me to tithe, pray and serve harder. I went to my family but they had other things to talk about.  I tried go to my friends but they were too busy.  Some even complained about my negative energy and left my presence.  Does anyone even realize how close I am to killing myself?  

11.  K, inventory check:  what do I have to make this go quickly and easily? I don't want to survive, I don't want to suffer any longer than I am right now.  I just want to go and never come back.  What?  You fakas calling me selfish?  Did you ever think for a minute that all this time I have been trying to come talk to you, that maybe you have been selfish?  Yeah.... I'm trying to tell you I want to die and all you can think about is how you like I fix your car.  That wasn't selfish?  What about the time I went to my family and they handed me three kids and a grocery list.  I'm trying not to kill myself and you're handing me kids because you don't have time for my shit and want to get dinner done fast tonight.  But what about me? 

 I fail to see how I never mattered and now you're crying that I was selfish?  Bitches, I'm dead now.  Fuck you and your not listening! Fuck you and your "to-do lists"!!! Fuck you and your selfish ass favors.  You didn't care for me when I was alive, what the fuck are you here for now?  To ask my dead body at my viewing, who's supposed to fix your car now?  Fuck all of you who says suicide = hell!!! Now that I'm not there, you can go on with life because I never mattered anyway and in a month or so, you'll forget me.  Trust me.

ps.. This ain't hell.  It's heaven, after living on that earth.






18 July 2017

Just Don't Give Up


It's been a long and humbling journey to have gotten this far in life.  I remember when there was a time that I didn't expect to see thirty years old.  I lost a lot of people at a very young age, both family and peers.  People got killed every day in front of me or around me.  When I had my coma at nineteen, the hospital and everybody else thought my Dad was off his rocker for believing I would wake up one day.  If ever anybody was thankful to have a parent on crack cocaine, I sure am.  I really don't expect too many people to relate to that, but it is what it is.  If he hadn't been in denial, the doctor probably would have successfully convinced him to pull the plug.  They tried so hard, but he just kept denying that it was that bad.  He denied it until I woke up seven months later.  Almost a year later, I was walking.  I think it was the part where the doctor called me a vegetable as if I weren't in the room.  

When I hit twenty-one, I was faced with having to make a choice of what I was going to do with my life.  I would have gone to college right after high school, if my family dynamics were anything less than disastrous.  I had invested in four businesses already but between my coma in 1996 and my fiance getting murdered in front of me in 1998 had killed all but one business.  The last one, my brother took over, while I was traumatized.  Just after my twenty-first birthday in 1998, I found out I was pregnant by my fiance.  I still hadn't gotten over his death, having violent bouts with PTSD while fighting for my own life on the streets.  I still had my job at the supermarket and my co-workers really stood up with me.  Who else has a Baby Shower in the break room at work? 

We lived in my car until my baby was about seven months old.  Although my family lived all around us, we had nowhere to go.  My fiance's family was not only crazier than mine, but also a warring clan against my family.  It was far too complicated for me to bridge both disasters.  After all, I was heavily traumatized over the course of my twenty-one years and was losing my ability to balance so much struggle.  I worked day and night until my house was robbed, and paperwork exposing my future fortune was discovered.  At that point, I was actively being hunted.  I probably could have used some kind of therapy and protection at any point, but all I got were other people's kids, whom I tried to send home, but they had no home and were going through much of the same stuff as me.  All the kids stuck it out with me and we all put in our work to making it work for us all, while all of our families continued to be a growing problem for all of us.  It was horrible, but the lining was sparkling silver with an unspoken unity and love, indescribable.  

As my grandmother's health worsened, she requested that I live in her house, while she lived with my mother.  With that, I inherited a dog who hadn't seen another person beside my grandmother in all of the dog's fourteen years.  With an infant and a smaller dog of my own, that was its own struggle.  I soon found out that the 200 year old house was being held together by endless rolls of masking tape, contact paper and can tops that covered holes in the floor.  

My Father was still on drugs and his behavior was gnarly.  He also thought my child was his second chance to be a father, as though my offspring were destined to be an opportunity for him to get it right this time, but he couldn't even get himself together yet.  My corporate drive increased a thousand percent as I identified that work promotions were my only immediate way out.  I was not the type, nor did I have the time and patience to be a welfare mom.  I was getting my baby and myself the hell out of North Philadelphia and going back to my roots in Hawaii, and that was my choice.  I didn't know anything about Hawaii except the visions my brother had, mixed with the calling I had.  But who the heck knew if we were accurate?  The "Uncles" from O'ahu would tell us stories, but they only came in the summer, for one week a year.  We were eight years old.  Um yeah, unks.. what did you just say?  It was foreign to us.  They told us our Kumulipo and we were like, um yeah. A long list of long K names and a few other words here and there.  Sounded like a continuation of that story I don't remember from last year, or something.  But we kept discussing these crazy visions and our Indian Uncles with the Iroquois Nation used to be the only ones to listen.  They only told us to go west and to follow it.  Perhaps we had to give them the history of what happened here.  Yeah... we were too young then, but they said we'd remember, and we did.  That year was 1984.  In a kid's mind, cool.

Well, the only way I was going to escape the deadly grasp of North Philadelphia was to make enough money to get out.  First things first - save.  How?  Um, we'll coupon shop and put all the money into a hidden bank account in the baby's name.  When the time is right, I will close the account and we will go.  What next?  Uhhh... budget, yeah.  I'm going to need to put my life together there and people who go there say its expensive.  So let's take a wild guess what it's going to cost to do that and put the next money aside to pay rent for awhile.  I'm a hard worker so getting a job should only be as hard as finding child care.  I hope I can find an old Hawaiian lady so she can teach my child what I cannot.
But I had a family and they either had needs or habits.  I got robbed constantly, but it was hard to stop that from happening because I needed someone to watch the baby so I could work at night.  I quickly went up the payscale at my job but I didn't appreciate my new management team.  One day they pushed me to the limit and I snapped and walked out.  A week later, I was hired at Discovery Channel and the following month later, at Starbucks.  I liked Discovery Channel better at first, but I immediately advanced in both position and payscale at Starbucks.  It was a great company back then.

When I lost respect for my job at Discovery Channel, I picked up extra hours at Starbucks, as our team was extremely successful in a very short amount of time.  I was kind of immature so we had music going and we danced all of our jobs complete.   We were a bit wild, but in the location we were, that was perfect.  It was a millionaire pocket with a whole lot of big music stars and savvy millionaires.  They thought we were entertaining and spent with us, just to have a place to go that was free from every day pressure.

Things got really scary again for awhile, as my predators were closing in on me and I wasn't getting out fast enough.  People knew I was growing in status and rather than be uplifting, they envied me.  Before I knew it, the home invasion, shooting and firebombing happened and once again, I was traumatized to the high holy moon.  It left me pregnant with my daughter, whom I couldn't imagine my life without, today.  But at that time, the trauma.  Little by little, my tolerance was going down again and I remembered what happened the last time I lost it.  I never want to go through that again.  

I went to my other side of the neighborhood, my other stomping grounds, and I sought my old warrior friends.  Most of them were dead or in jail, but I knew I'd find someone.  I just didn't think it would be the only non-confrontational person in the whole squad.  Everyone kept him around because he was cool, but this guy was no warrior.  He simply wasn't built for it.  But he was there, I knew he'd do what he knew to protect me and my child.  It wasn't long before he prevented me from aborting my daughter and his family took me and my son in.  They were grateful for all the years I protected theirs.  I was thankful because I was too scared and damaged to come out of my corner at that point.  I was afraid I'd snap.  But I was gone at work much of the time, and they enjoyed my baby boy.  It wasn't long before he went to jail and I was alone through the pregnancy.  I worked three hours around the nearest mountain and put in 90 hours per week on the clock.  Everybody got paid well, because I was appreciative of their support.  Of course, this put a huge dent in my savings, but I was lost again.  Now I'm having a second baby, I really don't know how to put together a move so big, and I got this new family thing going on.  I'll talk to him to make a long term goal.

A few years went by and after my father and I invested in his education, he began to steal from me and the kids for his drugs.  I never thought this guy would be one of those.  He was so lame, I thought he would outgrow the ghetto and move on.  But he began to rebel, and while I was at work, he would abuse my son and take my daughter to dope houses.  On one occasion, the result was my daughter almost taken from me at the hospital because he ripped her arm out of socket twice in a row, the second time, never calling me until five hours later, when I had to close the store and drive three hours home.  It was eight hours before she even arrived in the hospital and another three hours before she was seen.  Child Protective Services came to take her, and if it wasn't for my coworkers being there to support me, I don't know what I would have done.   They made me break up with the kids' father, but he and the streets didn't see it that way.  They showed up to my house by the carloads, threatening me.  The police were no help.  They liked this kind of thing because they would let the streets eliminate one another, and just come to clean the bodies.  Yeah, that was nuts.

I didn't mean for it to happen, but right during all of that, I ended up pregnant with my third surviving baby and as I was already moving into the high levels of corporate management, my life began to unravel my career.  Right after I gave birth to my third, I lost my career to a thug with a gun. Great.  I'm beginning to panic now, and to make things worse, I had been going to the doctor for my traumatic brain injury and my never ending internal bleeding, and both were progressing.  I was never more lost or alone.  My family split to pieces at the seams that year, and my brother was sentenced to life without parole.  Never in my entire life had I ever felt so alone and broken.  Just shattered.

As things got worse, he decided to play head games and start a court process, while urging me to just go to Florida with my father.  The day I did, he had me charged with kidnapping.  When I got to Florida, my father did exactly what I feared from him too - he took me a thousand, actually twelve hundred miles from the last person I knew, and beat the crap out of me in front of my kids, every single day.  At the same time, the judge was calling me from  Philadelphia to threaten to extradite me and that I would never see my kids again.  Me and my daughter were too dark for the KKK territory we were living in.  I thought last year couldn't get any worse.  It just kept getting worse in all sorts of ways I could never imagine and now my father decided to desert us in Florida with nothing at all.

It wasn't long before I lost my job and was one of the 22 million people who struggled with policy changes in unemployment, leaving us homeless in a foreign land.  When I did find a job and a house, the racism was so gnarly, my daughter was only eight years old and was targeted every single day by the adults, not even children.  Its not like we were bad either.  All my kids were well behaved, I was a minister with an outreach program extending to seventeen churches, I was a soccer coach, and I was paralyzed from the neck down, much of that time.  But they pepper sprayed my little girl while she waited for the school bus, and surrounded my house on a regular basis.  We actually had a league of ministers and pastors with guns, outside our home 24/7 to protect us because the cops wouldn't.  Child Protective Services knew us on a first name basis because they were called at least twice a week and all the minorities in the area would just tell us to shut up and join them, because it was in the best of our interest to do so.  At that point, people in Hawaii began to put together an action plan to help us come home.  It was ridiculous already.

In the meantime, my brain surgery was finally ready to be scheduled, but now I had cancer and my digestive system shut down.  The stress caused my body to self destruct.  This had happened to me in 2006, but not as bad as this time.  It took the combined efforts of sixteen churches and an eighty-four year old activist to threaten the hospital close by to care for me.  They did not want a colored person in their hospital.  Have you seen a picture of me? There's not much color to it! Tampa General was waiting for me to be healthy enough to go into brain surgery, but seeing all that was going on with my health, the surgeon at Tampa General was beginning to back out of the surgery.  There was supposed to be a 75% chance that I wasn't going to live through it, and a 95% chance I would never walk again.  I kindly told them God would guide their hands and that I was walking out of that hospital whether they thought I would or not.  I left the hospital within a week - precisely 120 days prior to when they thought I would be released from rehab.  I think they thought I was going to need it.  I didn't need that.  My sheer determination to get back to my regularly scheduled program of coming home to Hawaii Nei and doing what I could to restore our Kingdom.  I still don't understand how I made it this far, so I cannot really plan any further because I don't see further.  I only see that I have to be a powerful single parent, despite my inequities because I don't know what God means when I have gone through so much.  Honestly, I'm still waiting for this egg to crack and I am only trying to make the greatest impact that I can while I'm here.  

We've been home for almost four years now and we have made strides, as far as I'm concerned.  I fully intend to continue that hard work, to restore everything in sight, as I describe it.  Today, we live a humble existence and work really hard to advance what's around us.  We have a nursery, a crew and a network.  All we have to do now is work on getting money together to afford our work.  Does that make sense?  We need equipment to get our work together.  Somehow, with plenty faith, we will get that taken care of.  Until then, I'm really thankful to have a keyboard to share the depths of my soul with the universe, in hopes to inspire others to see that they are stronger and more powerful than they think and that you can do it.  I didn't do it alone, but my heart was in the right place and my efforts matched.  Still does, I'm still the same.  People might not agree with me on how I do things or my timing, but trust and believe that when you can pull your ancestral strength and determination, you can do anything.  Just don't give up.


With Love, 

Kahala Lei





16 July 2017

Questions


When you think about your life, what do you see?
Do you see past or future and what's your reality?
Are you restricted by fear or held back by your past?
Just how long do you expect that to last?
At which point are you going to be true to you?
Not just because you call it that, but because of what you do?

What are your goals? What do you hope to achieve?
Are these all thoughts that you yourself, have conceived?
Are these dreams American or you?
If you had a choice, what would you do?
Do we all dream dreams of a white picket fence?
At what point of your dreams did the drugs commence?
At what point in your dreams was alcohol a key?
When you're drunk and high, can you clearly see?

Why are you driving when you are unable to judge?
That tree you hit, did you think it would budge?
That life you just cost, was lost in vain.
Did you really expect that family to care about your pain?
When you treat others with inconsideration
Don't expect them to bail you out of a situation.

When you honor your soul, you honor what's true.
It's only then, that people can see the good in you.
Enough of the questions, advice to give life a thought
Before you suffer from the bad choices you bought.

Not everyone and everything is a bad choice
But not enough people listen to their inner voice.
Not enough people see the pain that they cause
But too many people want to change when they're lost.
So many souls are hurting from this
So many people dying from causes cancerous.
Did it ever occur to you to watch what you eat?
Or to get rid of your microwave radiated heat?
But you want me to march for dimes for the cause
Are all the natural cures dead and lost?
You seem not to trust what wasn't invented in a lab.
But science is deeper than the doctors & health fads.
The science of life is what brought us to now
While you think inventions are the only way how.

I ask you these questions with sound mind of purity
That you may open your eyes to see
You're being held captive by mental slavery.


Kahala Lei
Blood Money Poets
copyright 2017

Sun Set


Don't let the sun set on me
I've got to know my kids are free
From unjust laws and peer envy
From learning wrongful history
From bouts of mental slavery.

All kids deserve to live elate
To witness right perpetuate
To rise above all vices hate
To enjoy a fresh clean spiritual slate
Don't let the sun set on me.

Let the sun set when my mission is through
When my kids are prepared and they know what to do
When each of them has ordered affairs
And they no longer have a need for me to be there.


Kahala Lei
Blood Money Poets 
copyright 2017

Crossing the Sea


You're driving me insane can't you see?
What do you really want from me?
Its not commitment, its not really a friend
Well when does this bitter game end?

What could it be, if I was so bad?
If I'm so hard to get along with, you're iron clad
I really saw how we fit hand & glove
I didn't ask you to fall in love. 

All that I wanted was some clarity
Why does your everything boil down to me?
If its not love, then how would you define?
I was saying I'm yours, I didn't ask you to be mine. 

But its whatever, you want it to be.
Whether we're close or across the sea.
I have nothing left, nothing more to gain
By constantly going through this again.

I can only chalk it up to a loss.
By cutting off the pain that you cause. 
Just doing it alone, how I've done all along. 
Because I refuse to be hurt when I haven't done wrong.


Kahala Lei
Blood Money Poets
copyright 2017