Anyone who has known me longer than a few months knows I get around. I get around a lot. Everywhere I go I meet someone new and I try mightily to leave part of me behind. I also look for pieces of others to carry back with me. I have a lot of pieces of others in me.

I spent the weekend with three women recently in Minneapolis.

Leslie: She invited me. And the coolest part, Leslie and I had never before met in person. We both attended Howard University and both pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority there. That was enough for her. We also share a love of food. Foodles for sure. Through social media, we became really close. I look for her there and boy does she reset the bar in the areas of kindness, knowing just what to say when it needs saying, and being the most giving, unselfish sister on the planet. Leslie is like a big sister to me. She is someone I will thrive to keep in my orbit. Leslie is the complete package of awesomeness.

Barb: We met through my son, Michael. One day he comes into the house and says mom I made friends with a lady adult. Our dogs Mo and Charlie became best buddies and then through these intersections, I met Barb. Barb is the most loving, strong, take charge, never-sugar-coating sister in the universe. Barb once told me, "Always ask yourself why you are doing something. If you are only doing it for you, be careful you are not hurting anyone." I like that advice. I like Barb too.

Rhonda: We have known one another since we were teenagers at Howard University. We too pledged the same sorority. Rhonda and I have been in and out of touch most of our lives. She did my makeup in my wedding way back in 1992. I like that we fully get each other. Rhonda can tell me anything and vice-versa. Rhonda is stunning, smart, organized and amazingly in touch with her healthy side. What I most admire about her is her willingness to lean in and invest in growing things, like sisterhood and friendship. I have a big piece of Rhonda in me.

These three ladies came together to host a book signing for me in Minneapolis. They not only created the signing event, they organized an entire weekend around me. We spent a lot of time together. We had dinners, champagne brunches, girlfriend chat sessions, truth-telling lean-ins. I love these women and I know for sure sure they love me. Sister love I call it. 

I grew up with a spirit of expectancy. More accurately I grew into that spirit. By the time I was thirty every significant thing I had ever hoped for had come true. I was by thirty married, well-educated, had begun international travel, built my first home, and the list goes on.  By most anyone looking from the outside in I had it made and I had made it.  Nothing could be further from the truth. I was by age 32 grief stricken. A grief that would last nearly four years. All because I could not have a baby. I was unable to conceive.

I began by keeping a daily journal of my topsy-turvy existence which went from hopeful during ovulation to despair with the onset of menses each and every month nearly 48 times. That is forty-eight times of complete and utter dread when my menstruation came, big red I called it. The one thing I really ever wanted I could not have. With my despair came many doctors, many days and nights on my knees praying, begging God to give me a child. Over and over and over again I prayed begging Jesus to do for me what he had done for Hannah, free up my womb to conceive. I even made him a promise. If he were to give me a child I would name her Hannah or him Samuel as a reminder of his goodness and a testimony of his grace. I would use my testimony as a affirmation of God's promises kept.

I would spend years with infertility doctors until finally my doctor said, "let's give your body a break." So we stopped treatments which had included hormone injections, six artificial inseminations and several surgeries along the way. No more.

I continued to pray to Jesus until one day something happened that changed everything. As was usual I was on my knees praying, pleading to Jesus for a baby and He spoke to me, scolded me is a better term. He said I have given you what you wanted. I had been praying and saying, "I want a child." What he gave me was the want of a child. I had never believed it would be so. I had never prayed, "Jesus, I will have a child." I was begging while he was waiting for me to trust and believe it would be so. During my prayer this day he spoke this, "STOP! Get up! You must turn this over to me and then I will do what I said I would do! DO NOT ask me again. STOP begging."

I never again prayed to have a baby. I thanked God that I would have a child and a few months later, I conceived and without any infertility treatments.

God wanted me to trust him completely. He wanted me to know that I only need to ask. To make my desires known and then trust him to be God at his word. It was not until I was able to do this and show my faith did he show his favor.

Our daughter was born on 5/17/99. I named her Hannah. I kept my promise too.

I never got around to becoming the lawyer I swore I would be from the time I could talk, argue, shout or throw tantrums. I never made it to the edge of nowhere and shouted my name only to hear it echo off everywhere for only my listening ear to hear. I never thanked my first boyfriend Lee, five years old at the time for helping me take off those sticky over-boots stuck to my sneakers beneath. I never had the white picket fence with the 2.5 children, baked bread from scratch or became Miss America, though I came close.

I never fixed all those problems I color coded with different highlighters, red meaning "DO NOW" down to yellow meaning track but don't sweat it today. I never gave enough just because it was asked of me, thinking instead, hey, I do my share.

I never lost those winter pounds during spring and summer. Never once was the first one asked to dance at any prom, any homecoming dance or any anything. I never a lot.

But as I come into myself I have come to realize the best thing ever. I have become okay with never. I have given in to it's okay. I have yielded mostly because it's okay feels good on me. And never can go somewhere in search of everywhere. But as for me, I am okay being me. And where I am headed, never ever had a chance of stopping me anyway.

I just banked another four miles walking. Not anything exceptional one might think, but to me it was another day of remarkable. I am mostly not one to exercise. I became interested in walking a couple of years ago just before turning 50. I have come to enjoy it. I started slow, then built up to a routine that was comfortable for me. I have been mostly walking daily since I first started. Walking is my exercise. 

Nowadays I walk both because I enjoy it and because I am constantly in a state of remaining well. I know what it feels like to be unwell. At first I thought it was just jet lag.

In April of 2015 I became unusually lethargic. I slept a lot and it seemed I could never get enough energy to do the things I needed to do. I spent a lot of time in bed. Weeks into not getting any better I relented and went to see a doctor, which turned into three doctors. One of these doctors was a cancer doctor. Yes. I was 51 years old and about to have surgery to see if I had "the really bad cancer." The silent killer, ovarian cancer. It was the most scary, stressful, painful time of my entire life. My oldest brother died of cancer. It had taken his life at age 45 in less than one year after diagnosis. I was used to bad hearts in my family. My mother passed of a bad heart that simply gave out at age 55. Her mother too, habitual heart problems.

I wrote private letters to my children and my husband of 24 years and laid my fate at the alter of Jesus. After an invasive, exploratory surgery less than three weeks after first visiting doctors, I learned my problem was not cancer at all. I have "beautiful ovaries."

I spent the next few months becoming well from problems more related to severe anemia. Once I fully recovered, I vowed I would spend the rest of my life becoming well and remaining well. And mostly I have. What I have learned is becoming well is not an impossibility. It is a mind-set. An exercise of commitment and forgiveness. I say forgiveness because I have bad days. I eat all wrong, drink all wrong and do all wrong. But the beauty of becoming well is your promise is to self. You don't owe anyone else an explanation. It is your body, your life, your decision to become well and remain well.

I am so glad I have made the important choice to take better care of myself. When I am healthy I am able to do more, becoming more of my creative self. I am able to take time out for family and do all those things I enjoy doing. With good health, I can be present. I can be there for those who are becoming healthy too.

Our body is our temple and we are expected to do our best to take care of MIND, BODY and SPIRIT.

I pray others will join me on this "becoming well" journey.

We move around in spaces of comfort believing that we are led where we belong. We learn to listen longer to sounds unfamiliar to us, allowing ourselves to tip-toe until they become familiar and comfortable. Because we well-know what it feels like to be too trusting of a situation only to be left in a cloud of disappointment because we jumped in too soon ignoring that slow down voice that was sent to rescue us. We jumped in knowing the risk but not the true cost. The cost that sticks around keeping us awake at night and in bed during times we should be awake and active.

The caution signs were there. They are always there. But because we are anxious for a way out of something old and into something new we put blinders on truths staring us in the face. We pretend that we can mitigate any consequence that surely will come. We make excuses for behaving stupidly. Oh the excuses which become more laughable the longer they are told and the intensity in which they are delivered.

We do things to feel better moment by moment forgetting that days follow moments and those days must be fed too. But no. We seek momentary fixes to long term problems that did not appear overnight. These problems came without expiration dates because mostly no one was there to look after them. These problems have been dressed up, disguised as complacency and happy moments. When these problems start to show real cracks we bring out the spackle and do our best to mask the oozing destruction beneath. All this so we can step right back into pretending life happens and no one has to pay the piper.

But it is in the knowing that the piper will be paid that jolts us back. The piper must be paid. It is in the knowing that nothing we initiate comes without a price. The true cost depends on how long we let it sit pretending it does not exist.

We have a real choice to stand up to our truth, undress it, welcome it home. And begin moment by moment to free it up to live another day without the added burden of pretending it just now showed up out of nowhere and you only just met. And the very worst thing about our pretending is we teach those around us how to treat us.