“I’m 83. Been married four times. Divorced twice. The other two passed with cancer.

“I lost my wife, Jewell, on Jan. 19 last year. She was 69. She dealt with that cancer for many years. It spread all over. But if you had seen her walking around, you never would have thought she had cancer. She was always happy.

“Then one day, me, her and the daughter went to the funeral home. I said, ‘Why are we going there?’ My wife said, ‘Hush, you’ll find out later on.’ She didn’t want me to know that she had only six months to live. She didn’t want me to worry. And I tried my best. But sometimes at night when that cancer moved, man, she’d go to hollering. I didn’t know what to do for her. There was nothing I could do but sit there and look at her.

“But she never did complain. That was just the kind of person she was. She was jolly, happy, all the time.

“When we were at church for the funeral service, that’s when I broke down. I couldn’t take it no more. But that’s all right. It’s best to cry. Best to get it all out. Because if you keep it in, it gets worse and worse.

“At the cemetery, oh man, my chest locked up on me. I thought it was my heart. But it was all that stress. I didn’t know it could be so strong. They had to rush me to the hospital. I wasn’t there to see them put her in the ground. I haven’t been back to the cemetery. It’s too hard. I try not to think about the bad stuff, all I’ve been through. I try to keep my mind off things like that.

“Before she passed, my wife told me, ‘You don’t have to worry about me. Because I know where I’m going.’ And that’s a good blessing. Yes, indeed.”

— C.J. Edmond

C.J. is a deacon at Mt. Calvary Baptist Church in Baytown, where Jewell also was a long-time member. “I used to have dogs when I was young. I had one that I called Bozo. My mother would say, ‘Both you Bozos, get out of that bed.’ Then my sister started calling me Bozo the Clown. It stuck. Everybody at church calls me Bozo. Even my pastor.”

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“Unless kids feel safe and loved, they’re not going to perform to the best of their abilities academically. That’s true for adults as well. We’re not going to perform professionally unless we all feel loved and secure. My personal way of delivering that in the world is by helping people quiet their minds through meditation and finding stress management through breathing techniques.

“A workshop at Lee College called the Happiness Program is where I learned these really powerful yoga breathing techniques. It’s a practice. In the same way that athletes have to condition their body through a regular practice, we condition our mind to be calm and quiet.

“A lot of people think meditation is concentration. But it’s absolutely the opposite. It’s actually relaxation. A byproduct of meditation is that you have more concentration. That’s because your mind is more at peace and you are more still.

“I do my practice every day. We have physical hygiene that we follow daily, like taking a bath, brushing our teeth, combing our hair, wearing clean clothes. In the same way, we should also have mental hygiene. But somewhere along the way, we’ve left that behind.

“Doing my own breathing meditation practice helps get me through the day. It doesn’t mean that my day isn’t difficult or that stresses don’t come to me. But when it does happen, I’m able to handle it from a different space. If I would have been upset for a longer amount of time, that feeling just comes and goes more quickly.

“It’s a practice, and it takes commitment. I spend about 20 minutes a day on it. We dedicate so much of our time to work, driving, relationships, watching Netflix, and this and that. But you can’t pour from an empty cup. Those 20 minutes a day allow me to be full and to be able to pour back to others.”

— Marisol Mendez

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“I think about the future a lot. It stresses me out.”

Your future, or the future of the world?
“Both. And I don’t know what to focus on. That’s the frustration. I get stressed out very easily. I think I focus on everything too much, all at once. If I’m struggling financially, in school, with relationships, all of that, I feel like I’ve got to fix everything right now. 

“I try to keep telling myself that I’m still young. There are people around me who are getting married or having kids. And I’m like, that’s fine. Everybody moves at their own pace. 

“I saw something on Facebook that helped. It was like, what you’re stressing about and wanting to be out of right now is exactly what you were looking forward to a year ago. That kind of puts things into perspective.”

— Troy Breaux-Hare

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The post He’s trying not to stress out about the future appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“For about eight years, I had this job that took me all over the country. At first it was fun, getting to travel and see different places. But when you’re away from home and family Monday through Friday, working indoors sometimes 10 to 12 hours a day, and living out of a hotel room week after week, you start to get burned out.

“The road doesn’t really have anything for you. You’ve been to every restaurant. You’ve been eating all these bad foods and you’re gaining more weight. Then when you get back home, you’re distant from your family. It’s Friday night, and before you know it, it’s Sunday already and you’re getting ready to leave again. 

“I was feeling really stressed at work because they put me in some leadership roles, which I didn’t really want. I don’t like to tell people what to do. I prefer to be just a worker, a team player. But it became all about income and grossing and worrying about revenue. It got to the point where one time when I was flying out, my nose started bleeding. I’d never had a nosebleed in my life, and it was gushing for like an hour. I guess it was just the stress of everything.

“That’s when I thought, I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to make a change. I mean, I was making decent money. But to me, it’s not all about the money. It’s not all about chasing that dollar. It’s about happiness. I want to be doing something that makes me happy.”

— Ashley Parris

Ashley, 39, is in between jobs right now, but hopes to pursue life as a photographer for fun and profit.

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The post Career change in the works after life on the road appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“I was born in Mexico. First, I came to California. I went to school a little bit, and then I found a job. I cooked, working in the kitchens. I stayed there for 22 years.

“Many people come here looking for work. They want a better life for themselves, for their family. I was married 27 years ago. I have my wife and four kids. Two of them are already married.

“I come out here (Baytown Nature Center) two days a week. The doctor says I have too much stress. I work at the grocery store five or six days a week. He says I need to relax. So I come out here to fish. It’s fun. It’s relaxing. It helps.”

— Javier Lopez

The post Fishing his cure for work-related stress appeared first on The Baytown Project.

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(Note: Ralph Zamarron passed away on Jan. 27, 2021.)

The post Reiki helps promote healing, reduce stress appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“I was an LVN when I got out of the Navy, then I became a registered nurse in 1979. After working in the neonatal unit at Texas Children’s Hospital, I got a chance to work in the ER. People came in with all sorts of things, from being really sick to trauma. That’s where I really started doing down-to-the-core nursing.

“I took early retirement in 2015, but I guess I’ve carried that same desire to help people into my Reiki and hypnosis. I like to help people who are feeling stressed or in pain. I’m not a doctor and I’m not here to diagnose, but I do what I can to help by applying different things I’ve learned and experienced through the years.

“I’ve worked with people who are dealing with cancer treatment, and others who have chronic issues related to things like Crohn’s disease and IBS. If I can provide them with some relief and offer a few tips on how they can help themselves, then that leaves me with a pretty good feeling. I just get real satisfaction from helping people.”

(Note: Ralph Zamarron passed away on Jan. 27, 2021.)

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“I knew it would be stressful to come to college. In my late teens I had a lot of anxiety. I had some depression issues, some health issues that were going on. And I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a long time. I felt like if I didn’t have a clear purpose, I wasn’t going to do very well in college. So I just waited and waited, and the wait got longer. But finally I just decided I wanted to do it. I wanted to expand my horizons.

“Through Lee College’s Honors Program, I’ve been able to take a lot of my papers to academic conferences and present them. It was a challenge. It was a big challenge. When I was first doing presentations, the biggest thing was that I had to speak up. They said I’m not loud enough, they can’t hear me, I seem too nervous. I would just get horribly, horribly nervous. But it’s such a great opportunity to be able to present your work, that I kept doing it. My work was good enough that they always wanted me to go to these conferences. So I’ve kept it up, and it’s gotten easier over time.

“I think it’s easier now for me to talk to people. It’s never super easy, but I feel a lot less nervous than I used to. And I’ve gotten a lot better about ignoring the nervousness that I do feel. It doesn’t mean that it’s gone away. But it doesn’t impede my life the way it might have in the past.”

— Emily Blumentritt, 25

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The post Student works to overcome nervousness, anxiety appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“Growing up, I wanted to be a forensic scientist. But then I learned I wasn’t any good at science. I also had hopes of getting a scholarship to play softball in college. But that didn’t end up happening.

“Now I guess I’m still trying to decide which direction I want to go. I question myself every day. It worries me because I feel like I’m getting older and I have a lot of friends who have already graduated. And I’m like, oh, I wish that was me. Sometimes it feels like a lot of stress and pressure.

“Honestly, I feel like there is something holding me back. But I don’t know what it is. I’m still trying to figure everything out.”

— Amanda Rios, 23

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The post Figuring out her future can be stressful appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“I came down here from New York, but my family’s originally from the Virgin Islands.”

“I was born and raised in the Virgin Islands, and just moved up here a year and two months ago.”

“There’s a big island community around here. There are a lot of people from Trinidad, St. Lucia, St. Croix, and you see a lot of Puerto Ricans up here.”

“The vibe is almost like you’re back home again, although the environment is different here. A lot of people here are more stressed. But we’re more free spirited. Everybody just tries to relax, feel good and have a good time.”

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