“I’m on a transformation journey. I recently got divorced. I have two wonderful kids. And I realized it’s important for me to become more in tune with who I am.

“Leaving a relationship to focus on me has been a challenge. But the wisdom that has come out of that, it’s like, I’m enjoying who I am. I’m learning more about myself.

“The goal is to be free. When I turned 30, I got my first tattoo. It’s just the words Be Free, but it symbolizes so much. It means letting go of past versions of me — how I viewed myself and how others viewed me — and embracing my most authentic self. That means being true to myself, despite what others may think or feel. Despite the path set out for me or the path I set for myself.

“To become the best version of me, I have to heal. I have to learn. I have to do the work.

“I’m 31, and I feel like I’ve done so much in life. But I still have so far to go. Sometimes I overthink that part, and I don’t appreciate how far I’ve come. So now I try to practice gratitude. It’s made me more centered. Because when I reflect on my life, I have achieved a lot.

“My goal now is balance. Balancing who I am on the days when I love myself and on the days I don’t feel so great about myself. We all have flaws, which we try to keep hidden from the world. But they’re still part of who we are. Instead of hiding them, maybe we should try embracing them. Because even though I may think I’m flawed in so many ways, another person may see beauty in that.

“Journaling has helped. I’m always in my head. I’m always thinking. So it allows me to get the majority of those thoughts down on paper. It’s a way to release those emotions, process them, meditate on them, and move on.

“Sitting by the water and journaling is a practice I want to do more often. Just for healing and clarity. I’m searching for that inner peace.”

— Synethia Edinborough

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“I see the question all the time: what do you want to be when you grow up? But I tell my son, that’s the wrong question. It should be: what do you want to be now? Your mind is going to keep changing as you get older. So it’s best if you try different things and experience as much as you can as you’re growing up.

“My parents were very encouraging like that with me. So I try to be the same way with my son. He runs triathlons. He does taekwondo. He plays music. He creates videos with Legos. He likes wildlife photography. So we’ve gone to Yellowstone, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Mexico, all over, and he takes pictures along the way.

“He’s always reading and writing on these road trips. And he loves writing stories. He kept at it until one day he said that he’d actually like to write a book.’ I told him, ‘If you do, I’ll help promote it.’ He started the book before the pandemic, and he finished it last year. I helped with editing, and we hired an illustrator. The book came out in April. It’s called, ‘The Prophecy of Three.’

“I’m so proud of him. I asked him, ‘Do you know how old I was when I wrote my first book?’ He said, ‘How old, 50 or 60?’ I said, ‘No, baby, I never wrote a book.’ So it’s quite an accomplishment.

“He writes for fun, and he’s really into it. But tomorrow it could be something else, which I think is great. I want him to do whatever interests him. I don’t try to influence him.

“I don’t know what he’ll end up doing in life. But for now, whatever he wants to do, I just try to be supportive and show him the way. He keeps suprising me. I hope he stays that way. I hope he keeps on surprising me with the path that he chooses for himself.”

— Armando Toledo

Ozzie Toledo, 12, is entering seventh grade at Cedar Bayou Junior School. His book is available on Barnes and Noble. The illustrator, Zach Zellars, is also from Baytown.

The post Young writer gets lots of encouragement from dad appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“I was 26 years old. It was my first pregnancy. I was healthy. I was athletic. Then it just happened. They told me, ‘Your cervix is gone.’ I had what’s called an incompetent cervix. It can lead to premature birth or losing your baby.

“They kept me in the hospital, head down and feet up, for two days. I was almost at six months. If they could get me to at least seven months on bed rest, my son could be born and possibly still live. But he would run the risk of cerebral palsy and some other things.

“I’ll never forget. After that conversation with the doctor, I was lying in the hospital bed and watching a Lakers game on TV. And I prayed. I was like, ‘God, I’m not sure if I’m strong enough at this point in my life to deal with a child with special needs. If my baby is going to be that, I don’t want him to suffer. So just do what you have to do.’ An hour later, my water broke and I went into labor. I delivered a beautiful 1-pound, 10-ounce baby boy. He breathed for just a moment, and that was it.

“It was heartbreaking. Initially, it was hard to come to grips with. One of the things I did was write about it in a poem called ‘Only Begotten Son.’ And when I would share things with people, they told me how much hearing what I had gone through helped them. I ended up publishing that poem in a book of poetry.

“Because of losing my son and other things I’ve gone through in life, I’ve been able to speak to other women and breathe life into other mothers. My son made me who I am. It’s a daily struggle. But it’s a beautiful journey.”

— Raquel Segura

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• Spoken word poet tells Da Truth

• Playing pro football, she lived her dream

The post Poetry emerges from heartbreaking loss appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“For me, it all began with the thought of a rabbit: Alice’s white rabbit from Lewis Carroll’s 1865 book, ‘Through the Looking Glass,’ and how Alice was this curious girl who took chances. Especially into the dark tunnel of the unknown. I respected and related to that more than once in my life, and importantly, during quarantine from COVID-19. Learning to take chances, whether I jump, hop or leap. (Thanks, bunny, it’s infectious.) I’d bypassed the 3-inch caterpillar, Absolem, with his magical mushrooms and hookah, and the ever-grinning and disappearing Cheshire Cat. (It’s that grin plus the teeth — creepy.)

“So the shutdown eventually became mandatory. I already knew how to be isolated and in a dark place. Easy peasy. And when it was announced that consent to travel was needed for essential workers, things really began to snap into place. The easy peasy part for me is clinical depression and anxiety disorder. I’d already been battling with communication in various ways. Masks excluded, until now.

“Then about a month into quarantine I woke up one morning, stood up, and collapsed to the floor. I screeched as I hit. I don’t screech. Maybe a B movie scream queen, but never a screech. I have a disintegrating lower disk and severe osteoarthritis in my hip. Nerve damage. Fun stuff. Migrating from wheelchair to attempt long walks also has been a riot. I’m a sarcastic humanist, go figure. So here I am limited in inconceivable ways, and that damn hole I imagined of Alice looked real comfortable. Corona? Bah! COVID-19? I’m already a zero-to-zip isolationist. I thought I didn’t miss others. I also knew it was not a good place to be. Crazy, not stupid, huh? ‘We’re all mad here!’ says my beloved Mad Hatter, and I knew something had to change. My insurance offered me free counseling, and I was exuberant. Coping skills and treatment planning had me setting goals.

“The Cheshire Cat also says, ‘I’m not crazy, it’s just my reality is different than yours.’ Smart kitty. We’re all different and have different needs. What I love most about our planet is all the cultural differences. Even during the world quarantine, or in spite of it, we’re all battling the same thing. Which gave me an idea. ‘Why sometimes I’ve believed in as many as six different things before breakfast,’ Alice says. See, that’s my girl. I’d always kept a journal, and had written my uncle and aunt in New Mexico when I began to add family and friends, including pen pals as far away as Idaho and Tasmania. And they wrote back. Snail mail rocks! I threw in a surprise in the form of drawings. I began to sketch-pencil, add colors, and I’d even make cards and draw on envelopes.

“So my paradox began with my own world crashing down until I realized that I knew how to crawl out of a dark tunnel and daily reach out to others in a different, yet the same, place. Stepping out of self is the best experience of my life. It’s new adventures from all over the globe, right in my own looking glass.”

“It’s no use going back to yesterday because I was a different person.” — Alice

— Susan M. Plake

The post ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’ appeared first on The Baytown Project.

Name
Britney Brown

Age
30

How long have you lived in Baytown?
Eight months

Most interesting fact about you
I can remix any song on the spot.

Background
I was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, but raised in so many different places. I used my history of moving from city to city and state to state to build relationships. My motto was if I only have a short time with these people, might as well make my connection now. I have used that to help me in many areas of my life, including getting my degree in social work at Prairie View A&M University.

Goals
My goal is to provide a life for my family. I want to live life and have it abundantly. I want to be surrounded by people who love me and my family. I want to have the hope that we can do all things and to inspire people in our lives to be better. I have written my first book, “My Friend Icky,” for my daughter to have a book where she sees herself. I hope that it creates financial stability for my family and encouragement for others to also step out and do things that haven’t been done in their lives.

Challenges
My biggest challenge to this day has been losing my mother while in my last semester of college. Since I was a little girl, it had always been me and my mom. When she died, a part of me died with her. I almost didn’t graduate due to the debilitating heartbreak of her loss. But I did it to make her proud. Since her passing, I have struggled with depression and feelings of loneliness. I have also learned that because of her passing, I have become a stronger person. I have surrounded myself with love, and I have been supported. Losing her broke my heart, and I still miss her. But I know that it was all a part of God’s plan.

Happiest or saddest moment
My happiest moment would have to be the day I met my daughter. Seeing her, I knew I was deserving of love again. I didn’t believe that she would really come into the world because I was so jaded by the loss of my mom. I didn’t know if I could love another person as fully as I loved my mom. But when I saw Zoe, I saw my future in her eyes, and it brought me happiness.

Advice
Even when you think you can’t do it, try anyway. Wouldn’t you like to be wrong if it will benefit you?

Currently reading or watching
I have no time for watching TV. I am preparing for my teacher certification exam. I want to begin a new chapter.

Favorite thing to do in Baytown
I love Bayou City Wings. I go there often. And I love going down Garth Road, and just shopping at all my favorite stores.

Follow Britney on Instagram @britallover.

This profile was received through the Submit Your Story page.

The post Britney Brown: first-time author hopes to inspire others appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“We had three senior dogs, and we lost all of them because they were just at that age. One of them, Pablo, was a medical response dog. I trained him because I have two brain aneurysms. I was having neurological events where I would lose vision and drop to the floor, have no balance, just projectile vomiting until my electrolytes would be depleted. So the last event was real serious. I fell at Lee College, and Pablo went through the whole building to find the one person who could help me. I ended up going to the ER. While the ambulance was coming, and they kept trying to talk to me on the phone and keep me alert, Pablo kept pulling at my hair if I wasn’t responsive. He knew it was a grave situation.

“I haven’t had problems in years. But I knew how useful a medical response dog could be, especially with David dealing with Parkinson’s. His gait is so deteriorated and falls are such an issue. We got Percy about six months ago. Within a week, we could tell that he had the temperament and the intelligence to be a medical response dog. He knows that David is frail, and he is constantly checking in. Where is he? Is he upright? He notices that David’s going to fall before David falls. So we immediately started training him. The goal is for him to pass the public access test. So not only can he help us at home, but also when we’re out and about. I’ve been training him with a lot of help from the regional trainer for PetSmart. I’m building on everything that she teaches me.

“I have a master of fine arts in creative writing, so I’m working on my own narrative about this whole thing. I think it’s very ironic that we’ve been training a dog to protect us in public when we’ve not been able to be in public because of the coronavirus pandemic. But he’s the one who gives us hope that we’re going to get out of here. We keep training every day with that goal in mind. And it’s funny. We always sing with our son, Alex, ‘Who Let the Dogs Out.’ And now we joke that we’re waiting for the World Health Organization — the WHO — to let us out.”

— Kathleen Sydnor (with David Whitcomb and Percy)

Kathleen and David are retired. She was an English and humanities instructor at Lee College for 25 years, and continues part-time teaching Humanities on the Go, a program she developed. He practiced law 25 years for the Department of the Treasury (Internal Revenue Service) and Department of Justice.

Related:

• Good days, bad days with Parkinson’s

• Seeing world through autistic son’s eyes

The post Medical response dog watching for falls appeared first on The Baytown Project.

Overwhelmed by the daily COVID-19 updates, the stresses of four adults living together in a pandemic, and five pets beneath our feet, I am doing a lot of self-therapy with ink, specifically poetry. Poetry is my journal, my written reflections of riding an emotional roller coaster when yesterday feels more like hope than tomorrow.

Pandemic – Suspended

Across the street life moves
in the same strange distance
January didn’t demand.

Suspended, life on pause, I can’t
imagine tomorrow’s landscape
while spending all my courage on today.

Current events and history converge
on my doorstep, one too fluid to reach answers,
the other grumbling, “You never learn.”

Social distance, ironic unity of a world
using separation to fight an enemy
whose weapons are invisible.

— Susie Clevenger

Susie is an author and poet. See more of her work at susieclevenger.com.

The post Poetry reflects emotional roller coaster ride appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“I love animals. If I see a lost dog or cat on the side of the road, I’m like, ‘Oh, you poor thing. I can’t keep you, but I’ll shelter you for a couple days until I find you a home.’ I guess I’m just that type of person.

“That’s probably why I wrote this poem a long time ago called ‘Lost at Night.’ I had forgotten all about it. But when I was moving, I stumbled upon my poem book and rediscovered it. It was about a dog lost at night who can’t find his way home.

“I think I’ve always been a writer. But I’ve just recently decided to actually do something about it. I’m trying to get my words out there. So I thought, why not extend this poem into a children’s book. The lost dog meets another dog, and together they meet a cat. Then they all meet a duck. And later on, they meet two bluejays. They’re all lost at night, and home is nowhere in sight. Throughout their journey, they become friends. Then they finally meet a woman, and she takes all of them in. It’s kind of a sad story, but it has a happy ending.

“As a rescuer myself, I think the story carries a message about having a heart for lost animals. They all deserve a chance to have a home with someone who will love them and take care of them.”

— Maureen St. louis Nelson

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• She’s surrounded by a family of caregivers

• ‘Meals on Wheels’ met caregiver challenge

The post Poem about lost pets becomes children’s book appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“Everyone in my immediate family, except for me and one of my older brothers, is in health care. My mother has been a nurse for the elderly for 50-plus years. My two older sisters are nurses. I have a niece who just graduated from Prairie View A&M with a bachelor’s degree in nursing. My sister-in-law is a nurse. And I have a brother in health care on the business side. So I’m surrounded by people who have a passion for taking care of others.

“My mom is 70 years old, and she’s still at it. She’s a live-in nurse right now, Monday through Friday, for an 85-year-old diabetic who has Alzheimer’s. I asked her why she does it. She said it’s mainly for two reasons. One, her birthday is 9-11. Because of the 911 emergency thing, she feels that she was born to do something in the medical field. Two, she just loves people. She loves taking care of people when they can’t help themselves. She has always felt like this is her calling and her blessing to others, and she is an amazing person to do it.

“In my younger days, I didn’t quite acknowledge all she was doing as a single parent. Now that I’m a mother of two, I realize what a commitment that was to not only take care of us, but to also take care of so many others as a nurse.

“My mom never complains. If she has an issue, you would never have a clue. When she is with her patients, it’s all about them. It’s all about what they need and how she can help them. She’s just a big inspiration to me.”

— Maureen St. louis Nelson

Maureen’s mother and her husband, who was a caregiver for his grandparents, inspired her to write a book. It will highlight stories of people in the health care profession and others who are caregivers. If you are in one of those roles and would like to share your experiences for the book, email Maureen at bluemsnelson@gmail.com.

Related:

• ‘Meals on Wheels’ met caregiver challenge

• Poem about lost pet becomes children’s book

The post She’s surrounded by a family of caregivers appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“It began in college. I had a class called Sex and Gender in Latin America. It was talking about the machismo culture and what women in those countries are going through, not really being protected or having a voice for themselves. I remember reading these books and sitting in class discussions, and I was like, it sounds a lot like the environment in the military.

“A lot of people don’t realize what motherhood in the military is like. We don’t catch a break. When we go to work and we come back, we’re still working at home. We don’t have anybody to pick up the slack. There are a lot of amazing military wives, and I give them kudos. They help get their husbands through that time. But we, on the other hand, are mother and soldier.

“One of my battle buddies went to Afghanistan and almost had her children taken away from her for abandonment because she went to war. So what you’re saying is that a man can go fight for his country and leave his children with his wife. But when it’s the mother … It’s like, where’s the respect and the voice for that person? 

“It’s also no secret that there’s a lot of sexual trauma and domestic abuse going on in the military. There is some progress being made. They’re taking measures to try to alleviate it. But it’s still happening way too often.

“I’ve been collecting stories from women soldiers who have been brave enough to share what they’ve been through. My goal is to put them together in a book to provide a better understanding of what’s really going on, and to offer some insight and empathy for women in the military.

“We’re not just dealing with the effects of war. We also have a fight within the fight. We want to trust the men to our left and right. But they’re hurting us, too. I’m not saying that everybody does this. But there’s still an epidemic. It’s just this sad thing.” 

— Erica Salazar

Erica served as an intelligence analyst in the Army. She was deployed twice to Afghanistan, once as a soldier and later as a civilian contractor.

Related:

• Mom rebuilding relationships after military career

• ‘Honestly, I feel like nothing can break me’

The post A voice for women who endure abuse in the military appeared first on The Baytown Project.