The craving want stop.. no matter how hard I try.. it’s a constant begging from my body to make the pain go away.. what do I say no you can’t have it, not today.. when the pain is so bad that it wakes me up.. craving something to make it go away..
When will the craving stop.. when will I be whole again.. I don’t know all I know is for now the craving is killing me..
The Original Me Ann
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I have been thinking early this morning.. trying to cope with this year as it is quickly coming to a close..
As I look back.. I first want to say that God always knows who is best for us.. who we need in our lives.. but most of all God is not gonna go against His word to make you happy.. your happiness must line up with God word if you are a Believer..
Now it may sound like I’m about to contradict myself.. but this part is not out of just my spirit but my flesh to..
I look at how you left me broken.. and how I blame you for my brokenness.. but I had to except the fact I that I had been broken long before you came into my life.. I just allowed you to kick the pieces around, to scatter them and mix them up..
But I had to realize that broken people attract broken people.. at the time you might not see it because of the state of brokenness you’re in.. but have you ever seen a confident person full of live wanting to get involved with someone broken.. what I’m saying confident people surround themselves with confident people.. we have all heard the saying “No one wants to be around a Dibbie Downer”.. so we attract what we put out..
So moving on I allowed myself to be a victim of my depression and physical pain.. I didn’t become a Survivor.. instead I lay there ready to die, wanting to die.. to be at peace, to be at rest with my grandma.. yes I wanted to die.. or so I thought until I began to realize God has me here for purpose.. to help others just like me.. yes I will always have depression and probably chronic pain too.. but I don’t have to live in it alone.. remember I said God lives in our brokenness.. so I’m never alone and neither are you..
Now speaking to him who thought he left me a victim.. at this moment I HATE YOU.. You validated me away that has left me with doubt and shame.. a feeling of more weakness but it took this to open my eyes up .. and make me finial say enough is enough.. but before that you left me with my heart in pieces.. you made me doubt everything about me.. and then you left me.. but instead of seeing your leaving as a blessing.. I cried and pleaded with you to come back..
But today I look and I laugh at you.. you left me for her.. someone who never wanted you.. so I rejoice in my flesh at that.. you sitting drinking and crying like the bitch you wanted me to be for someone who used you like you used me.. crying for her to come and be with you.. you allow yourself the man, to be treated like a bitch.. not by one but two women.. yes I rejoice in the fact that both make a fool of you.. yes at this very moment I HATE YOU.. and I finally see that you are hurting worse than you hurt me.. and yes I’m smiling today as I write my freedom from you.. because see you got exactly what you deserve and more.. because you didn’t get the one you broke my heart for .. and you can’t have the one you truly love either..
Yes, the day will come I will write again to him.. a letter to say I forgive me.. for allowing him to use me.. but today at this moment I HATE HIM..
original me..
Picture ~black art
Giving a gift at birth only to have it stolen from me.. never given the chance to say who would be my first.. never even the chance to save my being for marriage.. it was stolen from me.. like a thief in the night .. you came and took what was not yours to take.. I slept in my bed like most little girls do .. with my dolly beside my hand .. only to have it replaced by something I never knew about.. it felt so nasty and didn’t know what to do.. I thought how could this be happening because I call you daddy too.. you told me not to tell anybody our little secret.. and as I lay there crying you said next time.. want hurt so bad.. as you close the door you say remember.. Our little Secret..
For every little boy and girl.. who has had their being stolen from them.. who never got a chance to choose their first.. it is my prayer that God will bring healing to you..
Original me..
I think I have been validated in the worse possible way a woman can be.. I think I was raped.. but if I know him and I have a on going relationship with him .. is it rape sista..
I told him NO.. I told him to STOP.. I told him just let me go home.. and yet he forced his self on me.. calling me names, saying I could leave and not letting me.. and starting it all over again.. humiliating me and making me feel less than a woman.. he said I was his Bitch.. and for the first time I fear that I would truly be taken from my children, for my grandchildren.. He made me say that I was his Bitch.. do you know how humiliating that is for a woman, Sista..
But how is rape .. when I was there of my own free will.. even when it was over I did not leave.. I was told we was having good sex and I started crying.. but how is that when I said NO.. when I begged him to please stop.. why didn’t I leave.. why didn’t I call for help..
Sista, I don’t know what to think anymore.. this is all I can write for now.. my mind is a lost right now..
picture-black art
Original me
The United States this place I call home.. The land of the free and the home of the brave.. I was taught about a history.. I was not apart of.. I never knew where I came from.. all I heard was how the white Man discovered this.. and done such great things.. It would be years later that I would discover that the land of the free was built on the back of my ancestors.. I would learn that it was not discovered by Christopher Columbus but yet taken by him from the Indians..
The land of the free and the home of the brave.. was never meant for me to sang.. because I was never meant to be free.. I was meant to be a slave.. to work your fields.. stand on the auction block.. shown off like cattle with my private parts for the world to see.. my name was stolen and so was my body .. they even took my language and I was given a new one..
I was forbidden to love .. and truly be as man and wife.. because anytime Master desired me, my wife or child I could do nothing.. can you imagine me when the Master began to look upon my child with lustful eyes and there was no place for them to hide.. can you imagine my cry as I heard my scream for help.. and in agony I could do nothing but watch.. I had to surrender as a animals to Him.. we were not considered as humans with feelings like the white man.. we were consider less than..
We were not allowed to read and write because with knowledge came power.. and with power came fear of the slave.. of the black man.. with knowledge they could no longer us separated from each other.. we would become one in voice and strength..
So no this will never be the land of the free and the home of the brave.. it will always be a land built on the back of my ancestors .. and taken away from the brave..
original me
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Child labor in the mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo
Posted on April 6, 2016
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The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) contains vast and significant mining resources including more than 1100 minerals and precious metals. With such riches, the DRC has the potential to become one of the richest countries in Africa and to guarantee the well-being of its population—including its children. However, despite the availability of these mineral resources, the country is experiencing endemic poverty. Its people live with highly unstable conditions, and children are forced to work in mines, exposed to all sorts of diseases and the possibility of accidental death, while the government and the mining companies that employ them look on in silence.
Working conditions for children in the mines of the DRC
Various mining sites, located principally in the Eastern regions of the DRC (North Kivu and Katanga), employ a significant number of child workers. In fact, the data on Katanga and Copperbelt generally estimate the number of children (under 18 years) at 40% of all workers in the region’s mines.

According to a UNICEF estimate from 2014, roughly 40,000 young boys and girls are used for dangerous mining activities in southern DRC, primarily extracting cobalt.
The working conditions for children at these mining sites is atrocious. Given the same status as adults, they work without breaks and without any basic measures for protection or security. In unbearable heat, with clouds of red dust and weak light, these children dig at depths of 200 to 300 meters and are at constant risk of asphyxiation, rockslides, or other accidental deaths, for a remuneration of 1 to 2 dollars per day.
Mining and communications companies care little about working conditions: cobalt mines case
The world market for cobalt is growing rapidly, and the DRC produces more than half of the world supply on its own. Numerous cobalt extraction companies in the DRC employ children as young as 7 years old to extract this mineral by hand or with rudimentary tools and no protective measures. Although the UN has established trade guidelines which emphasize the primary need for companies to respect internationally recognized human rights while conducting their business activities, these companies care little, if even at all, about the conditions under which the cobalt they use is extracted.
An Amnesty International report revealed that, after contacting several companies that supply this mineral, not a single one maintained the minimum requirements for supplying cobalt. In other words, they did not have any strict policy of transparency with respect to the manner by which the cobalt is extracted, by whom, or the manner in which it is transported to them.
Knowing that this country produces more than half of the world’s cobalt, it is a shame that these companies do not care about the thousands of children who die in the rubble of these mining sites…
Mining is one of the worst forms of child labor and prohibited by international law
Mining labor is harmful for children and certainly constitutes one of the worst forms of child labor. Article 32 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child is

clear on this matter: “States Parties recognize the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.”
Child labor in mines is carried out under dangerous and unsanitary conditions, exposing them to fatal injuries and diseases. Article 3 of ILO Convention 182 also makes reference to work done by these children in mines, characterizing it as “work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children.”
Stop child labor in the mines of the DRC
Hundreds of children die working in the mines or from pulmonary issues or other diseases caused by their work. A UN study conducted in the DRC showed that between September 2014 and December 2015, more than 80 child laborers met an accidental death in the mines of the old province of Katanga. This number barely touches the reality, since many accidental deaths go unregistered—and not to forget the hundreds of children whose bodies are buried in the rubble.
Child labor in the mines of the DRC is a terrible reality that must be exposed. In spite of various regulations governing mining as announced by the Congolese government and the 2009 law on child protections prohibiting the economic exploitation of children, no concrete or effective measures or policies have been made by the State to eradicate this problem.
Consequently, it is time for the Congolese government and specific mining companies to really look at the issue of child labor in the mines seriously and to establish mechanisms for surveillance and review by inspectors of the mining sites to take bold action to combat this problem, a cancer within the DRC.
Written by : Diane BE
Translated by: Carolyn YOHN
Proofread by: Denis Gingras
Picture from google..
Original me
Here are ten things that you probably don’t know about this crisis because the media, having come to the story so late, can only process so much. But if you live in Flint or the State of Michigan as I do, you know all to well that what the greater public has been told only scratches the surface.
• While the Children in Flint Were Given Poisoned Water to Drink, General Motors Was Given a Special Hookup to the Clean Water. A few months after Governor Snyder removed Flint from the clean fresh water we had been drinking for decades, the brass from General Motors went to him and complained that the Flint River water was causing their car parts to corrode when being washed on the assembly line. The Governor was appalled to hear that GM property was being damaged, so he jumped through a number of hoops and quietly spent $440,000 to hook GM back up to the Lake Huron water, while keeping the rest of Flint on the Flint River water. Which means that while the children in Flint were drinking lead-filled water, there was one — and only one — address in Flint that got clean water: the GM factory.
• For Just $100 a Day, This Crisis Could’ve Been Prevented. Federal law requires that water systems which are sent through lead pipes must contain an additive that seals the lead into the pipe and prevents it from leaching into the water. Someone at the beginning suggested to the Governor that they add this anti-corrosive element to the water coming out of the Flint River. “How much would that cost?” came the question. “$100 a day for three months,” was the answer. I guess that was too much, so, in order to save $9,000, the state government said f*** it — and as a result the State may now end up having to pay upwards of $1.5 billion to fix the mess.
• There’s More Than the Lead in Flint’s Water. In addition to exposing every child in the city of Flint to lead poisoning on a daily basis, there appears to be a number of other diseases we may be hearing about in the months ahead. The number of cases in Flint of Legionnaires Disease has increased tenfoldsince the switch to the river water. Eighty-seven people have come down with it, and at least ten have died. In the five years before the river water, not a single person in Flint had died of Legionnaires Disease. Doctors are now discovering that another half-dozen toxins are being found in the blood of Flint’s citizens, causing concern that there are other health catastrophes which may soon come to light.
• People’s Homes in Flint Are Now Worth Nothing Because They Cant Be Sold. Would you buy a house in Flint right now? Who would? So every homeowner in Flint is stuck with a house that’s now worth nothing. That’s a total home value of $2.4 billion down the economic drain. People in Flint, one of the poorest cities in the U.S., don’t have much to their name, and for many their only asset is their home. So, in addition to being poisoned, they have now a net worth of zero. (And as for employment, who is going to move jobs or start a company in Flint under these conditions? No one.) Has Flint’s future just been flushed down that river?
• While They Were Being Poisoned, They Were Also Being Bombed. Here’s a story which has received little or no coverage outside of Flint. During these two years of water contamination, residents in Flint have had to contend with a decision made by the Pentagon to use Flint for target practice. Literally. Actual unannounced military exercises – complete with live ammo and explosives – were conducted last year inside the city of Flint. The army decided to practice urban warfare on Flint, making use of the thousands of abandoned homes which they could drop bombs on. Streets with dilapidated homes had rocket-propelled grenades fired upon them. For weeks, an undisclosed number of army troops pretended Flint was Baghdad or Damascus and basically had at it. It sounded as if the city was under attack from an invading army or from terrorists. People were shocked this could be going on in their neighborhoods. Wait – did I say “people?” I meant, Flint people.As with the Governor, it was OK to abuse a community that held no political power or money to fight back. BOOM!
• The Wife of the Governor’s Chief of Staff Is a Spokeswoman for Nestle, Michigan’s Largest Owner of Private Water Reserves. As Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein: “Follow the money.” Snyder’s chief of staff throughout the two years of Flint’s poisoning, Dennis Muchmore, was intimately involved in all the decisions regarding Flint. His wife is Deb Muchmore, who just happens to be the spokesperson in Michigan for the Nestle Company – the largest owner of private water sources in the State of Michigan. Nestle has been repeatedly sued in northern Michigan for the 200 gallons of fresh water per minute it sucks from out of the ground and bottles for sale as their Ice Mountain brand of bottled spring water. The Muchmores have a personal interest in seeing to it that Nestles grabs as much of Michigan’s clean water was possible – especially when cities like Flint in the future are going to need that Ice Mountain.
• In Michigan, from Flint water, to Crime and Murder, to GM Ignition Switches, It’s a Culture of Death. It’s not just the water that was recklessly used to put people’s lives in jeopardy. There are many things that happen in Flint that would give one the impression that there is a low value placed on human life. Flint has one of the worst murder and crime rates in the country. Just for context, if New York City had the same murder rate as Flint, Michigan, the number of people murdered last year in New York would have been almost 4,000 people – instead of the actual 340 who were killed in NYC in 2015. But it’s not just street crime that makes one wonder about what is going on in Michigan. Last year, it was revealed that, once again, one of Detroit’s automakers had put profit ahead of people’s lives. General Motors learned that it had installed faulty ignition switches in many of its cars. Instead of simply fixing the problem, mid-management staff covered it up from the public. The auto industry has a history of weighing the costs of whether it’s cheaper to spend the money to fix the defect in millions of cars or to simply pay off a bunch of lawsuits filed by the victims surviving family members. Does a cynical, arrogant culture like this make it easy for a former corporate CEO, now Governor, turn a blind eye to the lead that is discovered in a municipality’s drinking water?
• Don’t Call It “Detroit Water” — It’s the Largest Source of Fresh Drinking Water in the World. The media keeps saying Flint was using “Detroit’s water.” It is only filtered and treated at the Detroit Water Plant. The water itself comes from Lake Huron, the third largest body of fresh water in the world. It is a glacial lake formed over 10,000 years ago during the last Ice Age and it is still fed by pure underground springs. Flint is geographically the last place on Earth where one should be drinking poisoned water.
• ALL the Children Have Been Exposed, As Have All the Adults, Including Me. That’s just a fact. If you have been in Flint anytime from April 2014 to today, and you’ve drank the water, eaten food cooked with it, washed your clothes in it, taken a shower, brushed your teeth or eaten vegetables from someone’s garden, you’ve been exposed to and ingested its toxins. When the media says “9,000 children under 6 have been exposed,” that means ALL the children have been exposed because the total number of people under the age of 6 in Flint is… 9,000! The media should just say, “all.” When they say “47 children have tested positive”, that’s just those who’ve drank the water in the last week or so. Lead enters the body and does it’s damage to the brain immediately. It doesn’t stay in the blood stream for longer than a few days and you can’t detect it after a month. So when you hear “47 children”, that’s just those with an exposure in the last 48 hours. It’s really everyone.
• This Was Done, Like So Many Things These Days, So the Rich Could Get a Big Tax Break. When Governor Snyder took office in 2011, one of the first things he did was to get a multi-billion dollar tax break passed by the Republican legislature for the wealthy and for corporations. But with less tax revenues, that meant he had to start cutting costs. So, many things – schools, pensions, welfare, safe drinking water – were slashed. Then he invoked an executive privilege to take over cities (all of them majority black) by firing the mayors and city councils whom the local people had elected, and installing his cronies to act as “dictators” over these cities. Their mission? Cut services to save money so he could give the rich even more breaks. That’s where the idea of switching Flint to river water came from. To save $15 million! It was easy. Suspend democracy. Cut taxes for the rich. Make the poor drink toxic river water. And everybody’s happy.
Except those who were poisoned in the process. All 102,000 of them. In the richest country in the world.
michaelmoore.com>10factsonflint
original me
Emotional abuse is an uncomfortable reality, a social taboo. As such, it is the least talked about yet most common form of abuse. It is insidious and subjective in nature. Due to language and cultural differences — depending on the individuals, the setting and the culture — some abuses […]
via Emotional Abuse — The Journey is YOU……….and you are UNIQUE.
I know I can’t kill him but there is apart of me that wants too.. apart of me that hates him as much as I love him.. apart that hates most of all what I have become.. he has started jerking my hair and grabbing my arms.. he pulled my hair so hard my my neck and the back of my head still hurts.. Sista gurl what am I to do is this the beginning of physical abuse.. I saw my momma go through a lot but one thing I never saw was a man put his hands on her.. and get away with it.. I remember when we were young and my step daddy would get drunk.. and the fighting would start.. until one day enough was enough and she put him out.. divorce him and raised her five kids on her own.. and I am my mothers daughter but damn what has happened to me..
Sista gurl, I hate him yet I can’t let go.. what the freak is wrong with me.. I know this not my life not the life I plan.. by my fifty birthday I was supposed to retire early with my husband.. and walk around the house naked.. until we had company.. but now Sista look at my life.. a husband who I left because I thought I missed out on my youth and I did.. but I learned the hard way you can never go back.. I should still be able to enjoy life but if it’s not physical pain, then it’s mental.. even on days that start out good like today.. always end up being just another bad dream.. I long to wake up from this nightmare.. I call my life..
I looked him dead in his face and said we are DONE.. he started to talk but I stopped him by saying there is nothing left to discuss.. because I knew if I let him talk.. the next time he would not just pull my hair are grab my arm while I’m driving.. but it would be not only my mom and step dad but me and my husband.. see I’m a custom to the fighting , abuse and everything that comes with it..
All I can do is pray for every batter woman and man out there.. and remember to take it one second at a time..
original me
Out crawls Ann.. 