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That Ginger, Anna

That Ginger, Anna

Tag Archives: catholicism

60 Years and 1,738 centiMorgans: How I Found My Father’s Biological Siblings

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Posted by That Ginger, Anna in Personal and Fun

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adoption, adotive, ancestry, ancestry.com, biological, catholic church, catholicism, DNA test, family, geneaology, georgia, north carolina, nuns, research, savannah, south carolina

This weekend my mother, father, and I traveled to Asheville, North Carolina for a once-in-a-lifetime event: we are meeting two of my father’s biological siblings.

My father is 59 years old and will be meeting members of his biological family for the first time thanks to something many of you may have tried: a commercial DNA test—an Ancestry.com DNA test to be exact.

I found out my dad was adopted at a young age—I don’t remember just how young but certainly before 2nd grade. Beginning in earnest around 5th grade, I attempted to find his biological family—this mostly consisted of combing through digital copies of newspapers or making posts on discussion boards.

I’m a naturally curious person and have always loved to do research but I can’t really tell you why I wanted to find his biological family. I know a big reason was my desperation to have a culture. Growing up in Hawai’i I always felt so, so left out and lesser than for not having a culture, language, or group to belong to—I thought if I could find my dad’s family that would be the key to unlocking my culture and all the amazing things that come along with having one. I was in 5th grade and obviously didn’t understand the larger implications of this but none the less it motivated me back then.

I was extremely close to his adoptive parents, even closer than I was to my own maternal, biological grandparents. They liked movies and music and were well educated. I was able to go to their house and listen to cool records, read interesting books, watch films, and hear all about politics and history.  My father’s adoptive father died when I was in 5th grade and his adoptive mother came to live with us shortly thereafter. She was dying of brain cancer at the time and was also suffering from several chemical dependencies. During her time living with us and during end-of-life care she told my mother and father details about his biological family that no one had known. She told us his biological family was from South Carolina, that his mom’s husband was a Postman who had been killed in an accident, and that she had several other small children to care for alone.

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My father was born at Saint Joseph’s hospital in Savannah, Georgia on December 28, 1959. His adoptive mother was a nurse at the hospital and after struggling with infertility she and her husband began the adoption process through the Catholic Church. The hospital contacted them immediately when my father was born and they were connected with a social worker who relayed details about his biological family and finalized the adoption. During that time, the State of Georgia “blacked out” all birth certificates of adoptees so there was no way for anyone to gain any information about my father’s biological family.

After adopting my father, his parents relocated to Athens, Georgia, finally settling in Carrollton, Georgia in the early 1960s.

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Throughout my life, I begged my father to find his biological family but he was never interested in doing so. He never presented any objections beyond saying he felt he had a good childhood and didn’t need a new family.

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When he became a grandfather in 2009 I asked again and he relented. After a couple of years of back and forth, he agreed to hire an agency to find his family. The agency successfully found his 80+-year-old mother. He was permitted to write her a letter and he did so but her response wasn’t what he had hoped. She responded to his letter and while the agency would not pass the letter on they agreed to read the letter to my father: his biological mother was not interested in establishing a relationship with him. They relayed a few other details over the phone but since my father didn’t have a way to record, reread, or take down the details, that was the end of the line.

I had been pushing him to follow through with this process for 20 years and when he finally agreed he was met with further rejection from someone he’d never met. The one friend I confided in said I should have just left things alone and that things happened the way they were supposed to in the past so I shouldn’t have pushed to change them now…I felt extremely guilty.

A year or two afterward, I asked my mother to buy DNA tests in a last-ditch effort to find some additional information. My mother and I ordered Ancestry.com DNA tests. My father lives and works overseas so we planned to get him one at a later date. We spit into the tubes and mailed them off.

My test came back and noted that the migration pattern for my ancestors ended in South Carolina. My first connection was a cousin who contacted me and said that we were descendants of the Lumbee Tribe and that we had family who had migrated from Robeson, North Carolina to South Carolina. I gave the few details I had about my dad’s biological family but it was another dead end. This cousin put me on to GEDMatch.com and gave me some additional information about the migration to South Carolina which was very helpful.

When my father was able to complete his test some months later, I loaded all of our results on to GEDMatch and let it be.

I had one promising lead a few months afterward when I sent out messages to all of my first and second cousins on Ancestry.com containing a few details about my dad’s biological family: did they know anyone living in South Carolina in 1959? Did they have a relative in their 80s living in South Carolina? Did they know a woman widowed in South Carolina in the late 1950s? I received one response from someone who said they had relatives from New York who moved to South Carolina and on to Florida during this period. We exchanged a few details but they didn’t know anything about an adoption and I hit another dead end.

Finally, in the early spring of 2019, a new match showed up on my father’s DNA matches (I manage my parents’ tests so I can always see/correspond with my father’s matches while he is overseas). We both had a new first-second cousin match. To this point, my father had only matched with second-third cousins and more distant relatives. I reached out to the new match via my account and immediately relayed a few selective details about my father’s connection to South Carolina and relayed my excitement about the fact that my dad finally had a more closely related match than ever before.

To my pleasant surprise, the match responded immediately. Since Ancestry.com said we were first cousins I didn’t pay attention beyond that fact and we began exchanging information. A few days went by and after looking at my father’s other matches I realized this match had thousands of more telomeres in common than any of my other first cousins so I messaged the match and said I thought we might be more closely related. They immediately wrote back and said we needed to talk on the phone—I was speaking with my half-uncle.

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On April 23rd, around 11:30 AM I went into an empty office at work and took a call from my recent Ancestry.com first-cousin match. The following story was relayed to me: my biological grandmother was born and raised on Staten Island to an Irish father and Slovakian mother (my fifth-grade self was quite happy about this!). My great grandfather lost everything on Wall Street during the Depression and my grandmother went to work at a phone company in Manhattan at the age of 14. She met my grandfather in New York City while he was serving in the Army and when his service ended they relocated to South Carolina where they had 4 children. He was a rural mail carrier and was killed in an automobile crash in 1959. A few months later, my grandmother became pregnant. Her other children attended the local Catholic school and she contacted the Church for help. Having told her 4 children they were running away from bill collectors, the Church relocated the family to an apartment in Savannah, Georgia where a social worker (we suspect it was the same one who met with my adoptive grandmother and saw the adoption through) regularly visited.

After his birth, the children and my biological grandmother returned to South Carolina. The nuns teaching at the children’s school told the oldest sibling they had a little brother but that was the only mention of the situation that ever gave any indication to anyone that my father existed at all.

My father’s half brother was eager to establish a relationship and after asking my father for permission I put them into contact with one another. They corresponded at length and we exchanged pictures that left no doubt about the DNA connection.

Earlier in the year, we were invited to my dad’s adoptive family’s annual reunion—which happens to take place in North Carolina. Since we were already planning to visit the area, my father, his half brother, and one of his half-sisters agreed to meet while we are here. This is my first time coming to the reunion, meeting any of my extended family on my dad’s side, and my first time meeting my dad’s biological family. Within a few days, I went from being an only child with one surviving grandmother to getting to know two completely new family groups from North and South Carolina. It’s pretty wild.

So, as you are reading this, after 59 years and 7 months, my father, mother, and I will be meeting members of his biological family for the first time. There are still mysteries to be solved and research to be done as we have not determined the identity of my father’s biological father but none of this would have been possible without the commercialization and popularization of commercial DNA testing.

I am very thankful that I have been able to meet and establish relationships with my father’s adoptive family for the first time and I am thankful I was able to help him find part of his biological family as well.

I have only spoken about all of this with three close friends and I am extremely thankful for each of their support–they listened, shared their own stories, and were each so kind. It was an emotional experience for me because I pride myself on being a lone wolf of sorts. Navigating the hurdles, fears, and emotions related to my own relationship to my father, his relationship to his adoptive family, and worrying about hurting people, was very challenging (and of course, it coincided with a few other life events which compounded the complications that emerged).

All this is to say, if you are looking for your biological family or perhaps, like me, you think you don’t have a real in-group, don’t give up. It may take 30 years or it may take 60 and of course, things are often out of our control but know that a completely new set of circumstances can arise at any time no matter how long it takes. Biological or adoptive, chosen or born-to, it’s up to each of us to establish the connections and relationships we want to have in this life.

**I will edit/expand upon this blog later this evening when I return from the meeting and have further details.

 

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OSCARS+Lent

04 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by That Ginger, Anna in Media, Personal and Fun

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catholicism, lent, lenten fast, manhattan, New York City, NYC, off the grid, oscars, twentysomething

So, I gave up social media and texting (my phone in general except for emails, video+audio, finance stuff, and calls) for Lent.

So far I’ve messed up on the texting thing once when I had to respond to my brother about something, but except for that I have been good. Only about 27 days to go!

I’ve looked at WhatsApp and my texts to make sure anyone who didn’t know hadn’t messaged me…but alas, of course, they hadn’t, HAHA!

I was using my phone as a security blanket at times when I should have just been facing the uncomfortable situations around me and it got to be too much. I was checking my phone constantly and using it for everythinggg.

I chose to give this up a week or so before Lent but I went to my favorite bar on Mardi Gras and some grumpy, drunk old man was loudly making fun of me and this middle-aged lady sitting next to me about being on our phones…she told him off but I just sat there wondering why people have to be assholes–and bathing in the irony of the fact that I was set to give up my phone in a few hours and he had no idea. *I still think people are assholes…

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I’m legit dying tho. It’s super isolating and lonely not being able to reach out to people. I miss Instagram the most, by FAR! I find myself wanting to send people memes so bad 😛 I don’t miss Facebook at all, oddly, although I did realize all of my news was coming from there. Not like, I was reading news from people’s likes or my timeline, but I follow all of my favorite news outlets on there so without that platform I’m not reading any news. I have since fixed that by shifting completely to BBC and radio news shows/podcasts. Also, watching TV without Twitter/IMDb is certainly overrated, tbh…

That said, I have been sleeping better (it’s definitely affected my dreams!) and have been more productive at work. I have been better about getting exercise and grooming too. Not that I wasn’t doing that stuff before but I am more focused and have more energy to dedicate to those things now. I’ve also taught myself some new skills in my free time too: logo making on Adobe Illustrator as well as creating and enabling “canned messages” and filters in Gmail. Worked on more Adobe stuff too. I’ve been reading more as well. I definitely hope to keep my phone usage to a minimum after all this.

I keep forgetting and eating meat on Fridays so I guess it’s all kind of pointless anyway, haha >_<

I’m going to a concert on Friday and that’s probably going to be the most challenging. I will take some pictures to share on IG at Easter.

Capture

As is tradition, here are my picks (first and second) for all of the categories in tonights OSCARS! What are your picks?

BEST PICTURE

  • Call Me by Your Name
  • Darkest Hour
  • Dunkirk
  • Get Out
  • Lady Bird (1)
  • Phantom Thread
  • The Post
  • Shape of Water (2)
  • Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

  • Timothee Chalamet (2)
  • Daniel Day-Lewis (1)
  • Daniel Kaluuya
  • Gary Oldman
  • Denzel Washington

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

  • Sally Hawkins
  • Frances McDormand
  • Margot Robbie (1)
  • Saorise Ronan (2)
  • Meryl Streep

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

  • Willem Dafoe (1)
  • Woody Harrelson
  • Richard Jenkins
  • Christoper Plummer
  • Sam Rockwell (2)

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

  • Mary J. Blige (1)
  • Allison Janney (2)
  • Lesley Manville
  • Laurie Metcalf
  • Octavia Spencer

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

  • The Boss Baby
  • The Breadwinner
  • Coco (1)
  • Ferdinand (2)
  • Loving Vincent

CINEMATOGRAPHY

  • Blade Runner 2049 (2)
  • Darkest Hour
  • Dunkirk
  • Mudbound
  • The Shape of Water (1)

COSTUME DESIGN

  • Beauty and the Beast
  • Darkest Hour
  • Phantom Thread (1)
  • The Shape of Water
  • Victoria & Abdul (2)

DIRECTING

  • Dunkirk
  • Get Out
  • Lady Bird (1)
  • Phantom Thread
  • The Shape of Water (2)

DOCUMENTARY (FEATURE)

  • Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
  • Faces Places (2)
  • Icarus (1)
  • Lost Men in Aleppo
  • Strong Island

DOCUMENTARY (SHORT SUBJECT)

  • Edith+Eddie
  • Heaven Is a Traffic Jame on the 405
  • Heroin(e) (1)
  • Knife Skills
  • Traffic Stop (2)

FILM EDITING

  • Baby Driver (1)
  • Dunkirk
  • I, Tonya
  • The Shape of Water (2)
  • Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

  • A Fantastic Woman (1)
  • The Insult
  • Loveless
  • On Body and Soul (2)
  • The Square

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

  • Darkest Hour (2)
  • Victoria & Abdul (1)
  • Wonder

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)

  • Dunkirk
  • Phantom Thread (2)
  • The Shape of Water (1)
  • Star Wars: The Last Jedi
  • Three Billboards outside Ebbing Missouri

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)

  • Mighty River
  • Mystery of Love
  • Remember Me (2)
  • Stand Up For Something
  • This is Me (1)

PRODUCTION DESIGN

  • Beauty and the Beast
  • Blade Runner 2049
  • Darkest Hour (2)
  • Dunkirk
  • The Shape of Water (1)

SHORT FILM (ANIMATED)

  • Dear Basketball
  • Garden Party (1)
  • Lou
  • Negative Space (2)
  • Revolting Rhymes

SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION)

  • DeKalb Elementary (2)
  • The Eleven O’Clock
  • My Nephew Emmett (1)
  • The Silent Child
  • Watu Wote/All of Us

SOUND EDITING

  • Baby Driver (1)
  • Blade Runner 2049
  • Dunkirk (2)
  • The Shape of Water
  • Star Wars: The Last Jedi

SOUND MIXING

  • Baby Driver
  • Blade Runner 2049
  • Dunkirk (1)
  • The Shape of Water (2)
  • Star Wars: The Last Jedi

VISUAL EFFECTS

  • Blade Runner 2049 (2)
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
  • Kong: Skull Island
  • Star Wars: The Last Jedi
  • War for the Planet of the Apes (1)

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)

  • Call Me by Your Name (1)
  • The Disaster Artist
  • Logan
  • Molly’s Game
  • Mudbound (2)

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)

  • The Big Sick
  • Get Out
  • Lady Bird (1)
  • The Shape of Water (2)
  • Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

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It’s LENT

09 Tuesday Feb 2016

Posted by That Ginger, Anna in Personal and Fun

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ash wednesday, catholic, catholicism, exercise, lent, lenten, mardi gras, meditation, prayer, prohibition, sacrifice

It’s that time again, folks! LENT! I don’t have some long complicated thing to post this year, but I do have a reflection on something a friend posted on Facebook the other day. I have always thought of sacrifice as something you give up. Maybe it’s getting up early to exercise or not eating something you want or biting your tongue or giving away your money to a cause, but a friend posted last week that you can also sacrifice by adding a habit! Last year I added and stopped something at Lent, but I thought of it more as balancing out and trying to start a new habit, I didn’t realize that they were both sacrifices. So, this year I am going to add and remove some things.

I am going to add prayer/meditation and exercise.

I have seen a few 30 day exercise challenges and I am going to combine several and try to exercise at least half an hour a day. I am a little “soft” for my age and I could definitely be in better shape, so I am going to try to build some muscle and firm up.

I am also going to pray/meditate every day. I am super bad about praying regularly. It’s SO weird because I used to pray allll the time when I was young, but I really don’t anymore. I mean, I often talk to God throughout the day, but I don’t set aside time to meditate/pray without distractions. So, I’m going to do that.

As for giving up stuff, the past two years I’ve given up meat and Facebook and was successful both times.

This year I reallllly don’t know what I am going to give up. I mean, most of my bad habits have to do with not doing stuff (not going to bed early, not waking up early, not being sociable, etc.) so that’s why I’m adding two things. But all things considered, I think I am going to attempt to give up alcohol. Honestly, I don’t think I’m going to be able to not have any alcohol for 40 days because my job is very emotionally taxing and tests my patience (if you don’t remember, I take care of a lady with Alzheimer’s everyday while her husband is at work) and I don’t really have anything else to do as a stress release. I can’t afford a gym membership and the area I live in/weather right now isn’t hospitable for going out alone to exercise after work. Hopefully the meditation/prayer will be a good tool to help with tension and anxiety. I don’t drink every day, but my plan if I end up drinking with friends or slip up on my own is to compensate by giving up internet. If I drink one day, that will mean I cannot use internet for 24 hours and vise versa. The internet and wine are my two regular pleasures, so sacrificing one of those things everyday will definitely be difficult. This also means if I drink wine the only activities I can do will be exercise/reading/writing/watching DVDs. I use my phone as a security blanket/emotion buffer EVERYDAY, so having to give up the internet (switching to airplane mode) for a day will be huge for me.

Anyway, do you plan on giving anything up/adding anything to your routine over the next 40 days?

If so, good luck and tell me in the comments below!

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It’s Been Nine Months Since My Last Confession

02 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by That Ginger, Anna in Personal and Fun

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

anna, army, blog, catholic, catholic missions, catholicism, city, cleaning, cofession, dallas, easter, guilt, lazy, lazyness, life, missions, New York City, NYC, photography, religion, san antonio, seven deadly sins, sin, sloth, texas, thatgingeranna, twenty something, vice, WODW, woman, write or die wednesday, writing

Forgive my tardiness. My mom is coming to visit for the Easter weekend and I put off all my cleaning until the last minute. I’ve been running around like a chicken with its head cut off for the last 3 hours dusting, vacuuming, Swiffering, mopping, doing dishes, bleaching,Windexing, burning candles, doing laundry, taking out garbage, and other such nonsense. 

I pride myself on keeping a clean house, but there is nothing like an impending visit from your mom to help you see all the little things that need to be done.

My mom get’s here tomorrow at 2:55, but I have to be to work at 3 so she is going to meet me at my boss’ house and hangout with me there until I get off. I only work a couple of hours tomorrow, so hopefully we will get home early, make dinner, have some wine, and watch a movie or something. Friday we are going downtown, then Saturday I am taking her to Little Italy and the New York Botanical Garden for an orchid show, all here in the Bronx! I don’t know what we are doing Sunday yet. A friend invited me to go to church with her, but I will have to see what my mom wants to do.

Anyway…this week’s Write or Die Wednesday prompt asks what your biggest vice is or which of the seven deadly sins you commit most often?

Write or Die Wednesday

This is quite fitting for Easter, haha!

There are seven deadly sins: greed, envy, lust, sloth, wrath, pride, and gluttony.

I’m Catholic and part of being Catholic is examining one’s conscience on a regular basis, before going to confession or on a regular basis to keep one’s self in check!

Despite daily efforts to avoid doing sinful stuff, I could probably list twenty ways I commit each of these sins regularly. That being said, I definitly think I commit the sin of sloth most often!

  

I LOVE to sleep and watch movies, so that often leads to avoiding my responsibilities. I obviously work and maintain good grades, so it hasn’t necessarily impacted my life negatively, but it is definitely a severely bad habit that I possess. I can use almost anything to justify not leaving the house, even if I am initially really excited about doing something. My laziness means I don’t exercise the way I should, I don’t devote enough undivided attention to completeing assignments to the best of my ability (again, while still maintaining my grades), and I definitely don’t “take life by the horns” as much as I should. I am also spiritually lazy. I am Catholic, but I always seem to come up with excuses for not going to confession or praying the Rosary. I do pay attention to my faith and use it as a tool to become a better person, but sloth has contributed to not growing my faith to its full potential. 

Netflix, sleep, foreign languages, and wine are definitely my biggest enablers. I so thoroughly enjoy each of those things that I would rather partake in them than pretty much anything. I also LOVE hiking, shopping, fishing, swimming in the ocean, and traveling, but since I am living on a budget and can’t really safely do the others alone, I stick to my ol’ sloth-making activities. 

I’m sure anxiety and self esteem contribute to my laziness, since it is so much easier to avoid fear, confrontation, and other awkwardness when you just stay home. 

Gluttony would probably be my next biggest sin. I am definitely a hedonist at heart and I have a difficult time with self-discipline when it comes to certain things (like movies, goat cheese, and wine, HAHA!).  

One of the prayers that Catholic’s say at every Mass includes the line, “I have sinned in what I have done and what I have failed to do…” I remember the first time I heard this it kind of stunned me. I still think of sin as active choices we make to do bad stuff, but I never thought about the fact that you can also commit a sin by NOT doing something too. That’s still one of the big areas I have to work on, haha!

Texas Missions 

I’d say the sins I commit least often are wrath, pride, and envy.

I obviously get mad at people and sometimes want to smack them into next week, but I am not a vengeful, plotting, back stabbing type of person. I get my feelings hurt and take things personally more often than getting angry or wanting to get back at people. I’m also not a very prideful person. More often than not I assume that I did something to cause any negative events or behaviors and will often try to remedy the situation and apologize.   I admire a LOT of people and often do feel like other people are leading really fun and carefree lives, so I do feel envy in certain senses, but never in the way that I want to take what someone else has or live their life. I am thoroughly convinced everyone has their own problems and they have developed ways to cope with them. I know if I had the chance to inhabit someone else’s life or they had the chance to inhabit mine, we would each be unequipped  to deal with each other’s hardships. 

 Texas Missions 

Whether you are religious or not, we all do/think about doing crappy things everyday. I think as long as you are consistently working to make a positive contribution to the world (not matter what it is), correct your mistakes, and try to make others’ lives a little easier, then everything will all work out in the end. With this outlook you don’t even have to believe in/worry about heaven, hell, God, the devil, or sin (if you don’t want/need to) because the focus is on the now and doing the best you can in the present moment to make your life and the lives of those around you better. It’s a pretty awesome philosophy (check out A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle if you are interested)!

 Texas Missions 

Hopefully I will post a blog on Saturday or Sunday with some pictures from Little Italy and the New York Botanical Garden. I hope everyone has a good Passover/Easter or just a great weekend in general!

Talk to you guys next time!

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Let’s Get Our Lent On!

16 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by That Ginger, Anna in Personal and Fun

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

bad habit, bronx, catholic, catholicism, exercise, fortydaysoffabulous, habits, happy, lent, new york, New York City, NYC, positivity, read, stress, twenty something, write

IMG_0333-0

What’s up, folks?

I hope everyone had a great January.

I had some complications with my class enrollment, so I ended up only taking two classes this semester and will make up the third this summer. Still planning on graduating in December 2015, so all is well on that front.

This semester I’m studying the history of Italian Fascism in Italy and New York! If you’re a teacher or student, how’s your semester going so far?

Well, anyway, this blog is about Lent!

I converted to Catholicism in 2012 (RCIA and the whole bit) but I tried to make sacrifices for Lent several years prior to that. I’ve given up meat (a couple of times) and salt and have attempted to give up cussing and gossiping before too.

I failed at the cussing and gossiping before because driving and people, but I’ve succeeded at giving up meat a couple of times.

Even if you aren’t Catholic, have you ever succeeded in breaking a habit? How’d you do it?

This year I’m going to try to give up Facebook and cussing. But I’m also going to attempt to add two positive habits!

I am thoroughly addicted to Facebook. I like keeping in touch with people from the past, I like reading news, I like finding information that may be useful for friends, and I like seeing other people’s opinions. I also obviously like the attention. I’m much better at interacting with people online than in person, so I like getting likes and posting pictures and writing statuses. I’m one of those serial “likers” though, so I often pollute friends’ timelines and get blocked, haha! Giving up Facebook will help me be more present since I won’t be able to check my phone constantly.

It’s going to be hard for so many reasons. It helps me occupy my time and I use my phone as a security blanket as well. Not being able to constantly check Facebook is going to mean not having my phone to shield me from unwanted conversation and attention in public.

It’s also going to be lonely though. I’m Facebook friends with a lot of people that I want to be real friends with who don’t necessarily feel the same about me. Rather than messaging people and being all cheesy with the “let’s be friends” bit, I often like people’s pictures and statuses in order to force a connection with them and make an effort to become real friends. Since I won’t be able to force that connection through likes or comments, I will lose touch with people that weren’t interested in being my friend in the first place, which will be sad. It will be good though because I won’t bother people and if people decide they really do want to be friends they can make an effort to get in touch with me in other ways.

Facebook is also a platform where I post a lot of critical and judgmental thoughts and it also inspires me to be judgmental and critical of others. Let me clarify: I judge people and am critical of them but my judgements aren’t personal and do not affect my feelings toward people. Hopefully that makes sense. Seldom if ever have I allowed my judgement of another person’s life choices to affect my urge to be their friend or treat them nicely (IDeffW drug addicts-that aren’t making an effort to get clean-or criminals). I am extremely critical of myself and try to hold myself to a certain standard, but I know I can learn something from EVERYONE, even if their standards for their life and opinions/beliefs aren’t the same as mine (and vice versa). So, while I can justify my judgment of others, not being on Facebook will eliminate a lot of inspiration for being judgmental and critical of people.

I don’t Tweet or use Tumblr very much, so while I don’t think I will give those up, per se, I am not going to live tweet or retweet anything. I will auto-post/tweet from Instagram and other sites though (can’t break my Oscars tradition)!

I will stay on SnapChat, but only to talk to friends from Facebook that want to stay in touch!

Cussing won’t be too hard to give up…as long as I can find a positive habit to replace it with. The first time I tried to quit for Lent, I failed because I cannot not cuss when I drive…it’s like a compulsion, lol (thank the Lord I don’t have kids)! I don’t cuss at work or school, but I do cuss when I call/text my mom or friends to vent about stressful events. If I can find another way to vent and relieve stress in a positive way, then I think I’ll be able to stop cussing.

Now, while I am going to try to break two bad habits, I want to do something a little different this year and also ADD two positive habits!

I have seen several friends participate in the 100 Happy Days Instagram challenge, but I am going to change it up and I am going to post one happy/positive thing a day for the entirety of Lent. Follow me on IG and feel free to join the challenge! Just tag your pictures with the hashtag #ferventfor40 I don’t think I am a particularly negative person when it comes to my life and I don’t think I’m less appreciative than I should be, but I do dwell on things and am pessimistic. Posting one happy/positive thing a day for 40 days will hopefully get me into the habit of focusing on the positive aspects of my day, rather than the negative/stressful aspects (which should help eliminate my daily need to vent/cuss).

Last but not least, I want to read, write, or exercise for 30 minutes a day, everyday for 40 days. I am bad about procrastinating on school work, so this will help me get into the habit of doing a little bit everyday rather than panicking at the end of the semester. On days I don’t have homework, it will also encourage me to write more blogs! I would have committed to exercising 30 minutes a day, but it is cold as balls here and I have no space in my living room for inside exercise, so I am just making that mandatory for days when I don’t have any homework (conveniently, Spring Break falls in the middle of Lent).

So, I am giving up Facebook and cussing, but adding positivity and reading/writing/exercising!

Are you going to give up anything for Lent?

Feel free to post a comment below about your Lenten fast, breaking bad habits in the past, or creating positive ones!

Have a great week everyone!

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