Rise.

Can you and I please keep a word within our hearts? RISE.

When you wake up in the morning and remember what you were born to be; you must RISE up and get it.

If you’re tired of going to work, tired of feeding other mouths; think about that RAISE that’ll change everything.

A beloved passed away and sorrow latches on to your heart; believe that they ROSE and be happy, for they have risen my dear.

School couldn’t keep you focused if your life depended on it; don’t forget the prize that comes with a full RIDE nor the smile that lights your mothers face. Your success is theirs.

Unhappiness meets you at every corner and you are lost, hurt beyond repair? Stop it, now. And RISE.

You are better than any of your doubts. You have the capability to shine brighter than any ray of light after a thousand years of midnight blackness.

Forget the snobs that lift up their noses. Likewise to the negatives and sorrow sharers. Open your hearts, your mind, and more than anything your belief.

Look into your palms and visualize the hope & happiness you can create. I can already see it.

Xoxox

Lindsay

She opened her eyes and wept. It hurt when she tried to shut out the light and see the remembrances come up against the backdrop of her eyelids. So in the late hours of the night, while the others slept, she studied the cracks in the ceiling above her. They weren’t bad memories. Oh, no. They were wishing wells of glory. They were the bluest lagoons in paradise. They were a child’s voice singing, Freedom. At least that’s how they seemed when she remembered her past life.

Her back hurt. It had been years since she slept in a real bed. The coldness underneath touched her bones. She didn’t care so much about that as she did the memories. The memories touched her mind, which always hurt more. Sometimes she didn’t believe that they were memories. These belong to someone else, she would think when videos of her family and friends would play in her consciousness. Eventually, she would fall asleep.

But she barely slept. A few hours if she was lucky. Luck wasn’t her forte. She had ended up in Prison, she had been looked down on as if she were lower than an animal. She had been stripped of everything she valued and loved. There was no going back to the life of comfort and dreams as she had once lived. Yet still, she never stopped dreaming.

She dreamt of skies bluer than her father’s eyes, of trees that were so tall and full that she had to lay down on the grass just to study them. She dreamt of how her toes would feel when she walked in the sand, of the sun and how warm it would be to simply sit beneath its rays. She dreamt about someone holding her hand, and who that someone would be. She dreamt of how nice it would be to eat a meal without a time limit, about how nice it would feel to hold a warm stone against her cheek. She dreamt of eating and eating, not because they made her but because she could. She dreamt about being good, instead of how bad they made her feel. She dreamt about her mothers face when she was free and still had the ability to make her smile.

Although she had given everything up and turned her back on mankind, there was one thing she would never give up…

She dreamt. No wall or officer could stop her from dreaming.

xoxox.

Lindsay

Do you see your dreams every time you look up into the sky? Do you open your eyes in the morning because your dreams call out, “WAKE UP“? Can you feel your desires running through your veins when those goals and determinations light the recesses of your mind?

I want to be at the top. I want to show the world. I want to achieve. I want, and I wanted it yesterday…

If this feels like you, and you are nowhere near your end game, then all it takes is to stop thinking about it, stop talking about it, and DO IT. You can want like a monster, but with the time you have left, you won’t get anything unless you get to work now.

You must have faith in yourself and believe in what your path will be. This doesn’t mean that it will be easy and it certainly doesn’t mean that you will succeed.

But don’t you ever wonder what happens if you do succeed? You must think like the person you were destined to be and surround yourself with the environment that will give you the most successful results. How bad are you willing to find out how happy you could be?

YOU HAVE ONLY ONE LIFE, SO DON’T WASTE IT. 

xoxox

Lindsay Reva

 

 

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it’s yours.

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

I could die for you. But I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, live for you.

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons,and to make weapons – a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single attribute of man -the function of his reasoning mind.

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve.

Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

Annabel Lee

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we—

Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

In her sepulchre there by the sea—

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Xoxox

Lindsay Reva

Gratitude, don’t let me down

Hope, don’t leave me hanging

Rude, stay far away

Thankless, we have nothing in common

Brilliance, shine in me

Kindness, be my finesse

Mean-hearted, I know you not

Wicked, go mingle with other witches

Beauty, carry my words

Belief, don’t leave me, my soulmate

Hard, I am too soft for you

Doubtful, I am sure you will never have me

Goodness, how lucky am I to have you

Lovely, and why shouldn’t I be?

Unforgettable day, always and forever.

Xoxox

Lindsay Reva

The first thought in the morning might be the most important one.

My eyes open and I remember that everyday is one day closer to death, yet I breathe. Gratitude.

As I lay there I feel the pull of my muscle scream to get up, to get out, to LIVE. Hope.

I roll to my side, cuddle my pillow, and become unbelievably happy that my pillow fits perfectly around me, just the way it should. Maybe one day it’ll be another human being! Believe.

My mind raced through the day ahead of me and dances over the scenes which I look forward to the most. Pleasure.

Before I get my lazy arse up I pray,

Thanks, for making me the happiest, luckiest, out of this universe thankful girl in the whole wide world. Knowledge.

Thankful that today is going to be amazing. But first, let me go back to sleep just for a few more minutes…

Xoxox

Lindsay Reva

Do you ever feel turmoil in your soul?

Frank accepts the mission that his boss has just given him, knowing damn well, that when he completes his job he will be less of a man in his own unforgiving mind.

Olivia tells her best friend that she will loan her the $1000, even though she knows her best friend is tilting dangerously between the tightrope of a drug addict and casual user.

Filipe holds Isabelle tighter than he had ever held his wife. Isabelle stands there after telling him they must not see each other any more. They would do anything for one another, but only in a world where love and happiness were forgivable.

The Caretaker leaves Jim’s house with $350 in his pocket. Alzheimer’s makes his secret safe. Except in his soul.

Jin gives the extra doses to his grandmother after she demanded it and weakly slapped him in the face for disobeying her. He didn’t want her to die. He didn’t want her to feel any more pain either.

Of course, these are doing the most ( I’m a writer, I go EXTRA!). You could be suffering from a cause much more simplified, or even more dramatic. The point is, human beings suffer because of situations that we can and cannot control.

My words will never amount to the perfect solution but instead to acknowledge that you are not alone and that you can make a change in your life or make better decisions. No one is perfect. Have you ever thought about the million different shades of sadness painted out on the world’s canvas? Whatever you are going through, know that someone before you has felt it, and if they can overcome it, so can you.

Better days are right in front of you. Look closely and you’ll see it coming like the first rings of illumination from oncoming headlights in the darkest Forest.

Or be like me and pull out your own flashlight.

xoxox

Lindsay Reva

Dust rose in the air like gold glitter. The floors were white slick pools.

The air outside was cold and dry. Sharper than a needle.

Wind could be heard from everyone sitting inside the building. Sometimes they imagined they could feel it. But they could not.

Except for the lonesome girl who stood in the exercise field staring straight up into the clouds. How beautiful they were, she thought to herself.

Snow started falling and before it reached her she smiled. The cold didn’t even bother her despite the fact that she was wearing a slim nightgown with socks.

Normal people would have despised her, but where she stood, she was safe from the outside judges. Inside judges didn’t care.

The first snowflake landed right below her left eye and was replaced immediately by a teardrop that forced its way out, down her pale face, and forever forward into the hard concrete ground.

Never in her life had she felt something as magnificent as the first time she was touched by a snowflake. Never will I forget, she promised. Never.

The guards called her and she shut her eyes. Back she went to a thousand more years of Solitude.

Goodbye lovely freedom, she whispered to the glitter and crystals that spun around her like lovers in a duet. Entering the door of her captives, she did not cry. Instead, she smiled because the moment she felt the coolness of God touch her face she knew that she would be blessed forever.

Blessed.

xoxox

Lindsay Reva

He stood in the doorway with hair dripping wet.

She was tired in her bones. The hard part always seemed to last forever. Why was that, Theresa wondered. She flinted through memories that she would have liked to last forever but instead seems to dissipate like fog in the morning…

The time she celebrated her 23th birthday in the most expensive restaurant her best friend could afford. They giggled when the server had asked them to taste the wine before he served them two blood red glass fulls. They were used to bottles of Gin, not fancy waiters waiting for approval. Then there was the time when she went for a walk in the woods and saw a young man alone in his own peace, laying naked in the sunlight like a Greek God. What the hell was this weirdo doing out here, Theresa wondered. Something about seeing him and not being able to be seen excited her beyond her imagination. Then she remembered the time when a stranger had knocked on the door. That was a different kind of happiness. That happiness made her toes tingle. It was really too bad they couldn’t last forever.

She had been gone for so long that the sound of her best friends laugh couldn’t come back to her. Neither did she remember the young man’s face from the woods. At least she could still visualize the hair dripping wet… Eventually, she would forget that too.

All she wanted was a summer breeze or to be taken away by someone who she loved to a place she had never been. But she couldn’t. Happiness wasn’t ready to have her. So in the meantime, until happiness was ready, we had to make do with its evil twin brother, unhappiness. It all started with a simple wish.

She wished that one day she could have the world. That was suicide coming from a small rural town in the middle of no man’s land. For miles around her, there was forest, forest, and more forest. It wasn’t her fault that her father who had passed, was a hermit with absolute mistrust of all government entities, especially the heavy hitters like CIA, DEA, FBI. Those were the bad guys in his book. Everyone was out to get him. Thank God paranoia wasn’t in his DNA, Theresa thought.

Her mother wasn’t around, but she liked to fantasize about her. All that was left was a few blurbs from her father and a faded snapshot of a lady with a smile that created a thousand different stories in her daughter’s imagination. She was a dreamer alright. Maybe that’s what got her in trouble in the first place.

It had been raining for days. On the fourth day, while her father sat by the fire reading a conspiracy novel. Theresa’s eyes were shut, listening closely to the sound of rain falling all around her, and there came a loud knock on the front door. She couldn’t believe it. No one had ever knocked on her door. No one ever came. So she did the first thing that came to her mind. She ran.

He father was alarmed at how fast she made it to the door and foolishly opened it wide as if she were welcoming an old friend, someone she was expecting. Whose daughter is this? He pondered after the question of who the hell had found him. In fact, it was an absolute stranger. Middle-aged with a rough beard, but eyes that would always be described as kind.

Standing in the doorway with dripping wet hair, there stood a man in a green trenchcoat and an apologetic smile on his face. She stared at him and wondered if he was the answer that she had been praying for the last 5 and a half years.

I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m lost. His voice matched his eyes.

That’s all it took. Nothing more, nothing less.

One morning her father woke up. That same evening he would have a heart attack because another knock came to the door, this time it was indeed someone looking for him. It had been 15 years since he saw his daughter after he woke up in the morning to see her gone with the stranger who he helped out of the pouring rain.

Sir, your daughter is on the FBI’s most wanted list. Give me all the information you have. Or else.

O boy.

xoxox

Lindsay Reva

Chemistry. Meeting halfway. Electricity. Buzzing in happiness. The warmth from sunrays. Going up in an elevator. Walking downstairs. The first sip of coffee.  Learning a new word. Getting all, and not nothing. Long hot showers after long hot days. Making strangers laugh. Creativity. Making friends feel worthy. Choosing good over bad. Comparing my past to my present. Chocolate chip cookie dough. Pretty thoughts. Pink doughnuts. Glittered roses. The way French kiss your cheek. The way American men shake your hand. The way Tahitian men raise their eyebrows. Chasing after prettier thoughts. Manifesting. Understanding sections to make a whole. Intellectuals. Laughing at my idiocy. Chocolate on my tongue. Remembering where my bruises came from. Finding my keys. Walks to nowhere in particular.

But what makes me the happiest?

Knowing that my life could be so much worse, but instead, I am blessed.

xoxox

Lindsay Reva.

 

 

Hello, my name is Laurence. 

It drove her crazy when she closed her eyes and still saw him. Sometimes she would get this itching urge to scratch her eyes until they bled. Whether she was blind or not, she would see him. Plus, she wasn’t crazy. Not yet. Her worse moments were in boredom.

She needed distractions.

So she did everything and anything to keep herself busy. As soon as she woke up, running shoes on and miles passed as the sun rose. Go to work and pave through the masses of paper that everyone else wouldn’t touch. Not to show off, only because she had completed everything else. She made it an absolute habit to say hello to everyone single stranger who walked past her in hopes of finding a new friend or the spark of a new conversation. Just one word, she hoped. She was overly polite and walked around with a smile on her face. Sunshine seemed to be all around her. Managers adored her openly but despised her secretly. They feared for their own positions. She made many friends and many enemies. It had nothing to do with what she was lacking. still, that was her outside life.

On the inside, she was fighting a war. Her only ally was to forget him.

Her downtime was a habitual struggle of finding something new. Learn a language, write a book, read the Koran, re-do her resume, contemplate what it would be like to buy a puppy. She would play her music loud enough to drown every thought. But still…

No matter what she tried in trying to exhume him, some voids were just impossible to fill. Her bathroom belonged to him. She would sit down on the toilet with her pants bunched around her ankle. A pit would form in her stomach as she remembers…Slowly he slid her jeans past her toes and kissed the inside of her ankles. When she settles into the steaming shower the pit widens. With a washcloth, he bathed her from head to toe, kissing the freckles on her right shoulder. Washing her hands was the worse. Hands on hands, wedding rings, smooth wet skin. 

Before stepping out of the bathroom she took a deep breath and remembered the day she opened the door to a young man with sandy blonde hair and green eyes.

Hello,  my name is Laurence. I have some bad news.

When she found out her husband of 17 years had died because a teenager had been texting and drove straight into him as he went for his daily morning walk, no thought came to her. Only numbness.

Yes, I know. I am a somber one.

xoxox.

Lindsay Reva.

My beautiful Aimee Cebreros finally made it to Tahiti! 😍

Always be kind. No matter how hard a person seems, do not forget that there is goodness in them. Your smile can change a person’s day. Falling in love will never be a bad thing. Heartbreak won’t last forever. Even though the bad times seem to last forever, change will come. Change is good. Never stop thinking about your growth and potential. Always focus on light. Never be afraid of the darkness. Surrounded by power, you might just come out influenced. Stay away from the wrongdoings and evil. When it’s good, you’ll feel it in your soul. Thank your mother and father. Love your brother and sister. Honor your elders. Organisation can be the foundation of your successes. Believe, until you become. Nothing is impossible. Your mind does not stop growing. You are never too old. Nor too young. If you understand the foundation of any organization, you can succeed.

xoxox

Lindsay Reva

Can you feel it when someone else is thinking about you?

Someone on the other side of the world who sits in the shadows of a jungle surrounded by wild while you sit surrounded my wifi, someone across the street in a high rise whose office can’t be seen yet you imagine their silhouette pressed up against the glass window looking down at you as you pass by, someone locked away in a fortress of solitude and walls while you feel the wind in your hair, freer than free. Someone out there is thinking about you.

Can’t you feel it in the air?

Do we have the capacity to feel the thoughts of others? Things happen. Things that we usually call coincidences. Yet, what about that time when out of the blue you thought about that person who you NEVER think about, and in your back pocket, a vibration disrupts your thoughts until you look down and the same person’s caller ID smiles at you. Or maybe mocks you. You dreamt about someone who has been centuries out of your life and when you wake up a text from them awaits you. How can that be a coincidence? How can your thoughts not have had a trigger effect? Or their thoughts pulled the trigger.

Boom. My thoughts are calling you.

I don’t believe in coincidences anymore. I’m not sure if I can go so far as to say we all have fate. No, I think the future can change at any second because of the choices we decide to make or not make. But I can’t believe that certain things were not meant to happen and certain people were not meant to walk into our lives. I’ve seen too many answers from the questions within my mind.

Like the time…

More than the air I breathed, I needed a friend who I could count on, who was loyal, and who had the same visions as me. Poeiti Bordes walked into my life the same day I realized this. Once upon a time, I felt a thousand broken hearts all at once deep in my chest and I had no choice but to live with it. Happiness wasn’t meant for me. The day I decided I was worth something, doors opened that could not have opened unless a miracle had spread its wings and settled on me. No, it wasn’t a miracle, it was my acceptance in the membranes of my most powerful asset sending out signals. She’s Ready. She’s Ready. She’s Ready. Then one day I started to write about a character that would only exist on paper, could only exist on paper. They were too damn perfect to live in real time. It wasn’t my fault that my mind wandered off the wrong track and wondered…or could they? The character of my creation took two cool steps up to me and placed a flower behind my ear slow as hell for effect. By god did it have an effect. Bolts of electricity, a white flower. Lawdddd, get this heathen away from me! But not quite yet.

Manifestation, baby.

So if all these things can just appear out of the thin precious air, why can’t we communicate with each other on the same silent frequency. Why can’t I feel you enter and probe my mind and vice versa… When I look at someone in the eyes and thoughts flash before my eyes, maybe it’s time I start believing them because these were the signals that we evolved to understand. Or maybe I’m just losing my mind.

Either one is fine by me.

When it’s late at night and your head is resting against your pillow and I enter your thoughts, maybe it’s because I’m sending you a message. Maybe that message is,

xoxox

Lindsay Reva

They walk into a room and a silence more exhilarating than a thousand hands clapping could be heard.

They look at you with creased eyebrows and your heart skips.

They laugh and you taste happiness in your mouth.

They cry and you feel as if you witness something unforgiving, Horrible, that should have been kept behind closed doors and at the same time, you feel as if you’ve witnessed something that you will cherish forever because that was the day they too became human.

Powerful women. It doesn’t matter what they wear or the shape they come in, when they walk they’re drenched in Sex Appeal. They turn burlap sacks into Class. When they talk, their animation is intoxicating and you want to do nothing but grin like a school kid who has just been told the schools most valuable secret. And because they’re talking the talk to you, you’re #WINNING.

Powerful women rule the world. I say that only because I have met some very powerful men, but never have they affected me as the Alpha Women have. Why is that? With men, you can sense their intelligence, wisdom, and strength. Bla, bla, bla. Sometimes you look into their eyes and see absolute POWER. Another bla. But with a woman, even before they speak, even before eye contact is made, you can FEEL their power.

That’s the ultimate difference and I’m lucky enough to have met enough powerful women to see how they can shift the atmosphere of a room full of people just by their presence. They are not weak, even if they pretend to be. If you mess with their family, by God you better say your prayers and sleep with your eyes open. Their spirit is after you, sucka. They will never fail. Maybe a few stumbles, but the ultimate Power Princess’ and Queen never, never, never give up.

Kiki Solia. Tiana Liufau. Janelle Fejeran. Edieanne Stanely. Manouche Lehartel. Jeannie Napoleon. Erena Uura. Kehaulani Chanquy. Taina Elena. My mama of course (if you think I’m a little biased, than simple kiss my arse). The names can go on and on and DEEP into history. Yet these fine ladies have stood out to me all for different reasons. None of them are alike except for one aspect; they are unforgettable, and when they walked into my life, it was impossible to forget them.

You’d move mountains for them, but they move mountains on their own.

#MountainMoversUnited

xoxox

Lindsay Reva