Earlier this month, I celebrated my 29th birthday. I have dubbed this year: My year of testimonies signifying my commitment to share more (particularly of lessons learned and vulnerabilities) by way of personal healing, self-evaluation ahead of the big 3.0 and in hope of encouraging someone else as I have often sought to be encouraged this past year. I began this testimony-themed year by sharing my ‘salvation story’ or the account of how and why I committed to the Christian faith. You can read this HERE.  My contemplation on how far I’ve come this year and all there is to share led me to review my journals. I found an entry which reminded me that in 2012 as I completed undergrad, I had made an ambitious seven-year plan for fulfillment by the age of thirty.  As per this plan, my  29th year was to be “My Year of Preparation”; it was to be the year I became fully ‘adult’. Underneath 29 I had put bullet points listing the goals for the year or what being ‘fully adult’ meant for me at that time. According to that list, as a twenty-nine-year-old I:  – Should have a healthier lifestyle- a healthy weight, diet, skin care routine etc.  – Should be getting to solvency, with savings, property, and finally acting on that business idea… -Should be enrolled in a postgraduate program and establishing myself as a writer and educationalist.  – Should be setting up a family and preparing myself to be all I needed myself as a child.  – Should have complete training at church to be a liturgist occasionally and be an active member of a Christian fellowship  -Should have plans for establishing a youth center like the YMCA in the works WELL! Let’s just say I had some ambition way back then eh?  I will not be holding myself up to this list, rather I shall think of it with appreciation as it shows that even back then, I knew I had to PREPARE and work on myself to achieve the fulfillment I desired and still desire. I am proud of the younger Monique for having figured that out.  There’s a lot more I’ve figured out in these 29 odd years and I’ve coined life quotes from lessons learned which I share in this piece. Consider these 29 original sayings as epigrams to remember me by. Notes on Living, Loving and Being … The worst thing about life isn’t the catastrophes, the losses, the pain or disappointments it brings to us all. The worst thing, in my opinion, is that life goes on. It does not stop for us to collect our bearings, regain our rhythm, restore our hope or reclaim our faith. One may lose their entire family, another may lose their only source of joy, yet another the hope which kept them sane; but still life goes on, others live as though the world had not ended had not ended for one.                                                                                                                                                            You can believe all you want. Unlike Hollywood PG 13 movies, wishes don’t come true by believing alone.                                                                                                                                         Believe in good, believe that justice will come someday, and right will conquer wrong. But bear in mind that this may happen on the day after you are buried in your grave. And it doesn’t make it too late for there was never a set date.                                                                                             One of the ironies of life,  I have found, is how we are encouraged to dream grandly as children only to be urged to settle soon as adults- and our souls expand and contract with each compromise and negotiation, weathering away.                                                                                        The thing about tomorrow? It never has enough hours or the capacity to fulfill all we wish it would, so we always need another one.                                                                                                      I have found that many people don’t notice my hearing impairment in the course or a conversation. To them, my rapt attention is response enough. And I can talk to at length with one whose name I do not know, one whom I have only just met. Because sometimes we do not need words. Everyone smiles in the same language, everyone understands the tilt of a head, can comprehend eyes welling up with tears and a hand outstretched…or withheld.