make my own sunshine

I’ll share with you a speech (exercise) I wrote and delivered to a group of people a couple of weeks ago. As always, please forgive any grammar lapses. This was written in haste. Asus. :hide:

To make the speech interesting, I had to sing a few of lines of the song “I Make my own Sunshine” in the introduction and conclusion part (in quotations) of the speech. Obviously, the song means a lot to me I didn’t really care how I sounded like then. Lol!

Let’s make our own sunshine, y’all! :)

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Make My Own Sunshine

“It don’t matter if it’s rainin’
Nothing can faze me
I make my own sunshine
If you think you can break me
Baby you’re crazy
I make my own sunshine”

“I make my own sunshine.” I first heard that song a few months ago during my three-month training in Atlanta and I don’t think I could ever forget it.

As you may already know, more than anything else in the world, I am a mother of two girls: a 5-year old and a two-year old. So when I heard that I would have to go a thousand miles away from my kids for training or work, I had a bittersweet moment. It was one part sweet because it sounds very exciting: that would mean I would be learning new skills and I would finally be meeting and putting faces on people behind those emails that I’ve been sending and receiving for more than 3 years at work; and, it was one part bitter because the thought of leaving my kids behind is just plain awful: that would mean missing the cuddles and kisses at nighttime and missing the sweet chaos and production numbers at daytime. It’s like my happiness for more than 5 years of motherhood is taken away just like that.

But I am no drama queen; If the travel would mean no happiness for me, then it’s just no happiness for 3 months, not forever; and it helped that I only had two weeks to prepare for the trip. I didn’t find the time to sulk and ponder about what ifs. So the next thing I knew, I safely landed in Atlanta and started working the next day.

The first few days were relatively good; I remember the kids were all smiles on the computer screen and there were flying kisses here and there during Skype calls; and I went straight off to bed after that because I was still jetlagged. It was smooth.

The came a week after then the next and the next, the energy and excitement in Skype calls started to dwindle. My 5-year old daughter sometimes wouldn’t talk to me; the 2-year old kept sucking her thumb for comfort whenever she sees me and kept looking for me behind the computer screen to see if I’m there. It was just terrible. Let alone, I cannot do anything about it because I was thousands of miles away. It was just beyond my control.

Then that song “I make my own sunshine” played on TV. It was a commercial for Lowe’s–a hardware store of sort. When the song played the lines, “If you think you can break me; baby you’re crazy; I make my own sunshine”, it was a light bulb moment and questions popped in my head, “Why not? Why not make my own sunshine?”

So whenever I felt bored, I made my own sunshine. I cleaned the apartment; I did the laundry; I cooked; I watched TV shows I never had the chance to watch while I was here. I got myself busy.

Then, whenever I felt sad and blue, I made my own sunshine. I convinced other trainees to head downtown, commute through buses and trains, and visit the Atlanta Botanical Gardens (which we found boring, by the way, because it was after spring time when we got there. It was just all green to our eyes.), the so-called Atlantic Station, and of course, Ikea–the furniture store. I also went to Stone Mountain and explored the place at noon time without wearing sunscreen that my skin hurt so bad right after. I simply basked in the sun.

Obviously, it was not a “no happiness for three months” for me. I lived happy regardless of being alone because I made my own sunshine.

So, to each and every one of you who believe you can never be happy simply because a part of your life is not present at one point or another, think again.

Because, to borrow the lines from the song:

“It don’t matter if it’s rainin’
Nothing can faze you
You make your own sunshine
If they think they can break you
Baby they’re crazy
You can make your own sunshine.”