Honoring all those military professionals who served and continue to serve in our U.S. Armed Forces, the most powerful military in the world. Deciding to join the U.S. Armed Forces can be seen as a pivotal, heroic, and sacrificial act. Most people joined willingly because they developed an innate desire to protect our country. Most people joined even while acknowledging the fear, stressors, and disruption it would cause their loved ones. Most joined with the hopes of returning home alive, whereas in the face of devastation, some didn’t.
Irrespective of the financial benefits and support, selflessly joining the armed forces is a sign of bravery. Yet such gallantry causes immense grief and agony to many families. It causes loved ones to pray endlessly, hoping for the safe return of their family member. However, when hope fails and becomes an unearthly truth, families spend the remainder of their lives grieving while simultaneously being proud of fallen troops’ dedication, discipline, and sacrifice in taking an oath to serve. Moreover, they appreciate days like this, Veterans Day, in which everyone in the U.S. exhibits appreciation and honor.
Many troops in the U.S. Armed Forces returned unscathed, while others were forced to navigate life while facing significant physical, psychological, and emotional debilitations. They face the complexities of systemic, medical, and societal hurdles, as well as the life-altering difficulties of reintegrating into civilization. Among other things, such pitfalls have led most troops to immediately return to the armed forces because of familiarity, camaraderie, and a sense of belonging.
Most of the troops who have rejoined are currently fighting, alongside incumbent troops, in the war in Iran. These troops are geographically dispersed to fight a war that the majority of Americans and those in other countries deemed unnecessary. Most of these troops are fighting in the ongoing war, which affects veterans both positively and negatively. More importantly, the dynamic impact Veterans have on the world is nothing short of profound.
To all of those we lost, we salute you.
To all those who fought, still fight, and support and protect your fellow troops and constituents, without bias, we salute you.
To all veterans, we salute you every day.
To all veterans who carry memories of your service and unmeasured sacrifice, we salute you. Your courage and resilience continue to inspire our nation. Your unwavering commitment in times of peace and conflict has shaped the freedom that most Americans enjoy today.
Today, on Veterans Day, all Americans are called to show gratitude and give you the recognition you deserve. We as Americans will continue to amiably support, uplift, and honor you and your families through meaningful actions, communication, and community. On your behalf, may our uncertain America strive to be worthy of your sacrifice.
Thank you for your altruism, self-sacrificing service, and undying dedication.
Blue tsunami (BT) is defined as a political event equivalent to a meteor strike of blue-voting Democratic power that substantially impacts U.S. democracy as a whole. BT is also referred to as an astounding turnout of people across the country voting for one party, Democratic, joining forces to protect U.S. democracy and humanity and in an effort to abolish and rebuke corruption, ineffective and noninclusive leadership in a single election. The outcome of the seismic BT is a massive repudiation of depravity and gerrymandering, with Democrats decisively being elected and flipping red states, creating a trifecta, winning control of the governorship, and taking over both the House of Representatives and the Senate in record-breaking numbers. This trifecta creates significant potential to pass additional state laws for the National Popular Vote Compact, which could make the Electoral College irrelevant. If the Electoral College were rendered extraneous, not only would each state still have the authority to award its electoral votes to the winning Presidential candidate, but it could also remain unchanged and retain the legal and congressional authority to continue functioning and pass Bills, with or without an elected president. In November 2026, the United States of America not only experienced a blue tsunami but also turned its incumbent President into a lame duck, with the vast majority of Democrats and numerous Republicans doggedly voting for Democratic, blue-representing candidates. The Republicans turned Democratic, even if temporarily, have penitently waved their white flags, and for that we, as the American people, say thank you. Welcome to the UNITED aspect of what it means to be American. Such an accomplishment has residents and leaders in other countries celebrating as well.
Know that you all, we, the majority, contributed to this massive blue tsunami and simultaneously created history.
#CatchtheseBLUEWAVES
#YousaidNOGRIFT
#YousaidNOCORRUPTION
#YousaidNOTARIFF
#YousaidNOWAR
#YousaidLOWERINTERESTRATES AND AFFORDABILITY
#YousaidLOWERCOSTS – groceries and gas prices
#YousaidENOUGH
#YoudemandedEFFECTIVEandINCLUSIVELEADERSHIP
The Democratic Party not only heard you but also continues to actively listen and communicate effectively.
Congratulations to all of the midterm election winners, especially those who have made history. You put up a good fight. Now let’s get to work – TOGETHER.
Two days and four years ago marked the day I was forced to make one of the most difficult decisions I think I will ever make in my entire life: choosing whether another person lives or dies, thereby embarking on an ascending transition. Taking on the responsibility of another person’s life is no easy feat.
When women become pregnant, they, and in some cases their significant other or sperm donors, readily decide whether to terminate the pregnancy or proceed with the birth. After parturition, most women and men assume responsibility for their child or children, holding individual or joint medical power of attorney, at least until the children reach adulthood, and maintaining custody to make life-and-death decisions on their behalf. In a reverse capacity, adult children of unwed parents are granted individual or group capacity to act on their parents’ behalf, unless otherwise stated in a Will, Trust, or Medical Power of Attorney. From an adult perspective, when mature individuals marry, they assume lifelong responsibilities, including serving as each other’s medical power of attorney and medical decision-makers, unless otherwise stated. Marriages are initiated with the phrase “in sickness and in health, and ’til death do us part,” as a marriage cannot be officiated or finalized without agreeing to these formidable terms. I loved and still love my husband, and NO ONE can prove or suggest otherwise. Nor can others, hence outsiders contest this fact. Retrospectively and introspectively, we stockpile these phrases, “in sickness and in health, and ’til death do us part,” as if death, in an inevitable sense, were jejune, something we can plan for, and that it will only come with aging, hence natural death, opposite to natural birth. More or less, most people live and breathe by the superstition and the prime number, that death comes in threes. My husband’s death was indeed part of an amassed three, or should I say FOUR, as he, two of his previous senior partners, and the most senior person of the organization, all of whom passed in a matter of a single year apart. For many of us, we live life in a desensitized and imprudent manner, death as taboo and life as if it were an interminable process filled with probabilities. Thus, we conceivably fail to realize that just as we were permitted the opportunity to live, generally by our parents’ birthing decisions, we are equally permitted to die, with or without personal certitude or permissions. The ability to live is about making the right, unstifled, and wise choices.
Living is about being a responsible and mature adult. Living is about having fully developed the psychological capacity, buoyancies, and emotional quotient to navigate challenging life circumstances effectively. Yes, to live means living and dying multifariously and amongst diverse others, even when others’ lives indubitably and chastisingly clash with our own, thus getting in the way of what we readily wish and efficaciously desire to accomplish. Never do we ever think that our lives will come to a screeching halt or to the point that others are forced to unexcitedly decide whether we live or die, or vice versa. Why? It is because life and living are filled with uncertainty and unpredictability. Just like everyone is born with a birthdate, the initial countdown to our death, everyone has an expiration date. Yet, we don’t know the exact actual and factual dead date. While some take it upon themselves to voluntarily terminate their lives through self-inflicted wounds and perpetuities, such a gesture is highly discouraged. Suboptimal and subliminal life events often lead to ineffective, consequential, and guilt-driven choices. Life, in and of itself, can be discouraging and a never-ending struggle. Returning to my personal experiences, I faced unilateral decisions that were both medical emergencies and mandatory. At the same time, the person whose life was in my hands lay voiceless, incapacitated, and defenseless. Even as I had to make these decisions, I listened, leaned into, and followed the advice and instructions of the medical professionals. When they optimistically primed me with the idea that hope, optimism, physical contact, and presence would make a world of difference, I kissed and touched my husband in all the biological spaces medically permissible and, in that instance, humanly possible. I prayed to higher powers. I communicated effectively, speaking his love language–handholding and physical contact. As the only person he had loved and trusted for a decade, and with the certainty and discernment that he wanted me there more than anything or anyone else, I assured him that I was there and wasn’t going anywhere, even if it meant loafing in the lobby while he underwent medical procedures. I was there from the beginning to the end of visiting hours. Most nights, I slept in the car on the premises, adjacent to the emergency entrance. Therefore, if a medical emergency occurred and doctors or nurses needed my immediate attention, I was readily available rather than miles away. Being called to order in medical emergencies, especially those that are astonishing, is never straightforward. Such calculated and weighty decisions are always painstaking, given the emotional, psychological, and security attachments. By comparison, life-or-death medical decisions may be a matter of forward-thinking for medical professionals, given that they have undergone extensive training and field experience to regulate their emotions, maintain professional composure, and detach personally to sustain clear judgment under pressure. As such, professional composure gets tossed out the window, with the trash, when it’s the medical professional’s loved one, namely, a spouse or significant other, who requires medical attention and advocacy. Nonetheless, I give kudos to all medical professionals, regardless of rank or role. If I have not said thank you before, I am saying it now, not only for taking swift, effortful action to save my husband’s life, but also for all that you do. I thank all medical professionals and all first responders who ungrudgingly put their own lives, health, and well-being on the line to save others’ lives. I thank those who experience cognitive decline from exhaustion, stress, and burnout. Most importantly, I thank you for taking the time to consider the loved ones enduring emotional torment, uncertainty, and severe heartache. As a secondary victim of medical crises, you ask if we’re okay and ensure we have the privacy and space to vent, cry, ask questions, and even be supportive, even when it’s not part of your job description. But I guess it comes with the territory.
For four years and two days, I have been repeatedly asked whether I am okay or how I am coping, and my responses have always been fictitious: yes and fine. These curvilinear and nonlinear answers were the result of wanting to be unbothersome and less onerous to others, whereas, deep down, my life was totally obliterated. Presently, I am still suffering severely, with complete and utter devastation, desolation, and a fragmented heart and soul. Even after years of experiencing loss, I am still in the infancy stages of prolonged grief, particularly as it relates to Kübler-Ross’ notion of death and dying. I have not accepted, nor will I ever assent to, the fact that my husband is no longer here, especially given that I have psychologically reconstructed my life as if he were readily present, seeking his permission and making joint decisions from a husband-wife perspective, all while looking for his mere existence in others. I seek to surround myself with others who can momentarily grant me the opportunity to feel whole, while also extinguishing my individual sense of forlorn and purposeful solitude. All these years, my social engagements have been intentional, yet meager distractions. Forcibly navigating the loss of someone who was the nucleus of your life is a constant reminder of unwholesomeness and fragmentation. And while this marks four years, as I continue to live and breathe, I recognize that each and every day moving forward will be a monotonous, piercing, guilt-ridden reminder. Moreover, every second, minute, hour, day, week, month, and year will be an adverse juxtaposition and a tertiary level of despondency: our initial encounter, my birthdate, and our wedding anniversary, all of which are now significantly intertwined with such a prominent tragedy.
While the world recognizes death as taboo and an avoidable topic. Let’s talk about it.
With insurmountable effort and without permission, will heavenly authorities demonstrate their power and authority to wipe away your mere earthly and borrowed existence in a single wave or through cognitive and inadvertent extinguishment, irrespective of the footprints you left in the sand, the number of interactions that crafted memories, professional endeavors, secured currency and assets, and with significant disregard for all the roads traveled.
Humans live life objectively and subjectively, always seeking ways to make their lives make sense to them in their individual capacities. People actively live to thrive both operationally and cerebrally, and to functionally comprehend their experiences from a distinctive, individualistic, yet relatable perspective.
To live means to superlatively live out loud.
To live means to be abundantly and congruently equitable, free, and secure.
To live means equal opportunity and corollaries.
To live is an extrapolation of breathing.
We all have an urge to live, whether that corporeal existence is lived publicly or in secret.
We all experience unanticipated crises and situational adversities. What matters most in these situations is how we navigate and learn from such conditions.
To live is to die. To grieve. To be desolate. To effectively circumnavigate uncertainty and ambiguity.
Conversely, to live is to be content. To thrive. To stay morally and ethically erect.
To live is to love and be loved.
To live is not a stopgap, but a dubious and enduring continuance, from inception to cessation.
Generally, life is an embankment. But more importantly, it is an embodiment of individual perpetuity.
I mean, how much easier would life be if the waves of the ocean and household showered waters washed away and abolished the desolate, grief-stricken tears and replenished one’s soul with hopefulness and discernment? For me, it’s been 4 long, emotionally-laden, and mentally challenging years, yet I still acknowledge our wedding anniversary; this year, it will be 10, while knowing and loving one another would mark nearly 14 years of unprecedented territory. I still have not, and without a reasonable doubt, succumbed to total cognitive annihilation of devastation, mortality, overwhelmingness, and numbness. For the most part, I don’t think I ever will overcome this deeply embedded and looming grief, a lifelong journey that I will never indubitably surpass. Still, it will forever be a power-struggling and power-exerting experience that I will try to energetically suppress.
Recognizing that four years ago, on my birthdate, marks the date on which I experienced the most traumatic experience of my life. Such experience is similar to riding an elevator, in which most establishments fail to acknowledge the 13th floor due to the triskaidekaphobia phenomenon, a sign of bad luck. My birthdate and the subsequent days, from accident to date of death (DOD), mark 13, and have become days in which I refuse to celebrate, especially given the weightiness of uncertainty, probability, and makeshift moments that I endured. Each year, I solemnly recall all the moments when I looked for ways to recharge and recalibrate my physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional batteries, simply so I could transfer that energy to my husband, making his fight a little easier and helping him heal more expediently and hastily, and to combat negative energy that had become inevitable, but I digress.
For the past four years, I missed out on living life. I missed opportunities to surround myself with life and living. I showed up for others while forgetting to show up for myself in the same aptitude. I failed to give myself grace and permission to live. These gallant actions left me swooning in my private cocoon from sheer emotional exhaustion. I forgot what self-care meant, even after researching and practicing it for years. But in reality, I didn’t care, as there was no time or space, especially because for four years, I have been psychologically operating in survivor’s remorse, drowning and breathe stricken capacity and in fight or flight mode, all while physiologically confronting challenges and threats head-on simply to protect others and their livelihood, all while still in a state of shock, disequilibrium, and through severe brain fog and all while being medically diagnosed with acute and prolonged grief. As a woman, mother, and wife, my nurturing and caring nature reached its most profound level.
Due to this life extrapolation, today and from this moment on, I mandate that you take on the individual and collective responsibility to achieve your lifelong goals and objectives, to be free, and to positively and innocuously live out loud and with decorum, free of disapproving, shallow, and narrowed expressions and especially living amongst others with individual, cultural, racial, and physical differences, whatever that looks like to you, and without worrying about society and public perception or misconceptions. Live on the deep end, one that can substantively eradicate shallow and narrow experience and thinking. Navigate a fruitful, experience-filled life that positively divests itself and future generations of antiquated societal norms and behaviors, because, as we live and breathe, there will come a day when life as we know it ends.
If she can withstand the test of time, no one else has any excuse.
In December of 2025, the Grand Canyon University News wrote an article about one of their current doctoral students, Dr. Angela Pearce, PhD, who is now on her second doctorate in Organizational Leadership and Development (Ed.D.) regarding a life shattering event that would change her life forever, losing her husband in a tragic accident. One begged the questions of why pursue a second doctor after having already completed one, a Ph.D. But Dr. Pearce’s primary objectives was to fortify her C-suite leadership role after taking on a CEO and President position at a multi-company and multu-state SME company, all while functioning through tears and mental brain fog the entire time.
Dr. Pearce preserved, remained resilient, and optimistic while enduring heart-wrenching pain. She continued on a straight and narrow path and put her emotions in check to protect employees’ financial well-being and job security, and protect the company’s reputation and industry competitiveness.
Provided is a link to the direct article. One that Dr. Pearce wishes would encourage others to plow through life hurdles, overcome life obstacles and challenges, and navigate the waters of complexity and grief.
