This Little Light of Mine: Addena’s Substack

December 2024

December Newsletter

Welcome back everybody and welcome to any new readers. ♥️

I don’t know if I told you, but I really appreciate your support and your encouragement and that you stick around and check out my Newsletter. I especially appreciate your comments and feedback. It’s what keeps me going with this project when I think maybe I should just give it up.

Let me start by saying I hope ya’ll enjoyed your month of holiday observances and celebrations. Our family celebrates Christmas, Hanukkah,, and Kwanzaa.

To me, each day of the seven days of Kwanzaa, (focussing on what we think and plan about each principle) is like making seven meaningful New Year’s Resolutions. I, along with chosen family members and chosen Community, share our plans for working on each principle, and talk about how we could and would like to work on that principle and integrate it into how we live, and how it will improve our lives in the upcoming year.

The Holidays

When I was a kid, I would celebrate Ukrainian Christmas too, because with my friends were Ukrainian. When I would come back to school after that holiday, the teachers would ask ‘why were you absent’? I would emphatically say (with a little indignance) “because it was it was Ukrainian Christmas!”, and the teachers would look at me , real strangely , but they never asked me anything more about why I was absent that day. 😊

Every year, I am away for Christmas and New Year’s. I am in one of my happy places, Jamaica , and will be here for a couple of months. That is one of the reasons this Newsletter will be short, and hopefully sweet, with lots of photos … and probably next months publication will be as well. I think I may have told you I have been coming to Jamaica every year now (for the past 34 years) Jamaica is one place I can bask in all the things I love. love to see, hear, and feel. I love to see the deep blue Caribbean Sea, and feel the warm Sea breeze when it’s hot . I love the cool breeze blowing off the ocean when the Sea is rough and then it is a little cool for a few days. I love the music in the air everywhere you go walking through the neighbourhoods, love the Patois language blessing my ears, … but most of all I love the palette of Brown faces all around me! That, along with the laid-back Irie Vibes is reason, (even though I was born in Canada and am a 7 th Generation Canadian) that all the time I’m here I feel like “I truly belong”.. ♥️

So far, on our holiday this year, we spent most of our time just chillin’ and relaxin’, visiting friends and extended family, sharing meals, laughing, listening to great music, a li’l dancing, playing dominoes, drinking , …laughing., and watching the most beautiful beautiful Sunrises and Sunsets. I keep repeating laughing .. because we are so full with joy!

We are truly Blessed and Grateful.

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This year, we all consciously try not to talk about politics, and what’s going on all around the world and just enjoy being here on holidays. Sometimes, however, a Newsflash pops up in one of our Newsfeeds and we can’t help but talk about it. Despite that, we’ve agreed we will try to just live in the moment and enjoy all the moments we were here, even though we all know tough times and crazy times are coming…soon. We all know that the newly elected American President and his chosen government leadership will turn most of our worlds upside down (‘cause madness and mayhem are on their political menu).

We all like to think the madness won’t touch us, or have any effect on us, but it will. This New Year we have to be alert, to everything. Especially everything happening around us and our families. We have to Stay Woke and support each other (in all of our communities) especially those communities, groups, and individuals, that will be targeted in the implementation of the Project 2025 platform.

Speaking of that, have you read it? “The 2025 Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Leadership promise”.? It’s a mindblower! I suggest reading it section by section and then digest each section . ,,,, Scary! https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf

🔶♦️🔶♦️🔶♦️🔶♦️🔶♦️🔶♦️💥♦️💥♦️♦️💥♦️🔶♦️🔶♦️♦️🔶♦️🔶♦️

I”d just like to repeat what I said in my last Newsletter: “We owe it to all the people who came before us (who fought for our Rights and Freedoms) to listen to the negativity that’s playing out around us, to turn our eyes to it, and to Stand Up and Speak Out, and take some action to combat it… whatever action you can personally ( safely) do to fight against iit, do it!

It’s time to draw on your historical, generational, and genetical courage!

I swear I hear my Ancestors speak to me in my dreams.. saying: Please don’t let them turn the clocks back. We’ve come so far at such great cost. Please don’t fail us now!” 💥

Happy New Year Everyone 🎉🎉🎉🎶🎶🎶🍾🍾🥂🥂💖💥