Shola Okubote

Posted on 25. Jan, 2010 by Lounge Lady in Highlights

Shola?

I am a woman on a journey,  I am not where I want to be yet but I am working hard at it and i know I will get there soon! I stopped pacing the aisles and counting the miles, I chose to enjoy every step of the journey , to make the most of all my resources no matter how seemingly insignificant, without holding back all I can give, do or be.

Writing?

I  write  pieces on women’s personal growth and general lifestyle issues for print and online magazines as a part-time writer. I look forward to being a part of the editorial team of an international women’s lifestyle magazine, and having a women’s column in a daily newspaper.

So far my articles have been published in

• Fab Magazine
• New African Woman Magazine
• Naija Times
• True Love West Africa Magazine
• Exquisite Magazine
• Ninety Nine Magazine
• Elonn Magazine
• Poize Magazine
• Motherhood Instyle Magazine
• Timeless Magazine
• Femme Lounge

Femme Lounge?

It started as monthly inspirational emails to friends and friends’ friends, and then went a bit further to a vibrant Facebook Group and now we have grown even bigger to an online magazine! Who knows how far this could still go?

Hobbies?

I enjoy reading magazines, watching TV especially talk shows and spending time with my five sisters and four nieces! I love tea, and coke and rice in all its variety!

Passion?

I am passionate about international development and women issues.

iKnowForSure?

Tides turn and things do change, that iKnowForSure

Small is Big!

lol!, Small is Big is my first attempt at writing something close to a book, it’s an eBook of few pages, just trying to put an important lesson I learnt into words and surprisingly the feedback has been amazing.

To  Download Your Free Copy  of  Small is Big!, Enter Your  Email Address Below and Click The Download Button.

One Week in August

Posted on 10. Oct, 2009 by Lounge Lady in Excerpts From My Journal

One Week in August;

The week that I started by reading  page 125 of Max Lucado’s Next Door Savior as my daily devotional. It posed the question of where God is in the midst of the storms and depressingly left me with an inspiration from the story shared at a certain Silecchia’s funeral; she was recently married and had an eighteen-month old baby.

The week that I stumbled on ‘the woman issue’, an old edition of Farafina Magazine and out of the many beautifully written pieces by some of the finest writers around here, “For the love of Anthony” jumped out at me. It’s the memoir of a grieving woman who lost a promising son in the 2005 London bombings.

The week that I got a depressing and dreadful call from my mother, Mr. Adeniyi, a family friend and my father’s former collegeaue had died from complications of surgery; his identical twins girls were my younger sister’s best friends in high school.

The week that I saw an announcement and a white donation box at the entrance of my Estate. Festus, the head of the estate security who had a fierce argument with my friends some days ago had died after a brief illness.

The week that I felt great pain in my heart as Pastor Eastwood shared with us how life has not been the same after he lost of his two adorable children on the same day in the same accident.

The week that I had visited one of my favorite gossip blogs in hope of reading the hottest gist in town but instead got the horrific news of the passing away of one of my favorite actresses, she lost the battle with lung cancer.

The week that I flipped from one local TV station to another until I got hooked on the controversial Emmanuel TV’s charity day, and I shed tears as I saw many children who came for help,  they were all orphans some blind, some cripple, some dumb , some mentally retarded.

That same week, I realized how ungrateful I have been for getting depressed and anxious because of my need for bigger, flashier, prettier and more expensive things.

I made a stop to my search for antidepressants for my incessant mood swings and low spirits, and made a solemn vow, to take a pause and enjoy life, to step back in order to see clearly, to love others with all my might. To enjoy where I am, on the way to where I am going.

The same week I started my iGiveThanks Journal

Writer – Shola Okubote

Your Sin is Bigger Than Mine!

Posted on 10. Oct, 2009 by Lounge Lady in Everyday Living

Even her prison cell could testify to her remorse, she spoke few words, and threw no tantrums, instead she prayed for forgiveness all day. She believed she deserved a decade of isolation and restraints, so she made no fuss about it, she had no countdowns pasted on the wall, and she had no secret wish for clemency.

Abigail Thompson once had it all together, being a catholic nun was all she knew how to do, and she did it with all her might. She spoke no evil, saw no evil, touched no evil and heard no evil. How can one human possibly build such a resistance against the depravity of these times?

But, you know, evil is like a bully that has been dared, when you slam the door, it will bang on the window, when you latch the window, it will go to the rooftop. It never gave up on Abigail until it found an entrance into her life through one of her students – a fourteen year old.

Lust hacked Abigail’s morality code and her virtuous fortress crashed.  Her dam of emotions broke and she couldn’t have a hold on herself until she fondled the teenager; who did not resist, complain or report to anyone afterwards. It happened once.

Abigail’s secret was safe with the teenager, but her own conscience abhorred such things, she had contaminated her spirit and had no peace until she went ahead to confess her sins. Her confession didn’t earn her forgiveness; it landed her in jail for ten years and christened her new fiery names – child molester, sex offender, and pervert.

A prison guard spat dirty words on her and called her a pervert. The same prison guard cheats on her husband and sells heroin to inmates.

A chaplain looked at her with disgust and hoped she would find no forgiveness from God. The same chaplain showed mercy to another hardened criminal who just gorged out the eyes of another man.

A fellow prisoner asked Abigail angrily, “how could you rob that innocent child of his innocence?’’ The same prisoner is serving a life sentence for the murder of many people.

Did you call them hypocrites? Pot calling Kettle black? Well, that’s what I thought too.

But aren’t we all hypocrites sometimes?

We call our boss “bitch” for being mean, yet we spit degrading words on our house helps,

We tag another woman a bad mom though our own children are spinning out of control,

We say homosexuals will rot in hell but we accept adultery as a norm; though it breaks heart, homes and lives,

We feast on the distress of others, ignoring the awful mess in our own lives.

When we fail to take a closer look at our lives before judging others, when we talk about the speck in someone else’s eyes though we have a log in our own eyes, when we lack objectivity and reality in dealing with other people’s life issues,  what we say circuitously is “Your Sin is Bigger Than Mine”.

Writer – Shola Okubote

What's Age Got To Do With IT?

Posted on 27. Aug, 2009 by Lounge Lady in Excerpts From My Journal

When Martha’s husband broke her heart, she put her life on a hold and spent years wallowing and convincing her she needn’t try to get on her feet again. So she grew into an obese, depressed, agoraphobic and indifferent mid aged woman living in serious debts.

She didn’t realize how much her life sucked until a passerby dropped a coin in her cup of soda thinking she was a destitute. That was the dot connecting moment that made her lose tens of pounds in weight, threw her on the good sides of the stock market, dragged her to the clubs and hang outs with friends, changed her wardrobe, and got her dating again. In three years she made a complete 180 degrees turn, she pursued, overtook and recovered the seemingly lost years of her life.

Her transformation somehow lit up a bulb in my head, and there was this burst of understanding, like never before I believe that some changes are actually possible at any age, if we are willing to give it all it takes!

Influenced by the fairy tales we hear as children, and what we see on television and hear every day, we develop stereotypes about age and achievement. We use age as a yardstick to measure and judge what others should have attained, so if they haven’t done something at a particular age we think they are failures.

Because of our frozen understanding about the subject, we say a virgin at 23 must be a freak, an unemployed at 27 surely lacks focus, a single lady at 30 definitely has an attitude problem, and we tell the pregnant at 37 they are late bloomers, and if you are not at the peak of your career at 40, you are a fool forever!

The truth is life happens for us in different ways and at different times, and while we work hard towards achieving our life goals without leaving any stone untouched we must understand that the times and seasons of life does not necessarily have to do with age.

When I was younger I never had problems with telling people my age, because I thought my achievement measured up pretty well, but after few years of paddling so hard to stay floating on life’s stormy sail, it stopped being one of the questions I answer with great excitement. So every birthday comes with soberness and introspection, of what should, could or would have been. And my heart faints when I hear news like; Rihanna got a Grammy at 20, and Mark Zuckerberg (the Facebook founder) is only 24 year old!

But as I add another year today, I am choosing to have an enough time to conquer the world attitude with gratitude. To stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles, I chose to enjoy every step of the journey, to make the most of all my resources no matter how seemingly insignificant, without holding back all I can give, do or be, everywhere, anytime and at any age!

Happy Birthday to Me, Myself, Moi and I!