Hey readers!

I’d like to start off with a quick question: how many of you find it increasingly difficult to count your many blessings when your world feels like it’s upside down? On a scale of 1 – 10, with 1 being not difficult at all and 10 being the extremely tough, my response would probably exceed 10 on the scale. Honestly

The thing is, I know that recognizing the positive things about life tends to keep us upbeat and motivated, but it can be so difficult when you’re stuck in a rut – and asking God (or the universe, for those who are agnostic or atheist) Why me?  

This week’s episode of Being Mary Jane depicted a web of adversity that ties the characters together, but also highlighted the blessings that each person should be focused on amidst the struggle. I must admit that some of the stories were more comical than others, but I feel that the intrinsic lesson remains the same.

Take Kara, Mary Jane Paul’s Executive Producer at SNC and divorced mother of two. Life has given Kara more responsibility than most, and she struggles to find time to handle everything she’s got on her plate. Considering how much she works, her ex husband is a stay at home dad to their two boys; and as such, Kara foots the bill. Invariably, this is a vicious cycle because it means she has to work extra hard to look after the boys and their father. I guess I lied when I said Kara had two kids – I’m sure she really feels as though she has three. Sometimes, MJ makes it feel like she has an extra child to look after with the way she puts pressure on Kara to be at every taping or live air of her show, even when she has conflicting family responsibilities. I know she deserves Kara’s time during working hours, but asking ‘what about what I need Kara?‘ makes the expectations seem a lot more personal than professional. To top it all off, Kara had just started dating a really great guy, but was slowly realizing he had expectations too – dinner dates with friends, and other events she was just expected to make it to.

This week, Kara found out that her younger son was struggling with a learning disability, and had gone back to bed wetting. She was really hard on herself and his father, claiming that she needed to spend more time with her son to help with homework – after all she was the better mathematician. He tried to discourage her from biting off more than she could chew, but she was adamant. Having to leave work to take care of her boys in the evenings and listen to them fuss and fight left her stressed and tired. We see her taking multiple pills in an attempt to ease the pressure she was under, and we all know that is the worst way to ensure stress relief. She even took on the task of baking brownies for her son’s class at school to prove to the other mums that she could do better than ‘store bought cookies.’ Clearly, taking on a task is a far cry from actually achieving it considering she managed to burn her cookies, (I think she fell asleep while they were in the oven) and had to run to Mary Jane’s house for help.

By the end of the episode, it became clear to Kara that she needed to streamline her commitments to avoid cracking under the pressure. Though she initially broke down and conceded to failure by saying she shouldn’t have had children, she picked herself up and reflected on what she could do better. This led her to breaking off her new relationship to focus on family and suggesting that she and her ex move back in together to ensure that she would have more time to spend with her sons, and save money on funding two separate family lives.

For Mary Jane, adversity seems to be the order of the day – she’s currently sidelined at her job because she supposedly has a scar that won’t work on TV (I can barely see this scar by the way, and even if I could, MJ should really mean more to the network than a painful scar from an even worse accident), spending excessive amounts of time with a man she has no desire to date so that she can feel better about herself, and being blackmailed for 5000 dollars every fortnight, by Cecelia, the woman whose car she hit during the accident. Awful right? I KNOW! To make things worse, she is still grappling with Lisa’s premature death, and just how much she misses her.

Though it isn’t as obvious as we would hope, I see the faint glimmer of MJ’s silver lining that I am sure she cannot see herself. She survived that horrible accident and without permanent damage to her face, and looks the same as she always did (save for some swelling, which will eventually go down). She’s still earning a salary even though she hasn’t been doing her job and therefore hadn’t fallen behind on her responsibilities to her family. Above all, she must be so proud of her niece, Niecy Patterson, who is finally coming into her own after years of failed mentoring attempts by MJ. 

Oddly, the focus was not solely on the issues being dealt with by the protagonist Mary Jane, and her sidekick Kara. Instead, they shared the spotlight with Cecelia and Niecy in a bid to tell the similar stories from the perspectives of women who were at different stages of their lives. Niecy’s struggle is found in her desire to provide financially for her children by securing a job. Isn’t it interesting that Kara has the financial means to provide for her kids but has no time to spend with them, while Niecy’s situation is the opposite? Thankfully, Niecy has Mary Jane to support her in putting together her resume in order to make herself more marketable. I know it was wrong for MJ to advise Niecy to include work experience that she hadn’t actually gained on her CV, but that is the reality of the harsh labour market we live in today. Understandably, one cannot get a job without some work experience. But isn’t it insane that one cannot get any work experience without previous work experience?!? Come on people! Someone has to have a first job right? I believe that this is entirely unfair, and it pushes people to seek nepotism and favouritsm when all they really need to be given is a chance. I could go on about this point forever, but I’ll save it for a future post….

The difficulties faced by Cecelia are also financial – but vary from Niecy’s because Cece already runs a business. The show depicts Cece as the owner of a bookstore who is struggling to make ends meet. As a result, Cece truly believes the accident which brought her and Mary Jane together is her way out of the problems she is facing. The accident left Cece slightly hurt, and she had no insurance to cover her treatment. Mary Jane felt that she should cover the expenses, considering the accident was her fault. I assume she never expected to see Cece again, but she underestimated Cece’s intelligence in figuring out that a cheque with the words ‘I’m sorry’ written on it, convey a sense of guilt and blame for the situation. Cece believed that God put her in this situation in order for her to receive the $25,000 she has asked Him for some time back. After receiving a payout from the network for her silence, she approached Mary Jane blackmailed her for the money she wanted saying; ‘You are my blessing.’ Naturally, in order to avoid prosecution and being dropped by her network, MJ obliged Cece and is getting to know her in the process. 

My gut tells me that Cece’s deep knowledge and understanding of the world from a racial standpoint (which she has evidently gained from all her reading) will become a pivotal blessing in the life of Mary Jane, even though she doesn’t know it yet. 

Though I don’t condone Cece’s actions, I think that there is something to be said for accepting the situation you are currently facing and searching for the blessing therein (legally, of course). All the characters whose stories I have touched on today, have found something to be grateful for amidst the difficulties that they currently deal with. In the same vein, I invite each of us to keep striving to do the same. We will not always get it right, but I truly believe that a positive attitude in the face of problems will invariably pull us out of them faster, and make us stronger. Count your many blessing, name them one by one, and you’ll be surprised at the amount of positives you ignore in focusing on the negatives 

Have a lovely Sunday, and make sure you give your all to the week ahead!
Love,

Jo 💞