Dealing with the death of your parent may be the hardest thing you ever have to do in your life. Though you won't ever be able to truly "get over" it, there are many steps that you can take in order to honor your parent's memory while being able to go on with your daily life. The important thing is that you should give yourself time to process the loss and avoid being hard on yourself if you think it's taking "too long" for you to deal with your parent's death. There is no timeline for grief, and you'll be able to move forward when you're ready.

How did it happen?

It was a long distance relationship but I never really felt the ''distance''. We used to communicate on a daily basis. Like every other relationship, we had our own ups and downs but it was still all beautiful.

Then I don't know what happened and he changed. He changed, all of a sudden. The duration of calls reduced from one hour to one minute. The number of texts reduced from hundred to ten a day. I started spending my entire day waiting for a single call or text from him. Not that he was busy with studies and stuff. He would even spend his time alone rather than spending it with me. And even when he called, it used to be nothing more than a formality. The love and the affection went missing all of a sudden. It hurt a lot but I chose to stay quiet forcing myself to think that it was nothing and I was just over thinking things. And then one fine night he dropped the bomb.

The true meaning of friendship is when you consider the other person's well-being to be as valuable as your own.  If you feel this way about a person, you are truly their friend.

If you consider that another person's good is as important as your own, you will treat them the way friends are supposed to treat each other.  You will make sacrifices for them when, by doing so, you can help them.  You will make sure that you are behaving in ways that will not hurt them.  This is the essence of friendship.

If you are not friends with someone, you may care about their happiness, but not as much as you care about your own.  But if you are true friends, you will care as much for the other as you do for yourself.

what is love???

 I searched online for a definition of love and the results were muddled and confusing. Some even stated sexual desire was love. Really?

The reason there are so many different definitions is because love is not being studied. It’s been expressed in writting  poems, musical lyrics and other artistic ways, but there has been very little  research and investigation  about  love.

Most people have  accepted that love is indefinable. I dont understand why is this so? because  Love! is the One of  the most extraordinary and satisfying experiences we can have as human beings.

Whenever a guy proposes to me here I respond with, “30 cows”. Then they laugh and tell me that’s far too much, because the average price for a bride here is 12 cows.

Traditionally in South Africa, after a man proposes to a woman, he must negotiate “lobola” with the bride’s family. Lobola is a practice where the bride and groom’s fathers, or other men in their families, meet to discuss how much the man will have to pay to marry the woman.

The average arranged payment is 12 cows and each cow costs around  8500 each. The price is lowered by one cow per each child the bride has given birth to before marriage. Nowadays the negotiation process is a little more modern, and the groom can pay in cash or split it between cash and cows. The negotiations must be done by men from both families, or else it is a disgrace to the ancestors. Once the negotiations are settled, the plans for the actual wedding plans start forming.

Zulu weddings last three days. On the first day of ceremonies, the groom’s family travels to the bride’s family’s household to partake in a traditional ceremony. All men and women are dressed in Zulu traditional dress. Women wear an isidwaba (wrap around beaded and pleaded skirt), beads, and an isicholo – a straw hat that is beaded. Men wear amabheshu – a cow skin cover-up and carry a Zulu shield, also made out of cow skin. That why i love my tradition so much.

Babies are named before they are born in Zulu. There is no naming ceremony in the culture, but only a ceremony called imbeleko to introduce the baby to the ancestors and to thank them and ask them to protect it. For imbeleko a goat must be slaughtered as a sacrifice to the ancestors a goat is always slaughtered for a feast that involves talking to the ancestors, and the family elder responsible for talking to the ancestors will call the baby by its name when presenting it to the ancestors at the same time the goat is being slaughtered. Zulus usually carry more than one name, it can be several names given by members of the extended family. Names usually denote the family's expectations and encouragement for a baby; some reflect the family's experiences or how they relate to others in their community, sometimes they tell about the time/how the weather was like when the person was born, and so on. Also common are names that reflect religious beliefs and political beliefs.