I don't quite remember when I fell in love with tea but I do remember the most special moments of me drinking tea. I was eighteen years old and I went to live with my biological mother for four months. I had just met her months earlier and it was awkward for both of us. She and her ex-husband lived a very quiet life in Boulder, Colorado. He was a professor at one of the universities and she was a housewife. After years of drug addiction and being in and out of jail, she deserved the break. I was homeless so she and her husband agreed to let me come live with them. Each evening my mother and I would find a spot in the living room with a cup of tea and a book.

Now, years later, I'm a self proclaimed tea expert. I start each day with a wonderful English Breakfast tea to get me going. As the day progresses, who knows what wonderful tea I will crown queen. But for sure, I have at least three cups of tea a day. And yes, when I can, I have tea everyday at about 3:00 P. M. I love to invite my friends over for tea and cupcakes and so far everyone thinks it’s a delightful experience. I am always in search of the best blend of tea. Yes, I’m a tea snob, I prefer loose tea but I do like some bags also. I have learned not to judge a book by it’s cover. Some bags can be quite nice. And yes again, any Diva knows, what you drink your tea out of is very important.

Tea for me is a way of life. It's wellness for the mind body and spirit. Here, I will explore every expect of tea possible, with a high concentration on wellness. I will review the best teas, the best places to have tea, the best ways to brew tea, the best tea accessories, what tea goes best with what foods, and the list goes on and on. I plan to share my passion for tea with you. And I've been told, nothing I do is ever boring so be prepared to go on this tea journey with me.





RLT Collection Tea Ball Frosted Clear Beads!

Mint Medley by The Persimmon Tree Tea Company

About This Tea:

Until recently I had never drank Peppermint Tea made with loose leaves. And Honestly, I will probably never go back. The freshness of loose Peppermint Tea cannot be denied. When I open the can of Mint Medley, From The Persimmon Tree Tea Company, I feel as if I stepped into a garden of peppermint leaves. It is a perfect blend of organic peppermint and spearmint leaves grown in the US.

Mint Medley has become a favorite and I find myself reaching for this tea tin almost everyday. It is great for on-going nausea. The health benefits and endless. It relieves muscle aches, headaches, migraines, stress. And now that it feels like someone is sitting on my chest and I have a mean cough, I'm sure it will help to relieve some of this congestion in my chest. Mint Medley has been in my tea cup more than any tea as of late. It has really helped with my winter cough, congestion related to this bout of pneumonia. You can read my full review on The Persimmon Tree Tea Company Mint Teas.


RLT Collection AIDS Awareness Tea Ball!




Welcome to my world of books! As an pre-teen books changed my world. I fell in love with the writers of the Harlem Renaissance period and the more I read the more I wanted to read. The fiction of this period was powerful and empowering all at the same time. It spoke to my own degradation and gave me hope for a better tomorrow. It gave me purpose for my own life and the courage to fight the good fight and never surrender.

I love to read! Inside a book I escape into someone else's life. There is something wonderful about turning to the next page of a wonderful story. Something intoxicating about the smell of the book and the story it brings to life. Reading brings me joy, and these days with my health in the balance, I find solace in my books.

I spent hours in my bedroom sequestered with the door closed reading the classics from the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes, Larsen, Hurston, Wright and Baldwin. Books became my escape and my salvation. The fiction of this period was powerful and empowering all at the same time. It gave me purpose for my own life and the courage to fight the good fight and never surrender.

Reading is the one thing that the pain of my life could never take away from me. It was the thing that helped to make it better. And even today, living with AIDS, books continue to be the safest place for me. It’s the one thing that belongs to me that AIDS cannot take away from me.The RLTReads book club will be books that I choose. It’s me sharing a part of me with you that has nothing to do with AIDS. It’s actually in spite of AIDS.

The RLTReads book club will be books that I choose. It’s me sharing a part of me with you that has nothing to do with AIDS. It’s actually in spite of AIDS. I have read hundreds of books from many different genres and I will pick the best of my reads over the years. I warn you, it will not be exclusively white or black, male or female, fiction or non fiction, it will be all of them.

I’m so excited and I’m grateful to everyone who wants to be a part of this venture. We already have 110 Book Club Members. You can email me @ RLTReads@raelewisthornton.com. The Twitter hashtag is #RLTReads. We can make this book club as wonderful as we want to make it. Who says that Oprah has to have the only ownership to a wonderful book club?

This Month We are Reading In My Fathers House by E Lynn Harris


Read along and join our discussion July 19th at 7 pm CST







For more Tea with Rae "Vlogs" Click here to visit her youtube channel

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Depression, God and Staying Alive...

I've thought about suicide everyday since Robin Williams took his own life. The pain he must have felt at that moment must have been all consuming. I've been battling depression in the worst kind of way. I'm not sure how I got here but after Sophie passed I seemed to have gone over the edge. I talk about my grief and the onset of my depression in Drowning I and II. I saw myself slipping more and more into this darkness and tried to pull my way out with a plan that just went straight to hell in a hand basket one minute at a time. 

After Robin Williams death my mind started racing and I started to panic. I even asked my therapist about suicide and she said that most people don't give a lot of thought to it before they take their life. It's an impulsive act. The person becomes all consumed at the moment in time and it seems the only way out. In truth it scared me. Right now my life seems to be on some kind of autopilot run by someone other than me. No matter how hard I try I can't seem to do any of the things that I set out to do. It's like this, I say I'm going to go one way and I actually go another. Shit, most days I don't go at all, I just am. 

I came to the conclusion that I'm tired.... I'm tired of thinking.... I'm tired of taking medication... I'm tired of trying to make life happen... I'm tired of being this super famous black woman with AIDS... I'm tired of doing it on my own.. I'm tired of trying to save those that I'm suppose to be saving...  I'm tired of trying to make life work... I'm  FUCKING tired of AIDS... I'm tired of deciding if I should buy groceries or pay my cell phone bill with the little money I do manage to get. I'm tired, tired, tired. I'm even tired of being tired, so I just am.

Most days I don't have the energy to wash my tail. No joke, I can go 2-3 days without bathing. I say to myself, "Rae you stink" but most days I feel like I have a ball and chain around my neck and making it to the shower requires too much of me. So I do nothing. I marvel at the few times I've recently had commitments that were unavoidable and I was forced to make myself look like a woman with the world at my feet. When it's all said and done, I come home and with the stroke of a cloth I wipe the facade off my face, inch by inch by inch, and then I just am.



Some days I make it to the kitchen to cook at least the meat but cannot muster up the energy to make a vegetable. It's easier to eat cookies for breakfast and cheetoes for lunch. It requires only that I open the bag. Eating chocolate is even easier than washing fruit. I can't remember to take my medication and that's with my alarm set. I hit the button and I know what I'm suppose to do but doing it requires something of me. Quite frankly I'm tired of expectations, even those that will save my life.

I have never felt this level of hopelessness ever in my life. Even when mama was beating the living shit out of me I knew that she would eventually stop and I could go back to being a "normal" little girl just like my friends. Even when I was raped at 17 coming home from church, I knew deep down that when he finished his "business" he would roll off my body like water and I could go home and wash him out of my spirit. Even when my T-Cell count was 8 and I was on my third bout of PCP  (Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia) I had faith that God still had a plan. In all of my life there was faith in what I could not see. 

Right now, I'm even tired of faith. I'm tired of hoping and praying for better tomorrows in my right now pain. I want God to intervene in my right now, but right now he seems to be silent and His silence has exhausted me. I'm tired.... 

Be clear though, based on my history with God and my deep understanding of how God operates, I know that God has a plan for the rest of my life. Frankly, it is only that knowing of God that keeps me alive when I'm tired of living. I'm a tad curious on how this thing will play itself out. I'm probably just plain nosey, but for sure, curiosity and hope are two very different things 

Yet at the same time, any hope in God's plan for my tomorrow are overshadowed by my desolate right now. It feels like God has taken a freaking vacation on my life and just maybe some of my depression is connected to my faith; And honestly, church folk don't help God out one bit. The fact that I haven't been to church since the first day of Lent and the only thing any member of my church can tell you about me is what they read on Facebook is just... I'll leave that one alone for now.  I'm unpacking all of this in therapy. 

For sure, I understand that all consuming feeling and it has exhausted me into a place of just being.  Maybe the thing that helps to keep me alive besides my curiosity with God plan for my life, is that I'm just to tired to do anything other than just be. 
at 5:00 AM
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