blacker the berry.

the sweeter life could be

There was no pain or discomfort. It was a smooth and delicate process as half of my tooth cracked in my mouth. In complete shock, I hit the blunt again while meaning to put it out. Rotten to the core, blackened by the sweet tooth that I fight to deny, my hands shake as I observe the result of my misguided stress.

Breathe. I must remind myself to unclinch my jaw as I share this vulnerable experience. People ask me so often how I demonstrate such vulnerability in my writing and I realize imposter syndrome has worked in my favor. In my experience, imposter syndrome has served as a dual form of protection. It blinds me to my potential by following a patterned behavior.

The last time I was in the chair at the dentist's office I was seventeen, and he told me back then if I didn’t get my wisdom teeth removed I would have a road ahead of discomfort in my mouth. I opted in for a lifetime of discomfort and pain at the thought of my tooth being removed from my mouth and I’m just watching the whole thing go down. I think not. But now, this same tooth is cracked leaving a void in my mouth, the same void I’ve been trying to fill for years finding my worthiness in this world.

If I told you my biggest secret would you keep it? Pinky promise me!

One of my greatest fears is someone saying that I am a fraud, a fake, or lying. And for this reason, I keep receipts, and I openly tell my shortcomings before the opportunity is seized by someone else. I remember it starting as early as fifth grade, but the most traumatic one was in college. This guy came to my job recording a video of me saying that I owed him money and asking me for it back.

It was so embarrassing, even now, my shoulders have dropped, and my head hangs low as I revisit that twenty-something-year-old me just trying to survive. I asked him because I trusted him, and that wound rotted my trust in others.

I wrote a piece titled this bitch tortures me, and I was referencing my full potential as a hard-ass harassing me about the things I could have done better.

The more I sit with myself as a safe space, rather than before a judge, I realize that voice is not my full potential but hindsight. Although I have not yet met my full potential, I am aware that my most gentle version of myself is more associated with it. While the bitch that tortures me is a hoe named hindsight.

She always has something to say after the fact, never considering the situation. Hindsight reminds me that shit ain’t always sweet.

I got a text from my mom with a picture of a framed Change List affirmation board I created to prepare me for college in 2008. As I read the words of my eighteen-year-old self, tears took over, blurring my vision and sprinting down my face. I have been throwing hands with hindsight and she has been whooping my ass.

The photo didn’t fit the aesthetic I wanted for this piece, so I decided to do a then vs. now take on the expectations I placed on myself during a major time in my life.

• Attitude: Understand more, the world does not revolve around me all the time.

  • Now, I struggle with showing up in the world receiving recognition for my work, and feeling worthy of it.

• Clean: You’re going to college in a year it’s time to change and not have a dirty house/dorm like loved ones we know.

  • Now, I find myself clinching my jaws, my body tense, unable to function and irritated when I am in spaces that are not spotless to my OCD standards.

    • Just like my mom was going up.

• Style: Dress more classy. You don’t have to wear all the tight clothes, dress like you know you are the fliest thing around town. Teen Vogue wants more of your style, not Myspace.com.

  • Now, I am still struggling to develop my personal style.

    • My problem is knowing what fabrics, styles, and sizes work best with my body type. I went to college for fashion, so putting together an outfit is never the issue, but more of my confidence once I put the pieces on my body because it’s likely not the right size.

      

• Music: More R&B less Rap. You are not a hood rat. Chris Brown and Trey Songz are great artists. God doesn’t want you cursing in songs if you don’t curse at all!

  • Now, broke free from this belief and found messages through lyrics.

    • This timeline shows so much when it comes to the cultural conditioning of Black music, in 2008, we thought Chris Brown was a good guy meanwhile, a year later, before getting to college, the Rihanna situation happened.

• Shopping: NO MORE! You have more things to spend your money on now. We are not going through college asking Mom and Dad for everything.

  • Now, I suffer from intense guilt anytime I spend money on myself.

• Friends: Stop giving everybody your all. Put your guard 10 feet higher. Guys with no morals are nothing to you! Do you want to waste another six months with someone like ********? You can do much better babes!

  • And now, my most viewed and engaged piece is about me unsubscribing from Substack friends. I didn’t learn the lesson there until this year, but I am grateful for my marriage to my beautiful wife.

We can agree these things did not age very well, further proving the conditionings of our culture. But my self-talk is the same at times I’m embarrassed to admit.

And that’s not always hindsight, negative self-talk reminds me daily shit ain’t sweet.

I consistently found reasons to prove why the world didn’t revolve around me and needed to stop investing time and focus on myself as if I were this special person. As a result, I conditioned myself to listen closely to the needs of the people around me and put all my focus and energy into finding the solution to their problem, whether they asked me to or not.

I started to decondition from the need to fix people during the initiation of my rite of passage home. My birth chart placements told me a couple of key themes that were designed to trigger a sequence of pivots. When Pluto entered Capricorn during my senior year of high school, my foundation destruction began. I’ve been clocked in working on my self-demolition overtime since 2008 because that’s the Capricorn thing to do. With the blueprint in front of me, I have been rebuilding my home the way it feels best.

For lifetimes, my focus has been on the bloodline that raised me. I was taught to be loyal to those you call family instead of those who feel like family. My North Node in Capricorn redirected me to navigate my focus on myself, but most importantly, what satisfies me. With this major pivot in life, the lesson learned over the past sixteen years is that my cup must runneth over always, it isn’t my responsibility to fill anyone else’s cup. I will not pour from my cup to pour into others because my focus is always on filling my own, the people close to me benefit from the ripple effect.

My path to freedom has been this three-step process I discovered a couple of years ago¹ and it continues to build.

1. Acceptance of Our Childhood

   1. I had to accept that my childhood was a deeply rooted conditioning and not take it personally once I discovered my negative self-talk was a repeat of what was being said to me.

2. Acknowledge the Cultural Conditioning

   1. I had to acknowledge the cultural conditioning for me to decondition myself for the majority of the first half of my adult life. A lot of the things I struggled to unlearn were so deeply embedded within my DNA I had to give myself permission to be okay without my “Black Card” to prove my Blackness.

3. Embrace Your Freedom

   1. By redefining some of the conditioned beliefs I have been able to relearn what feels good for me and that’s been freeing.

“With consistency comes confidence. It’s a beautiful thing when you finally get to meet yourself. I reached a level of growth that most don’t, that’s why I talk that talk that most won’t.”

Jiaani

At six years old, the Universe placed a vision in my frontal lube that has been my life compass. Pluto has been in my sixth house for sixteen years, deconstructing how I feel about navigating my daily life. Over a decade of pivoting and course redirection, led me to where I need to be.

Alignment.

Divine alignment.

Maybe that’s why it’s been sixteen years since I sat in the dentist's office as a patient. One day, I realized my life didn’t look like the girls that had it all and that I perhaps may not ever have it all. I told myself I wasn’t worthy of it because I didn’t have a body that looked like those girls, so I turned it into a vault for the weight of my words. Nourishing my sweet tooth to pacify the grief of my dreams lost deep in the shadows imprisoned to my convictions.

The discomfort in my mouth was rooted in my sweet obsession that I wasn’t one of the successful ones, but more of the next best.

A discounted version, the knock-off.

I want to be a boss, but I complain about the cost. The truth revealed it’s time to enter another pivot. I’m learning that health is wealth, freedom is a mindset, joy is an experience, money is a tool, and exhaust work into my passion projects.

Now, I don’t mind paying the cost to be the boss because I learned how to be one. I curated myself into my definition of success. My new dentist is waterfront, you see the boats loading the dock while you get your teeth cleaned.

Mama, I made it!

1. My background before coming to Substack was in community service work to educate Black people on spiritual awakening to set ourselves free to live our desired lives. This three-step process is a part of my spiritual teaching on navigating life’s pivots. I taught a masterclass for $100 a seat that sold out (replay link below), and I wrote about this process in my book, UN-TRAP DA HOOD.