Torture has probably been my preferred choice of punishment since I can remember.
The sick part about it is that I have gotten creative over the years into manipulating myself into thinking certain punishments were “medicines.”
There are two that immediately come to mind: my need to overwork for rewards that are, in reality, basic needs, and I convinced myself that my inner beauty needed to reflect my outer beauty, so I stopped all self-care practices driving myself into my deepest state of depression to date. What I did was condition myself to prove my worthiness to tend to my basic needs.
However, I’ve grown up to learn that my torture was never necessary because I punished myself for things that were divinely put in place for the plot.
We could call it character development.
A Scorpio Sun sign, I’m conditioned to go deep beyond the surface of things, but my awareness reiterates that was a part of the story building. The poverty mindset, the unspoken rivalry, the overthinking - “Get out of your head, you’re just creating new issues.” The path is laid out in full, but I’ve been hyper-focused on the details of the past, not looking ahead to what’s to come and celebrating what is here.
This week’s creative article is a curation I put together to show how much I’ve been strategically aligned, and I’ve documented my pivots the whole time. Someone pointed this out to me in a conversation on Instagram, she found me through one of my Substack articles and I won’t lie it got me to thinking. And then I came to the realization that I’ve cleared the fog that keep my full potential or my higher self at a distance. Now it feels like my mind is at tug-a-war with my human self and my full potential. The problem child is my human self while my full potential has now taken over the show, and my awareness is the narrator and storyteller.
Old Me on May 31, 2023
Moment of transparency.
I know some of y’all have been telling me to rest. Some of you know and see my day-to-day. Some don’t, some can’t see cause I make this shit look easy.
Well, today I hit my official burnout point. It was not fun. Thank goodness it happened at home before I had to start training…see that within itself is crazy.
I was brought on to a business to manage the operations to get the store opened. I never realized just how BOSS I am. Listen, within two months, I’ve hired an employee, currently training the new employee, creating the employee handbook, building a second website, and designing a mock logo for the design team. Not to mention all the other shit that had to be done to get to this point. CRAZY!!!
Because in that same timeframe, I’ve cultivated and grown my Hood Therapy events. I’ve been working closely with my artists who show up and we have some crazy projects we are working on.
All while still being a full-time mom.
The problem is I overwork myself and I don’t know when to rest.
After all this I do daily I come home and after the kid goes to bed I start working again. So this Friday at Hood Therapy Concert - I’m letting loose and vibing. It’s an acoustic concert with some cultural vibes in the mix.
Hood Therapy is going to be in your city soon so this one is going to set the tone for what’s to come in your city if you ain’t in mine.
Meanwhile, please let me rest after Friday cause ya girl is TIRED, BOSS!
New Me in October 2024
I’ve found a new balance in this chapter of my life. From romanticizing life to romanticizing a new identity, I have reached a point where I’m romanticizing myself. I’m looking within to find the romance while searching to discover what my wife found when she fell in love with me.
Moment of transparency. I’m growing into a new version I don’t recognize, and it’s exactly the person I dreamed of becoming. As a child, I had a clear vision and understanding that I would become powerful and influential and change the world. But that vision was too big, who I was meant to become was out of reach and the judgment she would endure to become that person would be unbearing. As a child, my awareness knew I would live my life out of balance to avoid judgment, so it formed my ego to shrink daily to keep my reality from matching the vision.
That open vow I made to rest on May 31, 2023, has been the cure that led to me finding a new balance. I took the focus off of a Black business that did not value my work and put that focus on my own Black business. I rebranded, found my path for redirection, and curated a life full of rest, love, support, and satisfaction in abundance.
I’m a visionary. I used to view myself as a creator. However, I’m a visionary, and that’s how I curate. I’ve curated my entire life from a vision I was given as a little girl, and I’ve carried that vision with me for a lifetime until I accepted the call to become her. She has always lived within me, torturing me to be better at stepping into my full potential, which now I know is advertised as the unknown. I had to rest from the hustle and grind lifestyle to unlearn overworking in order to pivot into fulfillment and satisfaction through creative exhaustion. I redefined how success looks and how it feels to show up for the right community versus a group of energy vampires.
The vision has always been for me to put my energy, focus, care, and love into myself and my endeavors first, allowing only my overflow to reach the ones close in connection to me. My energy is valuable, my connection is electrifying. When handled without the proper caution, it’s damaging. I wore my warning label but took the damage for others’ foolishness. Now I’m soaking up all this good shit that has aligned for me in divine timing, with slow mornings and out-of-the-office email auto-replies.
Old Me on February 27, 2023
It’s crazy just three months ago I was crying over a nigga thinking dating was about to be a wrap for me. Now I’m getting pretty princess treatment sometimes without even giving my name.
5:55 on the clock as I type this, talk about divine mfing transformation! Shit.
The energy has been crazy. I thought the women experiencing pretty princess treatment were “working” for it but now that I’ve shifted into my feminine energy and learned what balance between the two looks like…it’s not what I thought.
Pretty princess treatment is almost like checkmate rewards along your journey that are there to receive. The key is to be open to receiving. Not being so quick to react to a trigger but learning to respond after you’ve experienced the trigger and learned the lesson.
You know the experiences we have are for us not the person we are holding at fault for causing the trigger. A lot of times we miss that opportunity to learn and grow by focusing too much on the person “responsible” for the trigger rather than the root connection to the trigger.
Shoutout to the Black men who book with me regularly for energy healing and who have been the reinforcement in me recognizing my worth. I recognized I’m a high-value woman and now I am attracting more high-value men. The more I focus on myself the more I look up and receive gifts from the Universe testing me to see if I’m ready for my person.
While I would love to be in love I’m deciding to experience the TRUE love that surrounds me. The people that truly love me and value me here right now and it feels fucking amazing. What I thought a partner would provide I already feel, so my partner can literally come in as an addition to my life! I don’t want him to complete me because I’m focusing on being whole within myself first, loving me loud and proud. But I want him to be able to share experiences with me and for us to cultivate something together.
One day I’mma just write a book cause these captions be hitting.
New Me in October 2024
“One day I’mma just write a book cause these captions be hitting.” How did I know that a year later, I would start writing not only writing my book but I would start writing my chronicles in this way?
“Fucking up my chakras again. I don’t need nobody.” I remember when this was my mindset after realizing the spiritual guru lifestyle would only leave me with a broken heart chakra and imbalanced sacral chakra if I continued the love-bombing cycle. I was so broken and emotionally manipulated into believing that I was the one who was undeserving of the love I desired. I was the problem, asking for things I did not deserve, but one day that spell broke.
I realized, wait, my daughter is learning that love is hard work and suffering. My love life was her demonstration of love and this was not the image I needed implanted in her subconscious of what Black love represented. It is not a struggle, nor is it suffering.
Love is healing. Love is pure. Love is peace. Love is expansive and expensive both at the same time. Love is you. Love is a reflection.
My self-discovery journey has taught me that love recognizes you once you have acknowledged it. I found love once I gave up on love. I was no longer looking for love because I believed love was never looking for me.
Looking for love in all the wrong places, in the arousal of a man exploring deep within my portal of life. Allowing men to misuse and abuse such a sacred portal a valuable that I have reclaimed as mine but share willingly with my wife. It was never for them, but I used it as a tool to hear those words, “I love you one day I’mma make you mine.”
I didn’t understand my obsession with being the one to soften the heart of a Black man was draining me of my power as a Black woman. **Trigger Warning** Two physically abusive relationships, a forced rape experience, a miscarriage after the situationship breakup, and years of operating with a band-aid barely covering my massive daddy wound bleeding out from the center of my chest. Not to mention all the other traumatic experiences sprinkled in for a little razzle-dazzle. It’s safe to assume that back on February 27, 2023, although I was in a great place mentally I still had no clue of my habit of self-torture.
Looking back on the date, I met my wife the same month. We talk about it all the time, how when we met, we were both on our own healing journey, praying for our life partner and being redirected back within. She had to learn how to love herself to recognize my love, and I had to learn how to love myself so I could experience nurturing love to accept hers.
Our marriage is everything I prayed for, and it feels like a reward for me taking the time to focus on myself. What I thought would take years happened when I least expected it. My prayer to grow with my life partner was answered because since being with Lexi, my entire life has transformed into everything I prayed to become if love ever found me.
A year later, we were preparing to get on our flight to Las Vegas to elope, and I launched my presale for the book I wrote with actual sales. Yesterday, October 1, made a year since we sold everything and moved out of our downtown apartment in NC. Today we are comfortably living in our downtown apartment in CA - which was our intention when we started the mission home.
She gave me a choice. I am forever grateful for the time I invested in loving myself which allowed me to recognize what she offered me was exactly what I had been praying for. She was my answered prayer, and I was hers.
This gave me so much hope❤️🥹