This Black Woman and 6 Things to be Mindful of on Your Healing Journey

I can speak of healing a bit more casually now since for over five years I have been actively healing from the traumatic and life altering experiences that have shaped my reality up until now. If you don’t understand what it means to actively heal your life, it means assessing your life, relationships and experiences to see how they are affecting your current state of being and transforming those effects if necessary. We all have things that we need to heal. Some of them more influential in our lives than others. Healing, forgiving, and actively forming or repairing relationships, and self-love are all essential to thriving. Thriving is the operative word here. It means to prosper or to flourish. Yes, it’s debatable that going back through your childhood experiences to heal the effects that your absent father had on your sense of self is not necessary to having a great job and beautiful home and even a spouse or children. That’s true. However, true thriving is about wellness, and inner peace and self-love as much as it is about the accrual of material possessions. The way that issues manifest can’t often be seen by the naked eye, but they show up as an inner-unrest and they affect our relationships with ourselves and others.

 The unhealed parts of ourselves are easy to recognize when they manifest as drug dependency or drug abuse (both prescription and recreational), alcohol dependency or alcohol abuse, or other addictions such as food, sex, or unhealthy relationships. It’s a bit more inconspicuous when the compensation for an unhealed psyche manifests as overspending, overachieving, overcommitting, because these attributes are more socially acceptable. For some of us, were we to ever stop, the issues that we continue to deny would be right there waiting for us, so we must stay relentlessly busy, because we are not ready or willing to face them. Overspending, overachieving and overcommitting were all indicators of my unhealed experiences. I loved starting new projects, volunteering, and working incessantly hard. I especially loved buying beautiful things that deflected away from my low sense of self-worth. Meanwhile, the unhealed parts of me were constantly grasping for my attention, demanding to be heard, and insisting that we can not go on like this. I would over commit and burn out and not be able to follow through on what I started, pause just long enough to catch my breath and do it all again. Tainted ambition was my cryptonite. If only I could just listen to what was crying out from within me. It’s amazing how we can fix our minds on an objective that will supposedly improve the quality of our lives, whether it’s a raise or better job, a vacation, new home or an expensive pair of shoes, but when the basic outcry for healing erupts from within us, it creates a panic and we avoid it all costs. We will work tirelessly to defend our façade of perfection or strength, all while we let the truest parts of our own Soul suffocate.

The beautiful thing is that we are in the age of consciousness and so many people are waking up. More people are realizing that we have left the times of our ancestors behind. The blind survival grind, the do whatever it takes to go on at the expense of our health and well-being time, is up. We evolve or we die. Evolution looks like healing. Evolution looks like becoming the whole-hearted, fully functioning human being who experiences the full range of emotions, that you were meant to be. This can be a conscious choice or in time, life may move on you to help you make that decision. Yes, you could possibly go to your grave with all the internal scars, hidden traumas, and secret shames. The problem is that you would have lived a life where you let all of those things that you want to pretend don’t exist, affect your choices, decisions, interactions, ambitions, relationships and so on. Nothing will be unscathed by your negligence and if you were to have successors, it’s likely they will not have been bequeathed the ability to show up in the world as whole-hearted beings the way they were intended. Therein the generational tragedy of fractured existence ensues. Hopefully, there’s always hope, they will be the one to end the curse. I will end the generational curse of bequeathing trauma for myself and the bloodline that follows through me. It is my hope for you to make that conscious choice for you and your family. Healing makes us more compassionate human beings and if there was ever a quality we could use a huge dose of for the sake of the human race, it’s compassion.

Not everyone values this beautiful, arduous process of healing your life. I made the mistake of thinking that other people will value all of the wonderful things that I was working through within myself. Whether it was debunking old beliefs or releasing shame, I had to realize that my progress was falling on deaf ears with some. I’m not referring to randomly speaking with strangers at the grocery store about my journey. I often found myself at a loss of connection with people within my close inner circle. Because they were not doing or had not done the work, they had no point of reference for what I was expressing. It was frustrating, but I lived and learned. This is just one of a several things that I had to learn to be mindful of on my spiritual and healing journey. Here are some of the others.

1. Be hella discerning. Healing your life, especially when you come out the other side is a very freeing and empowering experience. It is invaluable to truly be at peace with who you are and what you have experienced, even if it was done to you. Conversely, the vulnerability of being in the muck of healing can have you shrouded in insecurities. In both respects, be hella discerning with whom you decide to share your healing journey. When you have worked through an issue and you still have others to work through, trying to celebrate with someone who doesn’t understand the significance of the work you have done can be discouraging to your healing journey, especially for the work left to be done. Likewise with any healing you are in the middle of, you have to be careful of with whom you share your struggles or the details of your current issues. To have someone invalidate what you are actively working through by downplaying its importance can be downright destructive. Be discerning and protect yourself as you are healing your life.

2. Not all advice is good advice. This calls for more discernment. In this, I refer to advice that you may receive from people that do understand the healing journey as well. Not everything is meant for your particular journey, even if it comes from well meaning individuals. The worst advice I’ve ever received and I’m glad I didn’t take it was to share a video publicly on social media that I had shared in a private community where I was expressing the revelation of a repressed memory of being sexually assaulted when I was fifteen years old. My ex-coach encouraged me to share my video publicly and warned that it could go viral. Yeah, no. I didn’t even have to ponder this. I had not done any work to heal through the trauma yet. Sharing that revelation prematurely and so publicly would have been detrimental to my healing. That was terrible advice. For this reason and several others, that’s my ex-coach. Not all advice is good advice.

3. Learn to trust your intuition. This is essential. Trusting your intuition is a feat to start off, especially if you are accustomed to suppressing and ignoring your feelings. Healing has a way of developing our intuition and strengthening your connection with the Creator. A heightened intuition is a perfect compliment to being spiritually attuned. Intuition is the way that you access, download if you will, your Divine instructions that come from the Creator. Your intuition is your greatest gauge for discernment. Learn to listen to and trust the still small voice within offering invaluable insight.

4.Trust the process for you. It may mean stumbling over the same issues a few times. It may feel as though you may never get past the pain. Your healing journey may cause you to end relationships or affect your ability to function at levels you were used to. You may be called to change directions and use what you have learned to bless the lives of others, and it may not seem like you can do it. It is important to trust whatever the process is for you. From the outside looking into your life, you may appear weak or flaky or confused even. Honestly, because healing is sometimes deconstructive, that may be true. Be gentle and patient with yourself. It is natural for us to want others to understand and revel in or joy or excitement for our journey through life or simply empathize, but with healing in particular it is very hard. Often times, people that are not acutely healing see your healing as a spotlight for their own, and they may not want to look at that yet. They also just may not understand and that’s okay. You have to learn to trust your journey for yourself.

5. Seek out help. I know. The first four points I’ve made here would lead you to believe that you have to have your guards high and do this healing journey all on your own. On the contrary, because this journey can feel so lonely and isolated, I highly recommend seeking out help. I definitely, 100% recommend therapy whether you are actively healing through things or not. Having a licensed individual equipped with psychological tools to help you navigate and process experiences and their effects on you can be essential to thriving. There are also social media communities or support groups you can join that will allow you to converse and connect with like minds. Fellowship can be healing in itself. I would encourage you still to be discerning, determine the best advice for yourself, learn to trust your intuition and trust the process for your own healing.

6. Don’t underestimate the importance of healing. Living with a sense of unrest within yourself can feel like the norm if you have never felt lasting peace. Comparing yourself to your parents or grandparents (my fellow POC especially) and their ability to persevere and be unaffected by what they have experienced is often the reasoning behind carrying on the tradition of not addressing the need to heal. When you know better, you know that a fractured existence, an existence where you are not wholly yourself or free to be yourself because of shame , guilt , or fear is merely survival. For many of our predecessors, all they could do was survive. There was no freedom to process an abusive marriage or parental relationship, or the effects of racism on the psyche, or even to determine what healthy relationships should look like. We reflect on our predecessors as unaffected by all that they encountered, but they weren’t. They were human. There is no way they could not have been. Many of us will never be lucky enough to see them heal their lives or at the very least express how they were affected. We are fortunate in that we are past the point of taking life as it comes, and we have moved into a space that allows us to more freely manifest the existence that we desire. It’s hard to do that when you are so disconnected from yourself due to unresolved pain and trauma that you can’t discern what you want or deserve, let alone who you truly are. You can always package up and try to maintain this impeccable façade that is unaffected by life and sell that package of who you are to the world. Being unhealed doesn’t necessarily affect your ability to achieve and acquire things externally. We have plenty of evidence of that in the world.

The tragedy is that your children and grandchildren will go forth and attempt to mimic your unhealed behaviors as wholeness and chastise themselves for being affected by things that should genuinely affect them. Imagine if you will being a person that is hurt, deeply hurt by another person or some experience and finding a way to heal from it. Not ignore it and pretend to be unbothered, but genuinely process the experience, how it truly affected your outlook on yourself and your life, and determine what that means for you as you go forward. Imagine being deeply disappointed with yourself or someone else and doing the same thing. Imagine experiencing a huge loss that rocks your faith and being able to do the same thing. Whether it’s experiencing infidelity, being raped or molested, or experiencing the death of a close loved one, the ugliest of the ugly can be healed. It’s possible! It’s a choice, but it’s possible. To choose healing is to choose wholeness. HEAL. EMPOWER. THRIVE.

This Black Woman and Managing Stress Amidst a Pandemic

In the midst of this COVID-19 world pandemic, it has become evident to many of us that it is hard to be “okay” when we are finding ourselves more still and less busy than usual. I’d like to think that my life has not changed very much being a solopreneur that only worked part-time outside the home, but I was wrong. I also found myself immediately unprepared to deal with the heightened level of stress that we have all been subjected to in this time of uncertainty. Like many of us, I just melted into the delightful “avoidance-activities” like binge-watching and social media. I finally got to the point where these once enjoyable activities became just another source of anxiety. So in taking a step back, I was able to return to myself and a state of calm, closer to my usual demeanor, by reminding myself that there is always uncertainty when dealing with the future. I also reminded myself that stress is often just unprocessed energy or fear and decided to involve myself in activities that deal with it head on. Here are some activities and tools that have worked for me. Take what you will and tailor them to your own life and ability. 

1.     Exercise! Not just any old exercise-if you are healthy enough, do some HIIT (high intensity-interval training) exercises. Get your heart rate up and get the energy moving through your body it will help clear some of the thoughts from your head as well as of the restless, trapped energy in your body. Some examples of HIIT exercises are burpees, jumping rope, starbursts, and jumping jacks. Get your heart rate up and get that stress level down. (HIIT exercises can often be physically challenging, so choose modified versions of HIIT exercises based on your physical ability if needed, and always be careful when deciding on an exercise plan.)

2.     Meditate. The same as with exercise, this will not be your normal calm breath in-breathe out meditation. To counteract the high levels of fear and anxiety that you may be experiencing, try some Power Breaths. Power Breaths are short, controlled breaths made in and out through the nose, by expanding and contracting the lower belly. Take a deep breath in on the last breath and release it slowly. You will feel the stress melt away from your mind and the tension release from your shoulders. Repeat as necessary. Power Breaths are very powerful in sets. You can do 10, 20 or 100 at a time. Start small and work your way up to avoid hyperventilating. Power Breaths are a quick, effective way to reset your nervous system. Just take a moment, close your eyes (if safe to) and breath away the stress. 

3.     Express it! Write it out. It doesn’t have to be an official journal entry or even make sense to anyone, but you. Grab a pen and some paper and really write out the thoughts and fears you are having. It often helps to see them on paper. It makes them tangible, unlike when they are looming overwhelmingly in or racing rampantly through your mind. Write out the things that are causing you fear worry or stress and take the time to examine the validity of each thing. (If you are worried about someone else seeing your fears expressed in writing, simply destroy it after you’ve had time to process.) When you evaluate your fears, if you find one that is legitimate and you don’t know what to do about it, talk about it with a trusted friend or confidant. This is where coaches and therapists really shine (objective parties), by helping you work through it. Book a session.

4.     Plan out your day and week. If you are one of the thousands of people with additional time on your hands amidst this pandemic, it may feel unimportant to plan out what you will do daily because you have so much time to get things done. On the contrary, having too much time with no structure to it  makes it hard to decipher what is actually getting done. (Note: Avoiding structuring your time may  be a symptom of the stress or fear caused by the uncertainty we are facing in the world. It can be paralyzing.) Creating a structure for your daily activities that reflects your new circumstances can impact your mental health and stress levels in a positive way. It can restore a sense of control to this situation where it otherwise feels we have very little. Write out what needs to be done in your household, for yourself and your job or business over the next weekly period and decide which day and time you will be doing it. Even plan your binge-watching so that it has an end time. This will lead to productivity and a feeling of moving forward, even while you shelter-in-place.

5.     Talk with someone. In our world that includes such fabulous social media platforms as the centre for connection, it is easy to feel like we are talking to others all the time. However, in our world of constant visibility, there still remains a stigma concerning vulnerability. The “talking” I describe here is not the polished, methodical sharing we do on social media. It’s the raw, deep stuff that you only reserve for trusted parties like, confidants, coaches and therapists. Many coaches and therapists offer virtual services. (I do!) Talk with someone that will allow you to get it all out in a healthy, safe way. As for time with your friends, that can also be therapeutic, you may not get to meet for a coffee or a cocktail in person, but you can certainly do it over video chat and have great laughs and conversations. By the way, my Clarity Sessions are perfect for talking through issues. Book one now. 

6.     Pause. Practice mindfulness. Before you respond, “yes”- when Netflix asks if you are still watching or before you take another trip to the kitchen for anything other than water, or make another online purchase, ask yourself- “Is this what I need right now?” Need being the operative word. It’s so easy to let our wants rule our boredom, but taking a pause to be mindful and reflecting on how our seemingly minute, inconsequential decisions are affecting the big picture can save us from unnecessary stress, now and in the future.

Mental health is just as important as physical health, and stress is a known threat to both. Please choose a few of the tips that I have shared and start now implementing them to manage your stress levels. Take care of yourself, in these challenging times and everyday. There is only one wonderful you in this world and you are needed here in all of your brilliance. Love to you!