Month: March 2016

Reaching Out

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The single greatest skill I learned in undergrad was how to ask for help and support. I know that seems ridiculously simplistic. And perhaps it may even seem like a huuuuge waste of tuition dollars (considering Wesleyan’s price tag, this is probably true haha). But the older I get, the more I realize how foundational this skill is.

Specifically, I’m referring to:  How to ask for help || When to ask || Who to ask it from

Knowing the above adds up to you being a better, more functional, more evolved individual. It is the acknowledgement that no one person can do all things, be all things, hold all things, and endure all things. It’s the recognition that help exists if only you ask. It recognizes that humans are fundamentally social beings. We need each other like we need oxygen. The absence of either leaves us dead. Yet, we are rarely proactively taught this skill. Even worst, we are at times shamed for asking for help; for reaching out to others.

It’s in this context that I learned the other element to reaching out: you gatta be deliberate. Who you ask for help is just as important as how you ask. Recently, I had a particularly shitty day where I felt someone was intentionally, maliciously undermining me. After leaving this situation, all I wanted to do was rage (re: cry) to the first person I saw about how unfair and unwarranted this was.

But I forgot to choose carefully who I opened up to. I forgot that not everyone is capable of responding to your need for help, and certainly not everyone is well-intentioned. There are some that hear your story and their immediate reaction is, “Oh you didn’t know that that’s how the world works? Well where you been?” There are others who will say, “That’s bad, but my day was even worse” (these are actual responses I heard -___- ). Both responses invalidated my experience and left me feeling anything but helped or supported. In fact, they made me feel bad for even having this seemingly inconsequential problem.

Instead, empathy is what you really need from someone. Salt of the earth empathy. Not condemnation or minimization. This empathy will come from your tribe. Your tribe are the people in your life who will hear what you’re saying, absorb it, make you feel as okay as possible, and help you work through ways to solve the problem. They make you feel a little less alone and they will “show up and wade through the deep with you.” And maybe…just maybe, you will even leave the conversation laughing when at first there were tears.

Find your tribe. They’re out there.

And know that help is just an ask away.

“Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.” – the ever illuminating, Dumbledore

Taking Stock

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I had a great conversation with Marie-Eve a few weeks back. I am so grateful for the friendship we have cultivated. She is a best friend and family in so many ways. As we were talking she offhandedly praised me for really making the best of my time at home. For doing all the things I said I wanted to do: eating better, yoga, making a blog, my video journal, and going natural. It made my heart smile with gratitude. She said I was doing so much better and I looked happy.

That moment was unexpected but so deeply needed.

Truthfully, I’m working my way to happy, but I’m not there yet. I want to be joyful not in spite of anyone or anything, but simply because I am.

I cut my hair off because I needed to feel like I was walking towards change instead of being dragged, for once.

I started yoga because it touches a part of me that needs healing and strength.

I started a video journal because my spirit needs to remember the sweet moments and days as much as my tear ducts remember the hard ones.

I write because the writings of others have literally carried me to salvation.

I want to be a fuller version of myself. For too long I lay broken and shattered across the eastern seaboard, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from monuments to sand dollars. I left shards everywhere I went and I picked up new splinters along the way. Now I’m back in harbour, picking up the pieces, molding a new figure, and breathing life and light to that being. I want to love the person I will become. I want to love her fiercely. I want her to forgive me. And I want to forgive. I want her to set boundaries, healthy ones, and live true. I want her to feel powerful and worthy of all the sweetness this world has to offer. I want her to be imbued with strength, vulnerability, and most importantly, wholeness.

And I want the same for you, whoever you are reading this.

“Don’t let anyone take your magic away. Not even you.” – M 

3 Ring Circus

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This post was surprisingly harder than most. I can’t quite capture how utterly panicked I am about the state of modern day politics in the US and the Bahamas. We are now 8 months out from the US general election and (presumably) 14 months or so out from the Bahamas’s general election. Yet I am completely, utterly exhausted with it all. But it’s like I can’t escape from the 24-hr news cycle of doom. One or the other is making news for the new lows elected leaders and those jockeying for elected positions are willing to go.

So here’s where the shit hits the fan for me:

I assumed Americans would see pass the toxic sideshow of Donald Drumpf months ago and force him into the footnotes of political circus-dom. I assumed the deep-seated levels of apathy in Bahamians would finally be broken by the blatant corruption and lack of accountability in our governmental ranks. These assumptions have proven wrong…thus far (but please prove me wrong).

Instead, all I continue to see are core values of equality, basic human respect, compassion, tolerance, progressive social responsibility, and good old fashioned justice disappearing faster and faster.

So is it me? Am I getting something wrong?

Some stories give me hope that people are fighting against the tides of corruption, bigotry, fear-mongering, and demagoguery. But mostly I feel exceptionally pessimistic, which is not a default setting for me. And I honestly don’t know what to do.

At best I try to remember that others have not given up. I try to think about all the courageous people I know who strive every day to actively make our world a little less cruel and a lot more equal. Those who are activists in heart, mind and action, and speak out against all forms of injustice. I wonder how they do it every day. Because while I am tired, I recognize that I haven’t even begun a fraction of the work they have done. And the longer I sit on the proverbial sidelines, the more ashamed I feel. There is so much work to be done. What am I doing to help besides feeling sorry for the state of things? What are any of us doing besides complaining?

 

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.” ― Elie Wiesel

Photo credit: Ringling Bro. Circus

Becoming

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Be easy.
Take your time.
You are coming
Home.
To yourself

 

– “the becoming | wing” by Nayyirah Waheed

 

Growth can feel tedious, exhausting and unfair at times. Especially when it is punctuated by loss. As I’ve talked about before, no one warns you about the amount of mourning there is in growth. And maybe no one has to…

This poem gives me hope more than anything else. The idea is that as difficult and soul-crushing as growth and change can be, try to be easy on yourself. Treat yourself as kindly as you wished the universe would sometimes. Be compassionate and soothing to yourself in ways you haven’t received from those you trusted. Just know: no amount of warning can change what needs to be experienced.

Know that taking your time is elemental to happiness. Because movement is happening. Even if you feel despairingly stuck. Even if you feel like you’ve diverged from the dream you had for yourself, for love, for your career, for communion with friends. Movement is there, always. You are coming home. And home: home is the purest form of who you need to be in this world and who the world needs you to be. Home is protective and empowering. Home is love that endures.

Home is you.

Video Project: February 2016

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February was a great month for so many reasons. The month started with me cutting all my hair off and ended with a leap day of sunshine. Somewhere in the middle, we wished an old friend good luck as she starts a new journey in Australia, and I forgot to film Feb. 26.

I think one of the most fascinating side effects of this project is me opting in so much more. Those who know me well know that I’m more likely to be found in quiet spaces (namely, my bed) or with close friends, than out & about in a crowd of a hundred strangers. I often find all the ways possible to opt out of flashy social events, for fear that I won’t enjoy it or that my awkward turtle-ness will come out. But with this project, I find myself saying “yes” more often to invitations; if only to get a good video clip. But maybe that’s okay. There’s a world to be explored and captured. I should be opting in more often. So with that: here’s February 2016. A month full of being brave.