Unaltered Voices

Photo by STEPHEN POORE on Unsplash I remembered these words  “Just Be Nice” spoken to me often. After hearing it one too many times, my inner man rejected it, and I rebelled. I began to become frustrated, and I felt pimped.  It did not matter how deplorable treatment towards me was; I was encouraged to remain silent, translating into denying my feelings and suck it up. You need them right now, so chill out; you may need them in the future, so don’t start anything; you are wrong for how you feel, the violation is acceptable, it is okay to be mistreated and mishandled, it is okay to receive less than what I deserve from man. Just be nice to them and not hold anyone accountable for their ways and how they mistreat me. Suck it up and keep pushing; the 2% is better than nothing. However, it is a different story if someone says I am the culprit. It is “off with her head at that point.”   This magnitude of settling is an automatic response due to conditioning. We wa...

Photo by  Aimee Vogelsang  on  Unsplash HELP, why is this happening to me?  Why am I going in circles? Do I fight through this, or do I succumb to the pain? When does it end? I cannot keep this up. The robust exterior, while internally I am fragmented, is over. I cannot do this anymore. The pretend has worn off, and I can no longer keep up appearances. It is showing up in everything I do. I am attracting more of how I feel than what I want. More brokenness, more hurt, more pain. Everything I touch turns into the state of my being. I didn’t meet my goals; I stop before I start. With every setback, I relived the trauma I experienced ten years ago. It doesn’t matter how big or small; it all hurts the same. I am tired, and I want to be free. Whatever that is, I want to be me. Pieces of me are everywhere. I am shattering more with everyone I find; what will I have left? These were the thoughts that ran through my mind during those severely depressive states....

Casualty- a person killed, wounded, or hindered by some event. Medically speaking, this word means a severe or fatal accident.    You can be a casualty of your childhood trauma, but this article is about how we fail to pay attention because we are so in love, which causes us to suffer in relationships. Has an event wounded you? Was the blow of the pain incapacitating? Were you able to catch your breath, or did you find yourself paralyzed by the hurt you suffered? In a single moment, the trajectory of your life can change. One minute you are enjoying a movie, the next, a knock at your door ushers in a heartbreaking discovery changing things. Imagine being a casualty of someone’s unprocessed childhood trauma. I have. Before seeking proper treatment, I was also the culprit. I have been in relationships that typically ended after years of tolerating the individual not showing up altogether. The root of this toleration for some represents their father’s ...

I meditated at length on a dream I had yesterday when it finally hit me that I was seeing how we make unproductive choices without giving much thought to what we are doing. I won't go in detail about the dream but there was an act done that many do. The person I saw in the dream I personally did not know them to do it, so I had to look deeper. There was a point in my life I would have dismissed such a dream and questioned my thoughts, what I saw on TV, or what I was listening to prior to bedtime. This time it was different, something would not allow me to dismiss a potential clue. I read about this in the Old Testament but I was not reading then from the lens I read from now. And to cross reference I do see it in the New Testament. We have gifts, we have talents, we have purpose, we have opportunity, yet we remain unproductive.  When we learn that answers lie within us we will be more careful to really understand what we are seeing and how it applies to us individu...

I am screaming internally for help, but something is preventing my mouth from opening. It won’t open, so I chock on what’s overwhelming me. Someone sees me choking then performs the Heimlich Maneuver. The maneuver saved me, thank God.  But what happens when my choking goes unnoticed and the moment, I am about to succumb to such distress is the day I am supposed to break free and learn to seek help, but I refuse.  Last year I was a guest on the podcast Dope Conversations with Erica Warren. We spoke about a few things, but the “Strong Woman Syndrome” was the conversation topic. I have had an issue with this for years. I recall a time in my life I was about to lose everything because I would not ask for help. I got a second job and attempted to fix it myself but never asked for help. Having that second job was not producing what I needed, and it was wearing me down: mentally, physically, and spiritually.  In a moment, I felt comfortable sharing with someone ...

Setbacks are hiccups or speed bumps that are not supposed to bring you to a screeching halt. They are more like those things that slow down progress so that you can get a closer look at what is going on. There may be some modifications needed or areas within yourself that need adjusting.  However, some forms of setbacks are not as easy to deal with as others; with the right perspective, you will see it as a time to refresh and get back in the game.   Have you ever been in the middle of watching your favorite television show to have it interrupted by a broadcast signal intrusion? The message played then you were able to continue watching afterward.  It did not completely stop your favorite show just interrupted it. You may have missed details, but you were able to move forward. Well, we experience these setbacks emotionally as well. It throws us off our game; it’s like getting punched without warning. It takes a minute to regain momentum, but it does no...

At the age of thirty-one, I finally heard those words, “I’m proud of you.” It did not sound as expected by that time, so I sat there wondering what to say back. I waited to hear someone say they were proud of me for decades; eventually, I lost myself in the wait. I listened to what I wasn’t but never what I was.  I shared my heart’s desire to hear those words; I also acted out to get attention and redirection. Why wasn’t I being encouraged to dream? Everything I did wrong was magnified, but when I did well, I experienced minimization.  It seemed as though doing good was not rewarding, so I sunk.  It crushed me not to hear what other people were telling their children; it tore me apart to have my efforts dismissed. My drawings, writings, exceptional cleaning, and doing things a child should not have to do to hear someone say, I am proud of you. This type of deprivation takes an emotional toll on a person. It wounds the child, and the child never grows up emotionally. At...