The Evolution of Perspective

There's been something about this time of the year in the past that brought me down to my knees. In the past, Fall has been rough financially and even more so spiritually for me. Four years ago, I experienced my last serious battle with suicidal thoughts. It was severe. So much so that I checked myself into the hospital to get help to stabilize myself. Four years later and suicide is not on my radar. I'm in transition right now though. My closest relationships are shifting in ways that have been aggravating the insecurities I've felt for years. These shifts are bringing all kinds of thoughts, feelings, and realities to surface. And I'm holding on, both watching and experiencing it all happening. About 10 days or so ago, I started listening to The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. In hindsight, spirit led me to this message. I say that because the teachings helped to sustain me during the shift that happened last week. I know this is true for me. If it had not been for ...

Posting this without comment & commentary. Just know that it spoke deeply to me today. #AquariusRising #TheEvolutionofPerspective #EvolveThenEmerge

This will probably end up being a listicle (list/article)......because energy..... What leaving Facebook for a little under 2 weeks showed me about myself: 1. I was absolutely addicted to logging in and interacting with the toxicity on FB. I aggravated anxiety, triggered myself, and could not find the strength to turn away most days. I was annoyed with people and their thoughts, their opinions, their pity parties, their expression, and just them. But I could not find the strength to turn away most days. 2. I tricked myself into believing that I could manage the addiction (because that's what addiction looks like). I unfollowed people, muted people, unfriended people, blocked people, tried to stay on my own timeline, and tried to only go to certain people's pages. INSTEAD OF LOGGING OUT AND OFF so I am admitting to myself and to other people that my life became unmanageable. 3. I only claimed I wanted to be successful. I didn't do the things I knew I needed to do to...

This post has been a long time coming. It's been bubbling up inside of me for about a year or so and I was finally able to turn off the heat and let the waters cool so that I could express what I needed to say without fire. Cuz I don't want to give off fire. So yeah. I'm not sure that there's a "nice" way to say to people that you don't want their advice. I'm guilty AF at offering advice to people who didn't ask for it. Those people are my people though. My kids. My friends. My family members. For some of them *cough....my kids.....cough*, they don't want my advice. They don't want me to fix it. They really just wanted me to listen. We still struggle with this. If you preface the conversation with "I need to get something off my chest" I know how to hold my tongue and open my heart and my ears. The part of me that "needs" to fix things goes off to her quiet little corner and does something else. BUT....if the convers...

So one of my social media friends, friend in my head, and sister in the future posted this yesterday and when I tell you IT STOPPED ME COLD IN MY TRACKS. I started doing some healing work Sunday night and this was the perfect reflection opportunity. I talk a lot of about there are Five Big Emotions/Feelings that, when they grow out of control, start to push us around and make us do things that we either don't realize, feel like we can't control, and/or don't want to do. Those FBEs are fear, anger, guilt, shame, and sadness. I am, in real time, reflecting on fear right now. This meme helped me to hone on in fear and its role in my life. Fear has some control over my "yes". It had some control over my "no". It keeps them at just enough of a distance to make it appear that I'm doing what I need to do for myself and others. EXCEPT what I'm saying "yes" to is not the thing in my life that I actually want for myself. It's the thin...

During the last month or so, what I've learned about myself is that I'm more willing to listen when people need me to if they make their need known. When bombarded with what looks like a chaotic attempt at getting my attention (which I end up resenting for a period of time), I reject and/or ignore those attempts. I recognize that I know a lot of people and even more people "know" me. And because of this, people I'm close to and people I'm not close to both want and need (sometimes all at once and at the same times) something from me. It's overwhelming at times and challenging to navigate. It's not impossible. I admittedly haven't found any kind of consistent rhythm in practice with this though. The part of me that is genuinely interested in understanding people is not hard to access. People aren't aware of this. And I know I am not (on the surface) the most open and approachable person on social media. This optic is by design. It has its benefi...

Good morning/afternoon/evening Good People! Summer is creep creep creeping right on up outta here, but every once in a while, it will bust back through the door to remind us that it still has the juice. It was H.A.F. yesterday. Ok now the real reason yall are here...... So do you ever have an epiphany so deep and wide that it makes you stop in your tracks and re-evaluate your WHOLE life. One that makes you wonder who the hell you are and why you exist? Yeah....one of those. I had one of those this month. It came slamming down on me. Wanna hear about it? Here it go..... I used to think it was the slickest thing to slide people in posts on the internet. I've been doing it since I joined the internet on the now defunct Yahoo 360 website. I took the drags to Multiply, Black Planet, Blogger, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Where ever I was.....there was the occasional spark of drama and messiness. Bump naming people in posts. That was too direct, too messy, too dramatic, and it took ...

I've been on social media for years....YEARS! At least 20!!! I made my way through BlackPlanet, Yahoo 360, Multiply, Blogger, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. I remember back in 2001 when I clicked on a random bear that appeared on my computer screen at work after I opened an email and unknowingly released a virus on my system. I remember discovering how words from strangers could be restorative to parts of me that I wasn't even aware were broken back in 2005. I remember giving into jealousy and ugliness and meanness on the internet in 2011.  I remember one of my social media friends reminding me why it's not ok to make fun of people's looks in 2014. I remember being a self-righteous jackass in 2016. I value growth. I remember when I was approaching my 30's. It was important to me that I do something significant so that my 30's didn't resemble my 20's in terms of pain, mistakes, poor choices, etc. I remember when I was approaching 40 and wanting t...

I took a Hexaco.org  personality test the other day. I'm glad I like myself. Because if I didn't, I would be sulking in the seat of a pity party for 1. The things we tell ourselves about who we are and what other people experience yo!!!!! So the test basically told me all the things that exist in the darker version of me. Opened me ALL the way up! The information wasn't anything that I didn't know from reflection sessions I have with myself. There's something about reading it in black and white though. OUCHIE OUCHIE! What these things tell me though is that it's not so much that I'm a bad person (because I don't believe or think this about myself) as much as it tells me how far I've come in terms of being able to reconcile my personality. When I started The Evolution of Perspective in 2009, it was with the goal of reconciliation. At first I thought I wanted to manifest perfection and rid myself of all my demons and darkness and ugliness. As the...

I had an interesting exchange with a woman recently. We only know each other through social media and were connected based on some community work that we doing. She said something to me during an exchange that gave me pause. She spoke about how she supported the work that I was doing in the past and was looking to support the work that I'm currently doing. I'm going to unpack the feelings that I've had and currently have about what support is and looks like. Back when I first started my radio show on the Blog Talk Radio show platform, the people who listened to my show were mostly people who already knew me. They were friends (real life or social media) and family (blood relatives and play cousins) and strangers who happened upon the links. At the time, I didn't understand advertising or marketing much. I assumed what a lot of other people assumed about support as well. "If you bang with me like that, you'll listen to my show and tell other people to liste...

I was a very different person before 2009. I used to describe her as "ugly". Her behavior was ugly. Her thoughts were misguided. She was in a lot of pain. She knew it, but she didn't really know how she was being affected by the pain. My behavior wasn't anything that I recognize today as healthy. Her spirit tried to remember that it was good though. From 2009 - 2012, I was extremely aware of my own toxicity and knew that I had to heal it and deal with it and reduce it but never forget that she existed. Anybody who knew me then and still "knows" me today, knows that I am as different as I can be. Anybody who knew me then and doesn't know me today doesn't know the amount of work that I did and continue to do to to make sure that I heal all of the pain energy that was shared with me and that I shared with the world. I work hard to look at my life, my personhood, and my energy so that I can be clear about what I'm sharing with the world. It's ...

For the most part, I've been off social media (and by off I mean refraining from posting) since March 20th. I needed a break from talking publicly. I needed to listen. I needed to watch. I needed to observe. I was in desperate need of some clarity. I continued chatting with friends during the hiatus, but I didn't say anything publicly. I didn't like anything. I didn't comment on posts. I didn't answer any tags. I just held private conversations and lurked. Those who REALLY know me, know that when I get quiet, something important is happening. Here are 5 (of 15)  things that I realized about myself and was able to begin to make peace with when I decided to get quiet: 1. I realized that I had an unwarranted fear of missing out. If I didn't keep people engaged, if I didn't respond to people, if I didn't answer their tags.....what would happen? I assumed people would forget about me. I assumed people would get caught up in the "next best thing...

He was singing. "I tried to put one in the ay yah" then asked me who sang the song. I told him Solange. He said "Oh, I rocks with that song, but I like Beyonce better". And I looked at him and asked him why he needed to bring up Beyonce in a discussion about Cranes in The Sky. He said because he likes Beyonce's music. I said BUT THAT IS NOT A BEYONCE SONG THOUGH. Here's the thing....... If you hear me talking about something I love while comparing it to something I don't like, pay close attention. Ask yourself if I can talk about the thing I love WITHOUT mentioning the thing I don't. If I can, ask me why I brought up the thing I don't love. Chances are I could have accomplished praising what I loved and showering it with adoration WITHOUT thinking about the thing I don't. This is a bad habit we have in 2017. We stubbornly refuse to acknowledge what we love without including what we don't. Hell, we go on social media and talk about the...

I don't know if I can think of a woman, black woman more specifically, who is more polarizing in 2017 than Beyonce'. She announced today that she was pregnant with twins. And like clockwork, people on the far right and others on the far left took to social media to stand (either up or down) for Beyonce and her announcement. She's been called a distraction, a queen, and a lot of things in between. I joked on social media before about putting in an application for the BeyHive when she dropped Lemonade. I'm not a hater, nor am I a stan. I sit right in the middle. I enjoy listening to and dancing to her music. I enjoy watching her perform. I'd never pay to see her live. And while I think that she's arguably the greatest performer in my children's generation, I have the benefit of having lived long enough to know other great performers. It's the first day of February. It's officially Black History Month. For some of us, it's a time to celebrate ou...

I realized today that depression is creeping up on me. Even though it's not a crippling or debilitating version of it, it's taking its toll on me. I noticed it around Day 5 of 365 . The happiness, euphoria, and motivation that started mid-December are declining. So I'm sitting here trying to figure out what happened. Was it something specific that happened? Is this PMS? Am I dehydrated? Are there things that are bothering me or worrying me that I'm not completely aware of? Have I experienced an overt or subtle change? Am I getting enough of the right kinds of foods? Is something unresolved? Is someone bothering me? WHAT IS GOING ON?  I realized that I'm in an ebb and it became especially clear to me when I talked to someone about my feelings about some doctor's appointments that I had. While I told myself that whatever the outcome of the visits was, I'd be fine, I didn't consider the emotions leading up and immediately after to the visits. I didn...

I woke up this morning feeling a little blah. A quick check of my social media accounts led to me feeling inadequate about my current situation with respect to my business and brand ventures. I had to dig deep to process and figure out why the feeling was able to creep up on me. *this is where I get real with myself and you get to watch* Most of what I've "accomplished" in terms of any kind of business or branding effort is now being re-evaluated. I was one of the people who had an idea and got excited about the idea of executing the idea. Then after the idea was executed, I wondered why the "success" of the idea never really reached its full potential. I measured success by the amount of people I could get to support. I went through the motions like a lot of people do. I expected my friends and family to show up to support me. I pouted and took to social media with vents when they didn't. I couldn't understand why people wouldn't flock to this...

I am thoroughly bored with being human. I'm tired of dealing with my kind. I'm definitely changing. I'm not fascinated by the shiny things and with people right now. And it's not that life is not exciting. It's not that life has even changed very drastically. I think that I've just had my fill of the experiences that I've had for the last 41 years.  I think....scratch that, I know that I am absolutely sick of the lowly aspects of humanity. I find myself shrinking and pulling back from participating in them. They don't feel the same. They don't give me the same "thing" that I got from it before.  Gossiping ain't fun no more. Every time I do it, I know that I'm putting horrible energy into the atmosphere. I'm contributing to more bowl chit. Laughing at people's fuggups ain't interesting to me anymore. I haven't become super serious. I do understand personal pain a little bit differently though.  Being uninsp...

People close to me know that I am very transparent about my experience being a mother. I had my first child at 18. I had a small inkling of what parenthood and motherhood were. I knew that I needed to teach her to read and write and spell her name and say her manners. I knew that I would be responsible for her for a very long time. I'd teach her about life and what I had learned so far. (How arrogant of me to believe that 18 years of experience as a human being was enough to begin to show somebody something!) I had my second child right before my 21st birthday. I had to teach him the same things AND I had to figure out how to get him to pee standing up. Again, 21 years of experience as a human being seemed like enough at the time. I wouldn't advise anyone to do it today. I had my third child when I was 27. I hadn't begun to make sense of my life in what felt like a meaningful way. I was still reeling from choices I made when I was 18 and 21. I was busy doing things that...

I announced (both to myself and out loud) that I would be writing a blog about love this month. Those of you who expect this to be a traditional monversation (conversation of one) might be a little disappointed. It's ok though. Life gets better. Soooooooooo, LOVE. L.O.V.E. LOVE. You know what I used to think love was? I used to think love was tossing myself to the ground in order to be someone's stepping stone to self-esteem. I used to think that love was all give with sprinkles of take topped with a lot of resentment. I used to think that love was ugly, hurtful, and a waste of time. I used to think that love was taking what didn't "belong to me" and providing a temporary fix. I used to think that love was taking that which was broken and doing THE MOST to help it to get better (while making myself sick in the process). I used to think that love was convincing someone of how great I am....because obviously they ain't looking at me right *tilts their head a ...

Anyone who knows me knows that I cuss. A LOT. And while I don't cuss all day every day of my life, I speak with a very colorful language sometimes. I cuss when I am happy. I cuss when I am angry (especially). I cuss when I am frustrated. I cuss when I am hurt. Yesterday and some days before that, I was angry about what someone close to me was being subjected to. My reaction during the conversation was filled with the proclamation "FUCK _________________" I said it. I meant it when I said it. I meant it after I said it. AND THEN IT HIT ME to ask myself, "What do you mean when you're telling someone FUCK YOU or saying "FUCK ______________"? What does that mean? I never thought about it before. I NEVER thought about what it meant to me before. I just used the words....caustically and passionately. All this recent talk about rape culture and misogyny filtered its way into my thought process. Ellen Gee, what do you mean when you tell someone ...