✨ Weekly Prompt
What moment in your life invited you to remember who you truly are beneath the pain?
It was autumn when I met my authentic self and fell deeply in love with who I truly am.
Not romantic love. Not even self-help kind of love.
But a sacred, unexplainable love that only comes from deep intimacy with
the Holy Spirit, the Divine Mother-Father God.
That moment lives in me. Still. Not as a memory, but as a sensation in my body.
A living knowing that awakened my soul.
It started with a projection—falling in love with someone else.
Someone I thought I was loving, but really,
I was touching a part of myself that had been lost.
It came from a place within me I had long forgotten.
When I reflect on it,
I realize I was trying to love the part of me that had once loved my father.
My father struggled. He was a Black man in a system that gave him no dignity.
He was tender and complicated—
a dreamer, a wanderer, someone who showed me fragments of joy and pain.
When he drank, he was full of stories, laughter, and spirit.
But when he sobered, he withdrew into silence.
I learned to sit beside him in those quiet hours—watching TV, saying nothing, just being.
It was how I could stay close to him. I was afraid that if I asked too many questions,
even that little bit of closeness would disappear.
In many ways, I’ve been drawn to that kind of pain in others.
Especially in men.
Men who carried the world’s weight and still managed to be soft somewhere inside.
And like so many women,
I was taught to make a home, to raise children,
to carry the weight of others and call it love.
I came from a family of dysfunction and devotion, hardship and heart.
Then came the day I almost lost my eldest child. Three months to live, the doctors said.
That’s when I met death—not physically, but emotionally.
I could not imagine a world without my child. And I lost myself again.
The first time I lost myself was when I left my children’s father.
He was abusive. He left us.
I had built my world around him, thinking marriage meant forever.
But I was young, hopeful, and painfully mistaken. I didn’t handle the unraveling well.
The years that followed were filled with struggle, poor choices,
and people who didn’t reflect the kind of life I dreamed of living.
Still, the grace of the Holy Spirit, the prayers of my ancestors,
and the love of my children kept me.
Eventually, I joined a spiritual fellowship.
At first, I resisted. During my first spring retreat,
I was at my breaking point. I sat alone, saying,
“I’m leaving if I don’t get a sign. I need to know you hear me.”
And right as those words left my heart and passed through my mind,
the Spiritual Teacher and founder of the community walked by
and gently tapped my shoulder.
I knew answered prayers. Then I wept, and I stayed the full retreat.
That was the beginning of my becoming—
a Spiritual Practitioner, a student of life, a woman on the path.
I studied. I served. And then, life shifted again. Another dark night of the soul.
More shedding. More silence. More stillness.
But through all of it, I kept walking this path of love, compassion, kindness, and forgiveness.
It was self-acceptance that led me to self-appreciation.
That opened the door to self-forgiveness.
And finally, I met self-love. Not the kind you earn. But the kind you remember.
A love that was always mine. Waiting in the quiet. Beneath the pain.
🌿 Affirmation:
Through self-acceptance, I rise. Through compassion, I heal.