Nowadays, you see post after post about healing and trusting the process but you rarely see a post about what the process looks like.

See the thing is when you truly want to unpack your baggage and address the root cause(s) of your challenges, you must dig through layers of memories and raw emotions.

For example, you may think that a break up in 1992 caused your trust issues but in actuality, your fear of abandonment started at age 6 when your mother or father walked out of your life.

Think of life as a series of short stories that make up one book. Within the chapters of your book (life), there are pages that you have forgotten about or completely rewritten as a defense mechanism.

So, when you are on your healing journey, these omitted and/or revised pages come back and shake you to your core.

There will be days filled with tears and others filled with laughter. But there will also be utter disgust on occasion and a general disdain for folks that are not healed or working on their own journey.

This is the real awakening, realizing that you are more complex than you thought and that your inner child still cries out at times.

So I said all of that to say this, BE GENTLE WITH YOURSELF. You are in a space and place that you have never experienced before and you must treat yourself with love and kindness. Your future generations are depending on your healing.

Chorus for Today: I am not the things my family did. I am not the voices in my head. I am not the pieces of the brokenness inside. I am light. I am light. I am light, I am light.

Pain is something that we will all experience in life. No one is immune. While we generally believe that certain characteristics or actions of another are the source of our pain, the truth is, most times the pain is self-inflicted (I’ll save this for another post).

Now, the trouble with attributing your pain to the characteristics or actions of others is that you begin to believe that if you remove the person and every person that you meet with the same characteristics or behavior, the pain will end. Sadly, this solution does not deal with the underlying cause of the pain nor its lingering effects, it will only give you temporary relief and you could end up pushing the wrong people out of your life.

I learned this lesson the hard way (as many of us do). I confused the grief that I felt when that person was around with what I was actually grieving. It was not their presence that caused me grief, it was something inside of them that forced me to walk in my truth. Something in them would not allow me to hide behind the mask I wore. Their presence literally forced me to deal with me.

As you grow through life, search for the root issues. If you only look at the surface, you will stunt the process.

Remember, people come into your life for numerous reasons, allow people to do what they must and then let them go on their way.

Are you being specific with your request for God?

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Like many of you, I tuned in to watch the Bobby Brown Story, for many different reasons (I have not read

his book).  First and foremost, I wanted to see Bobby Brown’s life through the eyes of Bobby Brown.  I have read articles and seen stories told from the perspective of an onlooker BUT nothing beats a first hand account of a story.

Listen…by the end of day 2, I saw a piece of all of our lives in Uncle Bobby’s story.  I saw a life full of highs and lows.  I saw heartache, pain, and a man that has had to pick up the pieces and start over again and again. I saw someone that has loved and lost.  Someone that was full of life and wanted to enjoy every moment.

If you watched the series and picked through to determine which parts you choose to believe then you wasted your time.  We all go through trials and tribulations so that we can help others to see that there is victory on the other side.  Each part of the story built upon and expanded to another area of his life.  In the end, he is the sum total of every experience and a work in progress, still striving to get better.

I am grateful that Uncle Bobby brought HIStory to television and gave the world deeper insight into his life.  The story is told from HIS prospective and the wonderful thing about you telling your story is that no one gets to tell you what happened to you.

Be courageous enough to tell YOUR story.  The world is waiting.

I recently had an epiphany…many years ago, I was a side chick.  Now, I know the realization sounds a little shocking.  You may be asking questions like; how could you not know that you were a side chick?  Well, the answer is that I did not care enough at the time to think about it.

How does that happen???  Kinda like this…I was focused.  Focused on what I wanted. I was the boss of me.  He was a welcomed distraction but not enough of a distraction for me to realize all the moments he was an afterthought or a fill-in-the blank.  Now I am not giving him a pass and I do not promote cheating.  What I am saying is that I totally missed the process of changing from the object of his affection to the second place chick.

The story went something like this…we met under somewhat strange circumstances and we became almost inseparable.  In the beginning we talked all day, everyday, even while we were at work(shout out to Bluetooth technology) and then we talked until we went to sleep at night.  We also saw each other several times a week, at different time intervals.

At some point, I guess he grew tired of my unavailability/unwillingness to be who he needed and began to fill-in-the blank.  To be honest, I am certain that she was in the picture all along and I was quite possibly the fill-in-the blank BUT this is a tale about balance, not resolving the question of why he had the desire for two women.

So, back to my point…One night while we were together, he excused himself to answer a call.  He did not walk away or try to hide the fact that a female was calling.  When he hung up, I told him that was disrespectful or something to that effect.  He clearly responded that “if I was on my job, he would not be answering the phone.”

After this incident, I began to pull away from him and seek I wanted in my life(remember I am the boss of me).  I remember him questioning me about the distance and of course my answer was that I was busy.  Eventually, I told him that I started a new relationship and he confessed that he realized that he was in love with me.  The problem was that we had both run out of time.  There was nothing that he could say to repair our situationship, I did not trust him anymore. The good news is that we both went on to live our happily ever after eventually.

You see in life we put so many things before ourselves and our relationships all under the goal of looking out for ourselves( see how that does not add up).  Often times we think that we can push things to the side while we work our plan but we cannot control time nor add time when it is lost.  In order to achieve what we really want and need in life, we must find balance.  We have to be wives to OUR husbands, mothers to our children, girlfriends to OUR boyfriends, a friend to our friends and fulfill our positions at work,  all at the same time. All these roles require our attention and a certain level of devotion.  I believe that this is achieved when we prioritize our roles.  Ask yourself what is really important and adjust accordingly.

I, like many others in the world have celebrity family members (in my head 😉). While it is true that these people are not biologically related to me nor do they know me, over the years they have shared so much of their lives(even when they did not want to), that we have become family.

So…I did not watch the Whitney movie because as strange as it may sound to you, I do not want to see her story told again.  Throughout the years so much of her life has been in the public eye, so what else is there to uncover?  We have heard several variations of her life story and many “insiders” have given detailed accounts of what it was to be Whitney Houston. I sat through her entire funeral service and mourned her death along with millions of others.  Therefore, I am satisfied with remembering the amazing, God-given talent that was gifted to the world through Auntie Whitney and would like for her to rest in peace.

When the video was released for “I Look to You”, I saw the Whitney that we all grew to love in the beginning.  The classy songstress that took us on emotional roller coasters through her music.  The melodies that reminded us of what it feels like to be alive and the lyrics that showed us that there is a song for every situation.  But, I also saw a woman who had been tried by a firing squad and hung out dry.  In her beauty you could see the hope for better days (I look to you) while the strain of critics left her surrendering (after giving it my all).  Society has a strange way of worshiping celebrities one day and condemning them to death the very next day.  But wait that story sounds very familiar doesn’t it…they did it to Jesus, right?  I guess history really does repeat itself.

Chorus for Today: “As I lay me down. Heaven hear me now. I’m lost without a cause. After giving it my all. Winter storms have come. And darkened my sun. After all that I’ve been through. Who on earth can I turn to?~ I look to you