I’ve never seen so many people wanting to be someone other than themselves. In a society full of botched bodies, trend followers, and copycats, I’ve never seen a better opportunity than now to be Y-O-U.
I recently asked two of my children a very simplistically complex question, “who are you?”. This simple yet complex question holds a lot of weight. Their answers surprised and shocked me. I thought, at 16 and 12 how would they know, they haven’t lived yet. Honestly speaking, some people live a lifetime, die, and never truly know who they are.
Who am I? It took me a very long time to answer this question, and I mean a long time because when asked this question what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Your name and what you do. My answer to that question is, I am woke. I know it sounds more like a what, but is my who and my what. For so long I was Jazmine, a divorced mother of four, now lesbian, broken, job hating, depressed, and codependent individual. It took me a very long time to understand that I was not the sum total of my birth given name or my circumstances.
I lived my life based on how others wanted me to. Everyone from my mother to my ex-husband. Conformity and submission were learned behaviors. This included the clothes I wore, the way I styled my hair, my job, and my religious choices. It took years of this which turned into suppressed anger that led to self discovery.
My discovery into who I was came from discovering who I wasn’t. I was the walking dead. I slowly began to walk into who I was in my 30’s, reality check, I’m still in my 30’s. I didn’t understand that my life was a choice. I realized that my greatest power was being me. No one else could do that. Think about that for a moment. No one on this earth has the ability to be you, other than you.
Here is what happened when I fully embraced my ME. I no longer felt the need to say yes to everything and everyone, win #1. I discovered the power of no, win #2. I need everyone to understand that NO is a complete sentence and requires no explanation. I no longer needed validation from those outside of myself, win #3. I discovered everything that made me happy and unhappy and began doing more of what made me happy and less of what didn’t. I went natural, no more straight hair, win #4. Seems small, but it was huge. I even made an appointment to loc my hair 5/4/18, as a gift to myself.
Ask yourself the question, who are you?
Until next time…❤️