What’s up ya’ll. I started writing this in this Vegan joint called “Temple of Seitan” and finished it up in the library. I’ve been fasting this week, sun up till sundown, yesterday I took a break though. I still fasted sun up till sundown but I omitted the “raw foods only” rule. I’ve been learning how to listen to my body more and my intuition, also how to go with the flow more and stop being so hard on myself. It goes perfectly with the topic this week- Mental, Emotional, and Physical health. #OperationGetYourShitTgthr has been in full effect since I came back home from Christmas break. 2017 was all about learning about mental and emotional health for me. This year has been all about applying what I have learned to my everyday. Yes it has been hard as hell, but it has been worth it. So the fast was more so for me to start focusing on some creative projects and just redefining what organization means to me.
I’m a Virgo, so by nature I love to-do lists and anything that has to do with planning and being organized. My entire life has been consumed by to-do lists and extra curricular activities. I’m never NOT doing something, which is not good. So when I moved here for University and acquired all of this free time…I didn’t know what to do with it. Especially since I stopped all of my creative passions and pursuits. Up until January, I hadn’t touched them. I’m really hard on myself and expect nothing less than perfection which yes I know is not possible but I expect anyways. I had been forcing myself to do all these different things to stay occupied but they weren’t really my passions. I had been following the expectations of others whether that be my parents and family, my teachers, whoever for so long that I completely forgot what I liked, what my passions were, what I believed etc.
Towards the end of my senior year and over the summer before I came to University I was suffering badly from depression. There were so many things going on, like so many and I am just grateful that I made it out by myself; I wish I would’ve talked to someone, but I did learn a lot through this time. Even being here in an entirely different country by myself has had its challenges and every now and again the depression will try to creep back up on me. It is a battle that has to be overcome over and over and over, it is not something that will happen in one instance I believe. Going through this process of healing was the best thing that ever happened to me, I had to clean out every part of myself to identify what was causing all of this, and in doing so I became healthy in every aspect of my life.
First off, all that “Love and Light” bullshit you see on twitter is just that. Sure, positivity is wonderful, ya’ll know I’m an advocate for it, but in order to heal..you have to go into the deepest darkest parts of yourself. I started with my emotions first. So many of us have suppressed emotions all the way from our earliest childhood memories that just are never nurtured or healed. We forget about it, but our bodies and subconscious do not. I’m young, so to be able to catch this now is a blessing, but imagine a much older person walking around with all of these suppressed emotions over time because that’s what we’re taught. So many people walking around have a build up of toxic emotions in the body contributing to poor mental and physical health. When I started here, I realized that I had a lot suppressed and I had a lot to heal. I had to figure out how I was gonna do all of this. I had to drop everything I had ever been taught and completely start fresh. Even a few months ago, you couldn’t get me to express or even address my emotions for shit, and then when it finally became too much I just completely blew up and had meltdowns.
This is what we would call the “ticking time bomb”. So I went back and wrote down everything that I could remember that made me sad, angry, bitter, fearful, every negative emotion I had ever felt. There was so much that I completely forgot, I didn’t even realize these things were affecting the way I was not only treating others but myself. If we are not healthy emotionally, we are not treating ourselves in a healthy manner. This is where all of the being so hard on myself and the need to be perfect came from. So I started forgiving, like everyone. Some people I had verbal conversations with, others I simply wrote letters to and then burned the letters afterwards. The fire symbolized a release of the emotions that had been suppressed and a fresh start for me. I’m still learning what works for me, one thing that is for sure though is that I allow myself to feel.
The human experience is not meant to be happy go-lucky all of the time. I let myself feel pain now, anger, and fear, whatever that emotion may be. When we do this, we take our power back. By allowing yourself to feel, you’re one step closer to your higher self. The important and tricky part however, is not letting yourself stay in that space forever. After you let yourself feel it all and express it, you need to release it so that the emotions won’t get stuck in your body. You can write/journal, talk to yourself outloud, turn it into art, whatever you need to do. Just don’t get stuck, keep healing and moving forward.
As I continue to learn what works for me, It has put my mental health to the forefront. When you begin to heal your emotions, you begin to heal your mental. The first thing I learned is that everybody has triggers. We see this word a lot now especially with the culture of twitter and social media, but it is true. We all have things that can completely throw us out of whack when we see or hear them. Your triggers are your gateway to emotional and mental freedom though. Whatever is triggering you is with reason and purpose. When I discovered this, I began to dig into the things that triggered me and why. Some I am still working through and some I have healed from. Your triggers teach you about your “shadow self” as they call it. What you fear, what makes you angry, what brings sadness into your soul etc. And all of these things are okay…it makes us human.
Finding what works for you in terms of mental health is essential. I know that for sure. This is what can be called “self care”. Self-care is about being real with yourself but also gentle. These things did not arise in a single day so they surely won’t be healed in a single day. Expecting the process to be short and sweet will really screw you over in all honesty. It’s ugly, brutal, and honestly, really hard. So being gentle with yourself through it all and finding different outlets makes it just that much easier. Sometimes for me I completely detach from social media or my phone just to process everything I’m feeling. Social media is an escape for me and because I want to get to the bottom of it all, I have to fully be in it. Some people DE clutter, cleaning is super healing. Doing what you love can also be a form of self-care, one that I myself had been neglecting for a really long time.
I pretty much completely neglected all of my creative passions starting from 8th grade on; I am just now picking them back up. I only recently identified the reasons and I realized that I had felt discouraged. I was on the dance team in 7th grade and my dance coach who shall not be named did not like me, at all. She didn’t like my mom either so when audition’s came for the 8th grade year I found out that she told the judges a bunch of negative things about my mom and myself which resulted in me not making the team that next year. I got really discouraged from that and stopped dancing all together and basically threw my gift in the garbage bin.
I let a white woman with two left feet stop me from doing the thing I loved the most, something I had been doing my entire life. Like forreal ya’ll she really had two left feet and a 5 year old could have taught me better (This is why she didn’t like me LMFAO). It was really a domino effect after that and one by one my creative gifts began to get neglected. I picked a little back up sophomore year-senior year during my time as an editor in yearbook but it just wasn’t the same. My yearbook advisor from sophomore year till junior did really encourage me a lot though and I thank God for him. He helped me to begin to find my creative passions again.
My creative passions were blocked until I healed and forgave that teacher though. I was hella angry that some untalented white woman with no rhythm and two left feet was my dance teacher number one and number two that she held the keys the my fate, or so I thought. Everything happens with reason, and quite frankly looking back I’m grateful I wasn’t on the dance team that next year because it just crashed and burned each year, more and more. Did I mention she had two left feet ya’ll? Okay being serious though, we all know historically why that didn’t sit too well with me and I had to heal from those prejudices and emotions I felt towards her.
So thank you Miss Two Left Feet, you contributed a great service to the world. Not only did I learn a lot from that situation, but also I have gained my passion back and am 20x better than when I started. By healing a lot of these prejudices I was dealing with and a lot of the other negative emotions and feelings I had, my creativity began to flow again. Not only that, I was lifting dead weight literally and metaphorically. When we forgive and heal, we are also healing generation’s worth of trauma. Our ancestors DNA is within us, we feel what they felt, we get all the shit that they don’t deal with before they die. That is why there are a lot of different noticeable patterns within our families that are negative.
Change starts with us though, when we heal ourselves, we heal the generations before us and the generations to come. We are stopping the patterns and re-writing our DNA. The century’s worth of ancestral trauma begins to be lifted and so do the mental, emotional, physical blockages. We are literally clearing the debris out of our bloodline. Identify those triggers and issues, find an outlet and get to work. When you do this, your diet begins to shift; I don’t just mean physical either. See our diets are what we eat, watch, listen to, read etc. As we begin to heal and shift everything else does by nature. You’re not going to be able to live the same way because it will bring you back to what you left, fear not though…change is good.
I’m not finna go all PETA on ya’ll or anything, I’m just saying that once I began to heal my emotions and mental, my physical came with that. I switched to a Vegan diet before I really began to heal but it was super processed and starchy. The healing process caused my subconsciously to go into a more fruit/veggie based diet. I dropped from 144 to 122, skin? CLEAR. Bag? Secured? Edges? Full. No really, your diet is really important to your mental and emotional health too though. Just listen to your body, you’ll see for yourself. One thing I know for sure, no matter how hard I tried to lose weight and be healthier before I healed, It never worked. I don’t think that it was a coincide at all either. Physical health is directly linked to our emotional and mental health.
I’m still a work in progress and every day I am discovering something new and healing that much more. Shout out to a hell of a lot of self help books, telenovas, vegan ice cream, and of course my creative passions blessing my life once again. We’re all in this thing together, and ain’t nothing wrong with being real and NOT being okay. We’re all a work in progress. 2018 is all about stepping that self care game up, healing, and becoming our best selves. We got this ya’ll.
This week just do something that brings joy into your life, be gentle with yourself, write a list of things to heal/work on/ change, talk to a friend, whatever you need to do. Don’t forget you bad bitchness and how great each and every one of you are. I gotta go, next week, same place? I’ll see you here.
Until Next Time,
Stay Weird
Tai.
Worldwide Tai 