2020 is Tew MUCH!

2020 has been really busy so far! There has been so much going on in the world so it’s really hard to just talk about one aspect of 2020. I’ve had a lot of break through growing experiences this year, and it’s safe to say that I’ve caught the blogging bug again. So this week I wanted to share my perspective of what the pandemic has taught me.

When the pandemic hit, I was in full grind mode! closing houses, gigging, doing mommy duties, knocking out phase one of our master plan to take over the world. Once the shut down happened it was like everything just stopped. I couldn’t work or go anywhere and all of a sudden I’m homeschooling my 7 year old for the rest of the school year.

I could not understand why this was happening! I mean, I finally get my momentum going and BOOM out of no where the world is filled with germs and we have to stay indoors. WHY!? I went down the internet rabbit hole, I was angry, I was confused, I was afraid, then I was sad, and looking for someone to blame. I basically went through the steps of mourning. It was then that I realized that I was mourning the way the world used to be.

We went to Washington D.C during the pandemic. D.C was way behind Virginia with their reopening. We walked around our nations capital at time when social, political, and economic tensions were really high. The vibe was super weird. There was still an air of paranoia because people were just starting to leave their homes. The black lives matter plaza was basically a tourist spot surrounded by big BLACK LIVES MATTER billboards that were branded with logos of fortune 500 companies. We walked around the plaza (that was secured by the police to make sure it was safe) and we saw all sorts of art work. Some of it was about racism, but a lot of it was just people admitting their biggest fears right now. There was one poster that someone drew that simply said “I MISS MY DAD”.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Our trip to D.C really helped put things into perspective. I realized that everyone is mourning the old world right now. I think as a collective we low key know that the world will never be the same after this. I believe that we are all trying to figure out who will we be and what will we become. I realized that so much of our identity is wrapped up old narrative that no longer serve us, and I believe that the only way through is to let go.

Once I came to terms with the pandemic and this transition that we are all going through, I made it my duty to just radically care for myself at this time. I stopped subscribing to black power and conspiracy theory narratives and I started focusing on my own narrative. I believe that the only way to really know who we will be in this new world, is to self evaluate, and make changes on a personal level. Who will you be in this new world? Do you feel like you miss the way the world used to be? I would love to know if you guys feel the same! Let me know your thoughts down below!

The Scary Truth About Marriage

Mario and I have been married for 8 years! That’s a long time to be with someone! In fact, I think it’s probably one of the craziest things either one of us has done! Devoting your life to one person ’til death do us part” is pretty far out. I know a lot of people have these expectations for what marriage will be and how their partner will be. I’m here to burst your social media fantasy of #relationshipgoals and #baecations haha!

The scariest truth about marriage is that you are marrying a COMPLETE STRANGER. Even if you guys have dated since high school, or have lived together. When the papers a signed and the rings are exchanged PEOPLE CHANGE! Mario and I were best friends before we got married after only 8 months of dating. The first year was really hard. We argued and fought all the time because the other person was not being our idea of what a spouse should be. He expected me to know everything going on his mind, and I expected him to be perfect mr. wonderful. It wasn’t realistic. What’s crazy is, like most couples, we never talked about what we thought marriage would be, we just jumped into it and it was a big mess.

I always wanted a marriage like what my parents had. Or what I thought they had. My parents divorced when I was in high school. From my point of view, my parents were the perfect couple, other couples loved being around them, they were affectionate in public and had beautiful kids and a perfect house in the city. I thought they had it all. Meanwhile underneath the surface, there was a lot of lying and infidelity. I realized that my parents basically just filled these roles and they completely denied who they truly were on the inside. That’s pretty dark to realize you had actors for parents for most of your childhood.

8 years with my husband has been a crazy ride. It’s funny, we have been together for a very long time, and it seems like the past 3 years have been a massive turning point for our relationship. We faced a lot of low points together and we watched each other deal with things that really shook us to our core. We have both grown together. We aren’t the same people we were when we said “I do” on November 23rd 2010.

We only have one life to live, and if you are going to devote your life to one partner you better make damn sure that it’s a life that you will be happy in. Always remember that your partner isn’t just your husband or wife, they are a person FIRST. Getting married is like, you and your partner have decided to paint on a huge canvas together. If you work together, you can create something truly amazing!

Rewriting My Programming

I watched an interview with Bruce Lipton. He’s a biologist and he speaks a lot about genetics and the subconscious mind. Any who, he said something that really stuck with me, our first 7 years of our life we are in theta state meaning hypnosis. We are literally just absorbing all the things that we see around us from our parents, and our families. Then, we spend the majority of out lives, playing out that programming. In fact, that is how he believes that the rich get rich and the poor stay poor. It’s simply a matter of programming, and living out what you have been surrounded by.

The programming in my life was I had two parents, they were “perfect”, we were a “perfect” family, we had a house, we had nice things, and that’s what I believed that I should be striving for because that’s all I knew. I watched my mom be a working mom then a house wife when my siblings came along. I learned how to assume the role of “wife” by watching her. I got married at 18. Now, I’m starting to believe that I made that decision based off my programming. LUCKILY I have an amazing husband and I didn’t marry a shmuck!

So the past two years for me has been a process of rewriting programing from my childhood. I realized that even though my parents seemed to have everything, they were not financially literate because they didn’t use their money correctly. I assumed the same money habits, consuming things to try to make myself look and feel good. In order to rewrite that program I have been reading books on finance, watching how wealthy people spend their money, and embarking on this entrepreneurship journey. The universe has placed great examples of wealthy people in my life. I’m learning SO MUCH!

Another program that I have been working on rewriting is what I consider beautiful and how I feel about myself. I’m 26 years old and for about 23 of those years my subconscious was on a diet of hard core hip hop, reality t.v, and gossip t.v. My hobbies included E! network and cuticle care (Mean Girls reference haha!). I decided to experiment on myself and completely clean up my media diet. For the past two years instead of watching Love and Hip Hop or talk shows, I started reading, writing, and listening to lectures. It has helped me tremendously. I don’t feel like I have weight on me. I feel more patient, and I just feel a lot different. In fact, my husband and I don’t even argue anymore since I’ve stopped watching reality television sooo…maybe there’s something there!

A key thing to remember is that our brains are computers. And what ever we download into it plays out in our everyday life. When we were kids, we didn’t have much of a choice on what is being played out in front of us, but as adults we can make changes to our script by simply being more conscious of what we put into our minds, and realizing that we are free to create what ever life we want for ourselves.

Photo by Arif Riyanto on Unsplash

Chapter 5: Spiritual Cocktail

So I went through several phases of this journey, from being a christian to being a black conscious KWEEN to being a flat out hippie. What has all these phases taught me? What conclusion have I drawn at this point of my spiritual journey? Well, I have developed a conglomerate of all the things that I have learned and I developed my own little system or Spiritual Cocktail if you will.

I love how devoted good christians and buddhist are. They are consistent with their beliefs practices and that is something that I try to practice in my everyday life. Whether it’s blogging or doing something towards my real estate business everyday. Consistency is key so that you can see the fruits of your labor grow. I also still practice yoga. I find it very therapeutic and it’s great for your health!

Something I learned from the conscious community was that black is beautiful. I learned how to appreciate my roots and embrace my history. That made me stronger. I have also added rituals to my week to week self care routine. I have incorporated old African healing methods into my life. I use sage to cleanse myself and my home, and I’m learning how to use herbs and essential oils for health and wellness.

Self Help taught me that we are all connected and that the we are apart of the whole picture. It taught me that it’s okay to say no to negative thoughts and negative people and that there is a solution to EVERY PROBLEM. The universe is like one big computer, constantly calculating how it can give you everything that you have asked for. So no matter what it is that you have asked for, the universe will work to give it to you.

Astrology taught me to check myself. There are vibrations fluctuating and changing all the time. I had to learn to use those energies and to not let those energies use me. Retrogrades suck but you don’t have to focus on the negative energy. You just have to shift your focus just like all the planets and stars are constantly shifting. I guess you can say that Astrology taught me to be more flexible.

I’m 5 years into my spiritual journey and I feel pretty settled and happy with my practices. I believe that you have to take all the lessons that life has given you, to create your own system of belief. Religion is not one size fits all, you can have different beliefs than your family and the world will not come crashing down. I live by this one fact, we only have one life to live, I cannot live my life for anyone but me!

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Chapter 4: Devil Worship

I’ve always been into really weird stuff. Like for me, the weirder the better. In fact it’s in my natal chart (astrology) that I would have a fascination with the occult but it’s not good for me to go too deep into it or I’ll become obsessive (and I got a little obsessed in college smh). I think that I’ve always been into stuff like the occult and secret societies because that was a part of me trying to understand that there is so much about life, that I don’t know. So many things that were hidden from me because it was dubbed “DEVIL WORSHIP” by christians.

Now, it’s kinda weird, I wouldn’t say that I sought out metaphysics, astrology and self help, it kind of just found me honestly. I was on youtube one day watching this series called spirit science. It was strange because the videos were resonating with me, like I felt it in my gut. I started learning about how everything was connected on this earth. I learned that we are not these bodies but we are the spirit that lives within, and we are just here to have a human experience, no matter what that is. It all clicked, like it was something I knew but I completely forgot.

Now I know what you are probably saying, “Chenea you sound like a hippie.” You are right! It’s weird because I can relate to hippies now on a soul level. Like I completely get their lifestyle, and it’s something that just calls you really. Taking a spiritual journey like this is bound to turn you into SOME variation of hippie!

Again, I never had a transcendent experience or caught the holy ghost, but practicing mindfulness and taking things slowly and being in the present, I can really feel God’s presence and I can really connect with my inner self. It feels really, really good. Like if you’ve ever been high, that’s how I feel most of the time. I said “most of the time” because I am human and I slip into dark places sometimes, but what my spiritual journey has taught me is that I don’t have to remain there, I can alway pull myself out by practicing gratitude.

One thing that this part of my journey has taught me is to not let anyone else’s superstitions stop your pursuit of your destiny. People will tell you that something isn’t “acceptable” or start bringing the “devil” up because of their own fears and insecurities. You cannot live in anyone else’s box. Superstitions come from a place of fear and lack, and the world is full of love and abundance…if you choose to see it that way!

Photo by J A N U P R A S A D on Unsplash

 

Chapter 3: OM SHANTI

Music is a very important part of my life. I love all sorts of music and I love to sing. I feel like every once in a while there’s an artist that really speaks to a generation. For me that artist is Jhené Aiko. Her album “Sold Out” absolutely changed my life. I was digging into her lyrics one day, and I started googling things she was talking about cause for some reason her music really resonated with me.

In fact, in chapter 1 I said I never had a transcendent experience in church, but I did have my first experience with something overwhelming, like pure love, that brought me to tears. And I had that moment during a Jhené Aiko set at a festival. lol There may have been OTHER factors that made me emotional, maybe it was the rain, or the way the sun was setting or her soothing soft voice, I don’t know but that day…I had a supernatural experience!

OKAY so, Buddhism! Buddhism is awesome. That was when I started learning about chakra’s and karma, and their stories of creation and the after life are so amazing. I loved learning about buddhism because it was refreshing. The religion as a whole talks about more than the christianity does too. I feel like buddhism answered a lot more of the questions that I had about life.

Once I discovered Buddhism, I was started to feel a lot better about life. There was still some things that didn’t sit well with me. Like, believe it or not, Buddhism is not kind towards women either. In fact just recently the first female monk was allowed to practice in the monastery with the other male monks. Again I cannot be apart of something that treats women as if they are last and not important or puts limits on what women can do.

Now, around the time I started to come down off my Buddhism trip, I got my real estate license. I realized what kind of line of work it was, so I needed to figure out how to be the type of person that sold real estate, self motivated, confident, etc. This led me into that wonderfully wonderful world of self help!

 

 

Chapter 2: Angry Black Girl Fire

The internet is a very very VERY vast source for information and history. If you dare to dive into all it has to offer, you won’t be sorry haha! Which led me to leaving christianity.

I wasn’t raised to embrace my blackness. I knew absolutely nothing about being black and my father was very prejudiced against black people. I also grew up super privileged. My parents owned two homes during their marriage, both in predominantly white neighborhoods. I didn’t really have black friends because I had so many bad experiences with black kids from preschool on up. They all made fun of me or left me out because I was different and now that I look back on it, I just had a hard time connecting with the other black kids.

My husband, he’s super in touch with his roots. I mean he loves being black he has locs and he embraces his culture. He was the one that put me on to black culture. So as I started to submerge myself in black culture and I started learning about slavery and how christianity was given to our ancestors as a means to control their lives, and how the bible was used to justify slavery, and abuse. I made a decision right then and there that I would NEVER BE A CHRISTIAN.

It’s ironic because as I was going through this conscious black journey, the black lives matter movement was picking up, and there was a black kid being gunned down every week it seemed like. This just made me soooo angry. I was angry every day. I watched all the Hidden Colors documentaries and it just added more fuel to my angry black girl fire. Just to know that black people were responsible for a lot of great things in this world, and we have a very vast history that has been hidden from us, is enough to piss you off! But…I digress.

I started to become angry all the time, and I was listening to all the other conscious people on youtube and they were angry. I was just tired of being angry over things that I honestly could not control. I was tired of feeling, that way because I had a lot to be happy about, and I felt myself becoming unappreciative of what I had. NOT TO MENTION, the conscious community practices polygamy and they believe that it’s okay for man to have more than one women. Complete bullsh*t. I could never judge anyone for what they believe in, but I felt like men in the black conscious community do not respect women, and that was enough for me. Yelling the back woman is God then having 5 women like they are interchangeable is just silly to me. So…thats when I left the black conscious community alone and I opened up to buddhism.

Chapter 1: Breaking Family Karma

DISCLAIMER, if you are very religious don’t read this series. Just don’t.

What I am about to share is just my personal journey. Whether it’s your natural hair journey, starting a business, or finding love, all of our journey’s are different. I wanted to share my spiritual journey because I think that the black community makes it seem taboo to believe in anything other than christianity. So I wanted to share this because it’s OKAY to question things and try something new!

SO! I was raised under the christian religion. I remember when I was in elementary school, my mother told me that we were going to start going to church on the regular. It was new, but everyone I knew went to church so it seemed like a normal thing. My parents dedicated their life to christ and so did I. I got baptized and I sung in the church choir. A few years later my mom became a minister and began preaching. It would be years and years later that I would find out that the entire reason why my parents started going to church, was because they were running from something and they believed if they prayed and preached, it would get better.

When I was 18 I looked at the ruins of my family and how it used to be so “normal” and “happy”. It was then that I realized that church wasn’t the answer. Now, letting go of christianity wasn’t easy AT ALL! My grandmother had just became a preacher and I have 2 uncles that are preachers as well. One has a church. So, you can imagine the sh*t storm that brewed when I started to dabble in other religions (more on that later).

I got married, and I had a daughter. When you start a family, you want what’s best for them so I tried church again. We went to a few but it just didn’t feel right. I couldn’t bare the thought of being this fake christian wholesome family, that underneath it all we were all super miserable. I saw that story too many times in my own life.

I never really understood church even as I grew up in it. I thought it was a bit absurd and I just could never really connect with the christian religion. I’ve never caught the holy ghost, I’ve never had a transcendent experience on Sunday’s. It just wasn’t for me. There are some really good churches that I have visited, and there are some great speakers. I love Joel Olsteen, his positivity is so sincere! But, christianity just wasn’t for me, and I would soon understand why I felt that way as I started on my spiritual journey….

 

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

 

Get Outta Here With That Mess!

There is nothing wrong with black people. We are all the most perfect shade of human on this planet and we don’t deal with mental health or depression because that’s just not a “black thing.” Not to mention we are all covered in the blood of Jesus so, you know, we don’t deal with those kinds of issues. This is basically the narrative that I have heard my entire life from the black community. It has always bothered me because I have dealt with a family member that had mental health issues but no one in my family believed that it was a problem, or that they should try to intervene, even when that person threatened suicide.

No matter what color you are if you live on this earth you have dealt with some form of depression, anxiety, or just plain not feeling your best mentally. You are not alone. I do understand where the notion that black people don’t deal with these kinds of issues come from. We have always had to be strong, especially in the face of adversity. We are a race of people that have always had to fight and put on a smile while society seemed to be going against us. We have always had to try to maintain the appearance of perfection, and mental health, well, “ain’t nobody got time for that.”

Religion is such an important part of the black community (maybe I’ll blog about why I let go of christianity in the future). I mean I have been to the hood and right across the street from the housing projects is a mansion of a church. If you grew up in the typical black house hold, you were always told to take your problems to the lord in prayer. There was never really a safe space where you could open up about what you were facing. Homosexuality, physical, sexual, and mental abuse, or depression are all topics considered taboo in black families. I can’t help but think that it’s only because that would force families to realize that we are not perfect.

So what do we do? If we come from families that don’t allow us to express ourselves how do we deal with the pain and suffering of this human experience? We create our own communities and spaces of openness. It is important that we pick and choose wisely the things that we want to take from our upbringing. We were given this specific group of humans to help better aid us in our life journey. Sometimes they even help us by showing us what NOT to do. If there are certain things from your childhood that you wish you had more of, be the giver of that very thing you believed you were missing. So if we feel that there was a lack of openness and understanding in black homes, we should provide others with that openness and understanding.

This is why I created this blog, because all it takes is for one person to open up about their experiences and others will feel safe to do the same.