Let's Get Naked (Chapter 1 Season Finale)

What you are about to hear is the official conclusion to Momba Raw and Unfiltered Podcast-Chapter One. This marks the first year anniversary of the show and to celebrate this milestone episode, Blakkmomba will take you back in time to the podcast's genesis where the thought of "who knows where we will be this time next year" was reflected upon. Jump down the last rabbit hole of Chapter One and do some self-reflection of your own as Blakkmomba navigates you through her first official year in podcasting.

Transcript

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Hello, kings and queens. It's your girl, Black Mamba, and guess what? Today marks the one-year anniversary of the Mumber Roman Filter podcast. Wow, can you believe it? I know that I can, and to be honest, I didn't know how I was going to acknowledge my very first year in podcasting. I stressed about it because if you do not know by now, outside of collaborative episodes with other dope minds, there is no rhyme or reason to my recording. I record unscripted when my spirit feels moved to share some of my deepest and most personal thought processes. Suffice to say, I had not been moved or motivated to do so. I know that my method put me under pressure. Pressure I could avoid, but I find my best work to be done under it. Pressure that is. Pressure builds dynamics. With that said, it was not until yesterday, January 23rd, that I knew what I wanted to share. Let me first thank you in advance for tapping in with me this past year and for listening to me. As of today, the podcast has been downloaded 904 times and has been heard in 14 countries and 233 cities across the world. This time last year, I cannot imagine my voice traveling such distances. My only goal was to operate authentically and move forward organically. So sit back, relax, and prepare to jump down this last rabbit hole of chapter one with me. Are you ready? Let's go. As I write this, I cannot help but to be reminded about time, its construct, its unpredictability, its shortness. Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of this podcast. I recall recording the words, and I quote, who knows where we'll be this time next year? End quote. So the question begs to be answered. Where are you this time this year? What progress have you made in a year's time on anything? This question has led me to consider time wasted. Time spent doing nothing but breathing, existing, time that could have been used to bank towards goals and other possibilities that could be realities today if only I did not waste time. So in this moment, I decided that I will end this chapter the way I started this chapter with the naked truth. Last year, this time, I was two months shy from the unexpected removal of my gallbladder, three months away, unknowingly, from surgery on my right wrist, and six months away from having my right hip replaced. The purge episode was inspired by these surgeries. So tired I was from going under the knife, not knowing if I would ever wake up again. I guess for all the ways to transition, it doesn't get any better than that. This time last year, I pushed the button and let my spirit guide me on what to share with the world. I myself did not expect this podcast to be so raw, so unfiltered. My only goal was to give the world something I saw that it desperately needed and had very little of, and that was authenticity. That is why every episode is unscripted and purely in the moment. In my very first episode, Let Me Reintroduce Myself, I revealed that I started this journey in podcasting no hands. I meant that. I can proudly say that I am self-taught in editing and producing. This time last year, I was salty. Salty that people I considered to be good people flaked out on me, would not follow through on helping me and offered tricks for treats to help me. Today though, I'm thankful. I'm thankful because it forced me to see that waiting on others to help me with my motion was an excuse not to have any motion and to place the blame squarely for that on those people. Today, though, I'm no longer salty. And I am supremely blessed and thankful because those people forced me to see that waiting on others to help me with my motion was an excuse not to have any motion. When in reality, all I needed to do was help myself by becoming a student and knowing for thyself. I can't stress that enough. Know for thyself. It was a do or don't moment that I came to. No excuses. It's now 2024, and I did. I did that. And here we are, a year later. There is so much growing in me and this podcast left to do. I would love to tell you all that this year I'll be more consistent, but I've learned not to make promises and to put unnecessary pressure on myself. I recognize that I am simply living the human experience, and with that means life. Life that be life. Besides, I like to build up my listeners. You never know when I'll pop out with a new episode. Just know I'm coming and trust that when I do, it will always be raw and unfiltered. 2023 was a year of revelations for me. I learned that I am quite capable of achieving exactly what I put my mind and focus on. Also, I learned how much my mind and focus can be under attack and how that directly impacts my life and my motion, my goals, my elevation. The biggest attacks were to my mental health. My mental health and thought processes went through the ringer last year. Having gone under the knife three times within a year, recovering without pain relief, gaining weight that I had lost, failed relationships, isolation. I had so much weighing on me mentally and physically that I started losing my memory, literally. And it felt like I was losing my mind. Imagine someone like me, a mind like mine that thrives on connection and conversation, who can lose their train of thought while talking, unable to recall what is being said or why, needing a reminder. It's embarrassing. And it gives the impression that I'm not listening or that I do not care to listen or remember what someone is telling me. And that can be further from the truth. What burns the most about it is having people actually think that I am lying when I tell them I can't recall conversations that they've had with me. It adds weight to my mind having my conditions used against me, to have people actually think that I use them for convenient excuses when that is so far from the truth. I do not think that people realize how truly heavy the weight they carry is. They're so used to it, to walking with it, to being pressed down by gravity with it, that they can imagine its removal. They learn to live with it. And I've become so tired of living with all this weight, literally, figuratively, metaphorically. Here's some raw transparency for you. I had my first real appointment with a neuropsychologist yesterday. I was referred to one after my neurologist determined that I am not suffering from early onset Alzheimer's. And I have a stage two cognitive decline that is due to being in constant states of pain every day. He wanted to help me get a better understanding of the pain that I live with and how it not only affects my physical world but my mental world as well. I left yesterday's appointment in tears. You see, I had to get truly naked with myself. I thought I had done that already and have mentioned that I have in a prior episode, but this nakedness was different. It was coming from an unbiased and a professional source who studies mental health and the brain. So basically, I got a different perspective on my mental health battle. I can tell you that in one appointment, I learned more about myself that I never knew, my personal demons, the damage done from the spiritual battle for my sanity with them, and the work I still have yet to do if I want to win the war for my mind, the war for my body. Being authentic in who you truly are requires you to be honest with yourself about yourself. If someone is listening right now who is scared to peel back those layers, let me be the first to share with you what shadow work looks like. I'm going to read the progress notes from my session yesterday. And I pray it serves as a piece of my testimony and that it will inspire you to seek and face the naked truth of you. This will be my first time reading this as well. I'm anxious right now. I can honestly say that. All right, here we go. Clinical consultation, January 22nd, 2024. The procedure was individual psychotherapy session, 40 minutes with a diagnosis of one somatic symptom disorder, or two, post-traumatic stress disorder, three, depression. We worked on self-management skills to improve anxiety and depression management. Cognitive skills utilized during session today. Target symptom addressed, anxiety and depression, goal of treatment, encourage personality growth and development, improve anxiety and depression management, patience, response, intervention, verbalized intention to deploy strategies discussed, verbalized impression follow-up is beneficial and desires to continue with it. Intermittent tears, facial expression and emotion revealed, presence of significant anxiety, tension, as well as sadness, volume of voice adequate, eye contact good, no unusual motor behaviors noted, attitude towards examiner cooperative, mood reflective presence of anxiety and depression, effect mood congruent, rate of speech and conversation adequate, speech was fluid and coherent, no auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations, paranoid delusions, or manic episodes. Overall thought process is goal directed. No suicidal ideations, plan or intention has three past suicide attempts, the last occurring at age 26. No homicidal ideations, plan or intention. She was alert, well-oriented, able to recall personal and biographical information, able to recall recent and remote information, able to pay attention adequately and concentrate appropriately on our interaction. She appeared able to understand facts and draw her conclusions. She appeared reliably able to express her concerns. She manages her medications and finances and drives. Reported difficulty with sleep onset and maintenance. Reported decreased appetite. Reported episodes of tearfulness too of seven days per week. Reported presence of depression, anxiety and frustration currently, multiple issues exasperating distress currently. Results from brief self-report measures suggest presence of significant depression, anxiety with impact of past traumatic experiences on anxiety and high level of somatic focus. Results from comprehensive measure of mood and personality functioning suggests some inconsistent responses to items with both some hesitancy to acknowledge problems, as well as some endorsement of the items that lead to an unfavorable impression. She is reporting degree of somatic concern unusual even in clinical samples. She is reporting significant depressive episode with significant anxiety. She likely displays significant symptoms related to past trauma, traumatic stress. She typically presents a cheerful picture in the presence of others. She experiences her level of social support being somewhat lower than the average adult assessment. She is experiencing anxiety and depression secondary to multiple factors. Expectation for improvement through course of treatment is fair. She has mental capacity to actively participate and benefit from treatment. Psychotherapy expected to improve health status and function, and is appropriate treatment modality and provides support to her and gives her opportunity to develop adaptive coping skills to better manage above issues. She is to continue to work on development of improved self-management skills for above issues. Visit Frequency currently on a monthly basis, with the goal of treatment is to help develop, enhance, improve self-management skills for above issues in order to improve anxiety and depression management, productive emotional and social coping and function. At the end of the interview and completion, brief self-report measures, I reviewed initial impressions with her and offered to provide follow-up to her, blah, blah, blah. I don't even know if you guys want to hear all this. Wow. Post-traumatic stress disorder. That's something I being told you have. I don't know how to feel after reading all of that. I didn't think that I had PTSD. Everything that you know you go through, we've been taught that God doesn't put more on you than you can bear. I like to think if that is the case, then I think he puts more on you than you cannot bear. I haven't seen that in the Bible. Does it say that somewhere in the Bible? And I don't know about it, but I think he does put more on you than you can bear to break you down completely. There it is. There's the naked truth of me. Not all truths, but some new truths revealed. I never considered myself as someone who has post-traumatic stress. But looking back over my life, and times I've almost died, times I've almost been killed, murdered. Yeah. That can and would have an effect on someone's mental health going forward and how they interact with the world and with people. I appreciate you being here with me as I looked over these progress notes. Like I said, I hadn't seen them yet. They just got uploaded today. And I needed to get naked with myself. And a part of that is just sharing. I want to be someone who can share this experience, this journey behind the scenes look at what shadow work looks like, what real life looks like, what depression looks like, what mental health battles and struggles truly look like. And I think this is the perfect way to end chapter one of my baron and filter and move into chapter two. Chapter one, it seems like throughout the episodes, outside of my collaborative episodes with other dope minds, my goal was to give you a look at a pain journey, to paint a picture of pain, the many forms that it can take and what that looks like, what it looks like in real time. So that we can all try to overcome this battle together. Because we all have our individual mental health struggles, are all individual mental health battles, and it's not pretty. Then you can't help yourself truly win the war for your mind, for your spirit, for your body until you see the ugly truth of things. This is what going to my neuropsychologist has allowed me to do, to open up in a safe space and unbiased space and non-judgmental space with someone who can help me navigate the pitfalls of my past and prevent them in the future. Thank you. I thank you for allowing me to share a part of what that looks like. I am a true believer that mental health is the biggest crisis that we are facing today. How deeply rooted it has become. The poison is running so deep. It is and has infected our youth, the most vulnerable of us. They are being raised to be apathetic, nonchalant, unemotive, no feelings, just savages. I want to change that. I want to let people know that it's scary. It's really, really scary battling your demons. It's scary to look at them, to put names to them, to call them out for what they are. It's scary work, but I promise you, I promise you, once you expose your demons, they will start to shrink away. They don't want that light to expose them for what they are. Saboteurs. They are there to sabotage you, your growth, your elevation. They are designed for training in my mind. My demons are my training ground. They are designed specifically, tailored specifically to me. And the more that I expose them, the stronger that I get, and the stronger that I get, the more battles that I win. Eventually, I will win this war. The only obstacle to winning is me. Me versus me. Didn't we talk about this all last year? You versus you, me versus me. We are our biggest bully, our biggest critic, our biggest hater. We have to turn that around and start to become our biggest cheerleader, our biggest supporter, our biggest advocate. And it starts with us. So entering chapter two, and I pray that you all come along with me. For chapter two of Mambaran Filter, we are moving in chapters around here. I love the books, so I love the idea of chapters. Last year was chapter one. Chapter one dealt with a lot of pain and with a lot of healing. I want chapter two to be the comeback season. I want chapter two to be the growth season, the elevation season. I want chapter two of my barat filter to see more countries or to see more cities, to see more content. I like to see myself creating more content that you all need, love, and uh deserve to have. An alternative to the copy and paste lifestyles and conversations and everything that you've heard in podcasting last year. There's so much inauthentic personalities and just so much ugliness out there in the world that all I could see across social media was there should be an ending to podcasts. That people are just creating podcasts and people are just saying anything and everything, the more outrageous, the more viral. And it's become where people aren't interested in anything other than becoming viral. Well, I'm gonna let you know the only thing I am interested in with this podcast and with me in general is to be a light in the darkness of someone's mind who have gotten stuck, Harleigh, stuck in the darkness and the oily pit of their mind, and has allowed that to affect their growth, their elevation, their transformation, have kept them from achieving and reaching goals. When you listen to my baranam filter, I need you to know that it's always from a pure place. I hope it feels like some form of therapy for you too, as you listen and you know that you are not battling life shit alone. And when you move in authentic ways with pure intentions, you'll naturally, naturally attract other people who lives the same, wants the same, desires the same things as you who are of like mind, like frequency that does not have to match, but at least harmonizes with your frequency. Those are your people, those are your support systems. In order to secure those people in your life and those support systems in your life, you have to cultivate relationships with those people, and that takes energy. It takes energy to put into calling people, talking to people, sharing with people, visiting people, hanging out with people. But if you don't get your mind right, that'll keep you from anything, from going anywhere, from doing anything, from connecting with anyone. So your mind will have you stuck in such darkness that you'll start to isolate. And it's a slippery slope. That's all I can say. It's very, very slippery slope. And instead of climbing back up that slippery slope, you choose to stay stuck where you are because that slippery slope is gonna take a lot more work to go up than it did to go down, and I think that's what we're really scared of. The work that it takes. But you see as we enter chapter two, as we move into 2024, that with the very first podcast a year ago, you see how fast time is moving. It's not moving because you're getting older. Something, the world is spinning on its axis quite differently. Something has changed, and I feel a change coming in the world around us. And I need to do my part to get not only myself ready for it, but my children ready for it, and anybody else that's trying to be ready for it too. Well, kings and queens, here we are on the other side, closing the first year, the first chapter of Mambaran Unfiltered. It is my prayer that as we enter chapter two, that we do so with intent to elevate and grow from whatever we have facing us mentally, physically, financially, and spiritually. Let us make this year the year of growth so that when and if next year rolls around, and the question of where are we this time next year, we will have something to show for it, to compare and contrast. Remember that this life is a battle, a battle that is you versus you. I'm going to need you to dig deep and get naked with the truth of you. I promise that it is the only way to move forward out of the darkness. Are you willing to do the shadow work? Face your demons? What will you do this year that moves you closer to your dreams, your goals? By this time next year, I pray that we all have made real moves and efforts to have something to show ourselves because January 2024 is almost at an end. And I assure you that it will feel like a blink of the eye come 2025. Do not hesitate. There is no time left for you or I to waste away. Set your intentions for your existence today, right now, and be intentional about their fruitions. I want to thank you so much for your time and energy spent listening to My Naked Truths on this anniversary episode. If it has resonated with you in any way, it would mean the world to me if you would share it with others and leave me a review on whatever platform of choice you are tapping in from, especially on social media. You will find all available social and streaming links for my Baron Unfiltered podcast below. Your reviews go a long way in helping me maintain relevancy and reach others who may find it beneficial to tap in. It also serves as a reminder of why I do what I do and the raw ways that I do it. And that it isn't for nothing. Stay tapped in by subscribing to my podcast and following it on all social media platforms. That way, you can be sure not to miss out on the podcast's official first episode of chapter two. Due to drop next month around your girl's born day. And official, official new year. Shout out to all my fellow Aquariuses. And a major big shout out goes to everyone who I have connected with, collaborated with, and formed bonds with during this journey. You know who you are. You've each helped me in so many ways. The motivation and love you've shown me has made this journey even more worth it. Your support is amazing, and I couldn't ask for better connections in the virtual. I'm going to end it right here, beautiful people, and let this amazing beat produced by my nephew Eric, better known as Knight at AM, ride us out. A special, special shout out to you, nephew. It was your belief in me that motivated me to dive into this project. You inspired me to dig deep and uncover my creative side. I can't wait to see what beat you come up with next for my baran Unfiltered Chapter 2. I love you. Until next time, kings and queens, you know the drill. Be good, be safe, stay healthy, and drink your water. Water is life. Peace.