bag lady, you gon' hurt your back

In this episode, I continue my discussion of emotions and how to allow them to run through you without controlling you. I reflect on experiences where I allowed my emotions and memories to block me from new things. I was so caught up in things from the past that I couldn’t notice the present changing in front of me. Earlier the other day, I read something that said,” You are a constellation of everyone you’ve met.” It made me reflect on how many experiences I have allowed to dictate the way that I show up when they were just lessons that I was supposed to learn, not baggage for me to continue to carry. It also made me realize that I would allow my mind to focus on the negative rather than the positive. So many people have blessed me with their presence, and rumination only allowed me to focus on the ways that I perceived to be hurt.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey, how y'all doing? This is your girl Brianna, and this is the Divine Intervention Podcast, where I try my best to make space and learn how to take up this space. For today's episode, I wanted to kick it off with a new poem I wrote. It's called Chrysalis. In the crevices of my mind, I crawl through the debris of old memories, filling up on moments of insecurity. I wonder if I cling to a shell of myself rather than of me, hiding from the world in a cocoon, I'm molded for safety, waiting for my wings to grow, for me to realize that I'm more than I even know myself to be. But my wings grew years ago. And I'm sitting telling myself that caution, not leaving the shell, is what's best for me. Still and awaiting confirmation from a world determined not to give it to me. Praying to a God who knows me better than myself, silently waiting for me to choose to be free. While I confine myself to my mind, my cocoon, my safe haven, my prison, my home. A place I've convinced myself is best for me. But life begins in the open. Outside of thoughts and dreams, curating this new version of me sometimes feels like more than I believe myself to have. But the day you spread your wings is when you can truly call yourself a butterfly. I wanted to kick off this episode with this poem because lately I've noticed a change in my poetry. I think that I write very different now. But as I look over a lot of my old poetry, I noticed that there is a theme of almost feeling trapped in my mind and in my emotions. And I know that in my last episode, I talked a lot about not being afraid to fly or not being afraid to feel. You have to feel. Typically, it spills over when you least expect it, and in places and times when you really don't need it to. So it's kind of best to clock in when your body, your mind, your emotions are asking you to. Things don't have to be perfect. I like to think that if you're listening to me by now, you know what I'm talking about. I have a bad habit of just sitting with things. And the thing with sitting and not allowing it to flow through a process is that inevitably it just gets stuck. And life continues, life continues to move, things continue to happen. And I found myself, especially when I was in college, if I'm being really real, not processing things until months after they happened. Because I was so stuck emotionally in my processing that I couldn't even really, it's like emotionally, I could not catch up to things until like months had passed. And I remember I remember talking to a therapist about this, and I told them I was like, sometimes I feel like by the time I finally process something, something else is happening, and then I'm just overstimulated. How could this have gone better? How could this be fixed? What can you do in the next go-round? Hyperfixating so much on how to make something better that I already happened. It's done, it's over with.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

You're not self-actualizing. I guess I'm saying all of that to say feel your emotions. Listen to yourself. But also acknowledge that time moves, things move, people move.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

And the thing that you're sitting with, I had to realize how much stuff I was allowing to run my present. Stealing the present from you. The only thing you really have is the moment that you're in.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

And when you allow things to take that from you, the very thing that you're overthinking of, you're giving all of your power to. Life is all about what you give your energy to.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

And lately I've just been in a space of you can't really call yourself a butterfly if you're stealing your cocoon and you're too afraid to break out of the shell and fly. So with that being said, I hope that helped someone. It's been on my heart lately. Go drink some tea. Specifically, if you try the honey lavender tea, I love a good honey lavender tea before I go to bed. Y'all, it puts you out like a light.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

Drink some tea. Read a book. And just take some time to think about the good today.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Hope you enjoyed it and see y'all in the next one.