true abundance is gratitude

In this episode, I discussed my relationship with the word abundance and how I’ve grown to see community as my truest form of currency. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey, how y'all doing? This is your girl Rihanna, and this is the Divine Intervention Podcast, where I try my best to make space and learn how to take up that space. I'm here this week with an audio episode. Honestly, just to tune in, do a quick check-in. Um, because I honestly think I'm gonna do like longer episodes. Okay, so I start grad school this month, guys, right? And I'm on the countdown, so I've been trying to think about you know, how do I make this a space that does not start to overwhelm me? And I came to the conclusion that every now and then I don't honestly just do it the way I've been doing it, like audio episodes for the most part, but every now and then just drop a little video, a quick snippet, something of me talking, just so I'm getting more comfortable with my face on camera. So today I just wanted to tune in to talk about the word abundance. I think that lately I've been really sitting with it, and uh I think that and I can only speak for me, use my experience for a long time. When I would think of words like abundance or prosperity, I would always think about the tangible things. I didn't think about I guess a lot of the things I think of now, which is community and love, and having people that really truly genuinely care about you, but also abundance in the perspective of earlier today. I was sitting and thinking, and I was like, Well, you know, younger you would have if you would have asked younger me, should have been like, Oh yeah, in 2026, I'm probably gonna be in my second year of law school, and I'm probably gonna be doing this, this, that, and the third. And I guess now when I think of the word abundance, I think of the fact that I'm not doing particularly what I thought I was gonna do, but I'm finding so much joy in walking a different path, and realizing that I might not be doing what I thought I was gonna do, but what I'm doing is what I always needed. I think that and I deal with this especially a lot in college, a lot of things would frustrate me, and I would get frustrated when I felt like emphasis on the smack, I would get frustrated when I felt like I wanted something, a very specific thing, and for whatever reason things wouldn't pan out the way that I thought they would, and this is gonna tie into my episode next week because the title of that episode is gonna be rejection is redirection. I had such a is tumultuous the good a good word. We rollin' with that right now, y'all. I had a very difficult relationship with rejection, I I struggled with it. Um, I think it's for multiple reasons. Don't nobody like being rejected, don't nobody like feeling rejected, but I think for me, and especially in the moments when I would feel rejected, it would go back to wounds of like childhood wounds, it would go back to probably like the first time I ever felt like someone rejected me, or the first time I felt rejected by people around me, and it would feel like who it would feel like an open source that everybody could see, and so especially for me and navigating um college and just a space where I felt like a fish out of water, like I really felt like I was kind of just I was doing the best that I could with what I had, and I think some people would look at it and be like, Well, you were doing you were doing very good, but I think for me, I I was struggling to see myself, I was struggling to see the world around me and situations because I was in survival mode. I was literally just trying to make it to the following day. I was waking up and living my day like we just gonna get through today. That's that's what we're gonna do. Um, and if I wasn't just trying to get through today, I was planning my life like months in advance, so I was either fighting to take the first step, or so far ahead that it was impossible for me to really be in the present because my mind is just not where my mom was at, or I was in the past, so I was literally like I said, I was doing the best I could with what I had, and whenever I would come across situations of rejection, it would be very difficult for me because like I said, it would tap into moments of honestly, just when I was a really little girl, and when I felt like I wasn't seen or I wasn't heard or like I was around people that I felt like just didn't quite understand me, um, like a fish out of water, feeling very much in my feelings, and I think that for a long time it really messed with my relationship with Wiresuck Abundance because I wasn't realizing that even though I was probably struggling in certain areas of my life, I feel like I have always been blessed to have people that saw potential in me, and sometimes people that even saw more potential in me than what I saw in myself or what I even saw possible for me to do, and I think for me, even just thinking on it makes me emotional because I think a lot of times people will tell you, especially when you get in college, well, it's not what you know, it's who you know, and a lot of people think of that saying in regards to the people that you know and their connections and what they can, you know, who they can hook you up with, what can they who can they get you in contact with? But I think for me the who you know started to be more so about who do you go to when you need like words of encouragement, who do you go to when you need a genuine shoulder to lean on, when you need someone to just confide in, and I feel like abundance to me is the fact that even when I think about my time during the university at the university and following and even like my current where my feet are currently planted right now, and how I started having to make like a community um like a my community tab in my email or my community tab in my phone, or honestly, like days when I felt alone, I would have to make like a like a scribble tree. Um, like I would scribble a little drawing of a tree because I always tell people I'm a writer, I'm not a drawer. My baby sisters can draw y'all, they're so talented. God bless me with words. I'm working with what I have. And I would have to like draw a picture of a tree and then just write people's names around the tree and like branches to remind me that even in those moments when I felt like I was by myself or that I was struggling to ask for help, that I have I'm like a tree. I have all of these leaves, and all of these leaves are people that are more than willing to be there if I need them or if I need anything. And I think that my relationship with even abundance changed when I just learned how to ask for help and how to how to open up my mouth because a closed mouth don't get fed, and it took me it took me a minute to really and I'm still learning, I'm still learning how to lean into asking for help and leaning into my community and because I think the way life is set up now is so it's so heavy set on individualism and and like everybody working in their own pockets that I feel like sometimes it makes it even easier to forget that there are people that if you ask them they don't they don't mind and not even the not minding part. I think for me, I had to realize that when you're in community, people actually I don't want to say look forward to helping you, but like they don't mind like when people sign that's like that's like one of the clauses when you sign up to be in community that like I know at least for me when I think about it, if anybody needs me, I know that I'm there, so I guess a lot of times it's reminding myself that like what you extend, people are more than willing to extend that back to you. You just have to be willing to ax, and I think it goes back to the rejection piece because you can't let the fear of someone saying no or them not being available that one time stop you from even having the courage to axe a first time or a second time or a third time. Um and I also think just in the word abundance. I saw a post the other day, was it the other day, it was probably like yesterday, but it it it it it says something along the lines of I know that my prayers will be met because I'm living in my prayers from years ago. And it I've just been in this state the past week and a half of just deep gratitude for everything. I feel like once I really started to process a lot of things, I realized how not only truly like how blessed I am, but I think in relationships and in community I just aspire to be the type of person that I know that a lot of people have been for me. Um and so I just hope that if you're listening to this that you extend the offer to ask for help or extend the invite to ask for a coffee or extend the acts of just reaching out to someone for help and just trusting that when you extend that there will be someone there on the other end that can meet you where you are. Cause I think especially with so much going on, it's a lot of remembering that at the end of the day, community is and always will be um where your real sense of abundance and all of that truly lies. Um so yeah, that's that's the episode for today. I hope that you know you drink some water, buy a plant, tell somebody you love them, and if you don't extend an X, at least extend an offer. And I'll see y'all in the next one.