The Journey

    I'm on a journey. I have packed my bags and placed them on my back, now I am in search of a place to put them down. I'm on a journey to that place called self-love and appreciation which sits right outside of self-respect and that little utopia where standards are set.
    Saturday night, I was telling one of my male friends about my life and how there have been some things that have occurred here recently that have made me question my worth as both a woman and a human in general. In the midst of that conversation, he told me three things that I had to simmer on and apply to my life:

• Get to total self-love
• Tell God everything
• Put forgiveness at the front of everything you do

     As we were talking, he asked me what self-love looked like to me. I found it disturbing that no matter how many times I ran around in my mind searching over and beneath every quote I had ever come across and everything my mother had ever told me, I could not come up with an answer to the seemingly simple question, "What does self-love look like to you?" In order to save myself I told him that I didn't think self-love had a look and that it was more of a feeling, kind of like how someone can look like a good person, but be the most evil bitch or bastard you had ever crossed paths with. He stopped me and answered the question with the most ease in the world and at that moment I realized that I loved myself, but not enough.

     A portion of self-love is recognizing every trial and tribulation that you have been through, and embracing them as stepping stones to who God wants us to be in Him. Even though I have been abused, homeless and rejected by the ones who should have been closest to me, I have to understand that they are all a part of me. On this journey, which my mother described as one of the beautiful processes in one's life, I no longer have the right to parade around, putting up a facade as if my life has been a crystal stair. I have to look my issues in the face and tell them that I forgive them for making my stomach turn when a male touches me or providing me with the false notion that I will never be good enough for any male because I was never good enough for my father or any other male that I saw as someone I wanted to look up to. I have to gather them in my arms and tell I love them because they have made me who I am and who I am yet to become.

    I believe this will be the hardest thing I have ever done, but the ending result will be a powerful woman...