What I’ve learned along the way

I was sitting in a room the size of a New York studio apartment. I can’t recall the color of the couch exactly but I feel like it was dark green. There were beautiful, curtain less windows to my left where I could stare at the parking lot.

I took a breath and sat upright, spreading my legs to give my hips reprieve. I was a little over 6 months pregnant with my second child, — who is now going on 8 years old.

My therapist was a beautiful curvy black woman with an illuminating smile. She opened her mouth and asked me a question I’d repeat to myself over and over throughout the next decade.

“What do you want?”

“I want to be free,” was my response to her. In our years of work together over the next 8 years, she would remind me that at the start of our work together, I just wanted to be free.

As I sit in my Santuary Room, 8 years later, I ask myself, are you free?

I look around at all my art and musings on the wall. I stare at the vapor coming from the diffuser. The candle flame flickering beside it. I am, in a sense, I say to myself.

After years of work and healing and questions and decisions, I realize freedom is more of a mindset than a place in life. I used to think I would feel free when I was working a certain job or traveling the world — and I do think that is a form of freedom — but for me freedom is a mindset I strive to live from.

One of the most frustrating things about freedom is that it requires discipline. The discipline not to return to old ways of thinking or lifestyles when it comforts us.

The discipline to lean into what makes us feel free even when it’s a little difficult.

Like getting up at 4:30 am so I have time to write while the house is quiet. Journaling and writing in the early, dark hours of the morning cultivates a culture of freedom in my life. It reminds me of who I am — but it’s hard.

I don’t want to get up at 4:30am. I want to stay locked into my comforter in peace. I want to keep dreaming that me and Usher are friends. Or that I’m hanging out with a bunch of friends in a weird house. My dreams have been so good to me lately — like I’m watching a free life I’m living elsewhere .

But if I don’t get up and pray, or write, or journal — those dreams are the only place I will see freedom.

Freedom, requires discipline.

Another hard thing about freedom? It requires consistency. The ARChNeMiSiS of the uninterested. When I am truly uninterested in a thing, it is really difficult for me to keep going.

And when I say uninterested, I don’t mean I don’t want to do the thing, I just don’t like how I have to do it. I’m completely uninterested in the effort I’ll have to put forward and I would rather be doing anything else.

To be consistent, you have to choose freedom as often as possible.

The same way you feel better when you choose helpful foods over unhelpful foods or when you choose to be in the present instead of living in the past.

What you choose consistently, becomes you. When you choose freedom, freedom chooses you 

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But you have to be consistent.

Freedom is free.

Freedom, is free. Free. Free like it doesn’t cost but also free like it has no form. It is your own interpretation. It is your own blessing. It is whoever you are at your core.

Freedom is a mindset and a mindset that is very personal to your calling, your personality, your interests, and your knowing.

Freedom is a way of living that is specific to how you desire to live.

And you get to decide that. You get to walk that path and discover that on your own. You get to be your own guide for what freedom looks like.

And if you ever feel like you need guidance, there is absolutely a divine presence that will guide you to freedom if you let it.

I don’t know everything about freedom, but I do know what freedom feels like for me. It feels divine and persists through every life circumstance. When I am in turmoil. When I am in bliss. When I am in crisis. When I am content.

Freedom is present in me when I am present in freedom.

Do me a favor, yea?

Take a deep breath & answer this question:

What can you choose to do right now, that will make you feel free?

Think simple, small, tangible. Not something that will put you in harms way, jeopardize your sanity, or leave you unstable. Something that will benefit you, right now.

A walk outside, watching your favorite show, revisiting a hobby from childhood, listening to your favorite song on loop while you lay on the floor…

It seems pointless, but these little moments of choosing freedom, lead to bigger moments — and the next thing we know, we are living from freedom everyday.

If you still need more help, my book 100 Questions for the Soul could help you get started. It’s a book filled with questions to ask yourself in your alone time or when you’re getting to know others. Questions like “When was the last time you felt free” or “Does it have to be this way” will give you answers that can only come from you.