Wellness With Her Club

Tribute to self love, awareness and the Ego.

Hey love,

How are you doing?

In 2018, I had a huge life shift; leaving home to go study in a whole new continent was a very exciting prospect cuz now I was going to not only get a first class educational experience, I’d get to have it far away from home, doing whatever I wanted to do, freely. I was beside myself and the days rushed by as I nervously waited to leave my country. Adjusting to a new space was something but having come with my open mind and free spirit, and getting through the high school “trauma”, I knew I was ready to kick ass. But was I?

Interestingly a few months in, my mental health steadily started deteriorating and a lot of things were bought to my awareness that I had never noticed before; for example, the little constant voice in my head. I had never heard her there before but now in solitude and constant fear of making it and being safe, she went on and on worrying about where our next meal would come from or if the girls down the hall would like me, or whether the other people in my country still thought I was cool. My 18 year old self was so confused as to why she kept on going on and on, and sooner rather than later, I let her take over. My whole nervous system got taken up by anxiety and mentally, I always walked like I was being watched. I slowly felt myself get detached from my view point and it was like I was watching my being from the eyes of a stranger. From a distance, I looked okay, we always do, but inside, all hell had broken loose. Or so it seemed. Being exposed to so many different people could have helped broaden my perspective and realising that I was in a gold mine of opportunities that had the capabilities of changing my life forever was not at the forefront of my mind, hell it wasn’t even in my mind because she’d been taken up by a lot of other self deprecating thoughts.

On through 2019, I still felt like the world was against me and constantly found ways to think myself into depressive situations that would last months on end. In all this, it was always somebody’s fault. Or the country I was in, or the men in my life that promised me money but never sent it. I was constantly in tears, wishing to end my life but never quite having the guts to do it. I self isolated from the world; shutting out my family, friends and class mates, deleted and deactivated my socials. I felt like I was carrying the world on my shoulders, thinking, “Maybe this is how Christ felt as He carried up that cross to Calvary.” In a way, I guess, I had set myself up for a crucifixion, I was on the path to my own death.

Towards the end of that year, the viral pandemic came in and disrupted the flow of our lives as a whole, and naturally I was caught in the whirlwind. It set in pace, a series of events that were leading towards the discovery of the self, the ego and so much more. I tried so hard to resist the spiritual life, all the while convincing myself that it’s just a phase and would soon pass, but I felt the need to discover and explore and know more about what made my mind tick and talk. I gravitated towards yoga, journaling, other sensual practices and the exciting world of ✨manifestation.✨ I knew it wouldn’t be hard and gobbled up tons of information from LOA YouTube Gurus and the like, thinking, “this is so easy, I wonder why I’d never tried this before.” But three months down the road, none of the things I desired had physically made their way into my life and I felt like a joke. “What am I doing? Why was I wasting my time with all this?” I thought to myself. Asking myself these questions lead me to shadow work, I had to detox and make room for the good stuff. This opened up so many wounds and revealed things I consciously had no idea about.

Then I got to learn about the Ego.

My recent read, Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday, put a lot of things in perspective. You’ve probably heard people saying, “The Higher Self.” This is a concept i haven’t properly grasped yet because some days she feels like she’s the purest, best version of me, and other days it feels like it’s the fancy way the ego labels itself so that we’re constantly vying to be more and better and not just appreciating who we are right now and using that to build ourselves. That’s just a thought. The only way we can be the better version of ourselves is to stay awake, stay humble and to stay a student because learning never stops. Mentally envisioning and visualising the “best” version of us especially in a life where we aren’t even aware of our death date, is honestly draining and mentally sets us comfortable in where we are. The fact that you’ve lived the moment in your head a million times, over and over again in a bid to live that moment physically can end up making you not invest the right amount of effort to get you there. Visualisation isn’t the scam but there’s a fine line between that and maladaptive day dreaming.

🍃

“Concentrate every minute like a Roman — like a man — on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can — if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered , irritable.”

Marcus Aurelius.

The best thing one can do for oneself is to stay awake, alert and present, this way, the negative thoughts stay at bay because you’re too present to think about them. The Christians call it the Devil, the Buddhists, Mara, and some beliefs, like the Hindus, don’t believe in evil or the devil. The Devil is the embodiment of evil in Christian mythology and Evil is a concept used by religious folk in the West to explain negative events that “have no root cause.” Having a devil in one’s faith, supposedly makes it better for us not to take responsibility for our own actions and choices that got us messed up in the first place.

We have to choose then to not only be aware of who we are but also accept the way we come, because with acceptance comes great freedom and peace.

You

You’re a unique being, created for a purpose. There are spaces in the world that have your name on it and no one else in the globe could do you better than you do, so before you second guess yourself, before you talk down on your looks or mind or decisions, think about that. You’re depriving someone of an experience when you try to be someone you’re not.

I cry every time I experience people expressing themselves, in the smallest ways even, through their art and creative spirit. It rocks the core of my soul when I see authentic creations. A reminder that there’s room for all us, whatever shade or talent; whichever path one chooses, as long as they believe in it with their heart, it always pays off. What a beautiful thing indeed!

So today love, choose you, be you, do you because no one is you and that’s your super power.