Learning through pain, learning through love

Well,

Unfortunately I believe that when you mess up in public you have to apologize in public. The last thing I wrote on this blog was driven by hurt and anger and, like, a desire to make someone feel as bad as I did.

It did not help me heal, it certainly didn’t help her heal, and I’m pretty sure I caused a lot of hurt to someone who is doing the best they can with the tools and experiences and resources they possess–like everyone else in the world, including me. And including my parents.

I’m sorry, mom. Please forgive me. I love you. Thank you for staying.

I’ve been cocooning lately because the last couple years have been a time of tremendous growth for me. In that time, I lost a parent, which fundamentally altered me and forced me to grow up immediately.

And I changed.

And I know to some, that sudden and complete change was bewildering because on October 9, 2022, I went to bed with a childish mind and heart. But on October 10, 2022, when I got the news that my dad had passed,

I put childish things behind me.

There is a level of seriousness that can’t be undone when you feel and know in your heart and soul and gut that the people who made you will leave eventually–if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, or they’re unlucky, you’ll leave them.

As a part of my cocooning, I’ve been deep diving into Dolores Cannon. She’s something of a metaphysical researcher, if your world paradigm allows for that concept. Mine does.

Tonight,

The chapter talked about pain, the purpose of pain as a teaching tool, and jumping from a space of “learning through pain” versus “learning through love.”

I mean, think about it. No pain, no gain. Ours is a time where the vibe of learning and growing yourself is very much shaped around pain. We do some things to avoid pain, and we do others to create pain because we believe that we have to have that pain to drive us toward the outcome we think we want.

I always, always felt like I felt things too deeply. I always felt like I was in so much pain. I felt mental anguish from a highly active but undisciplined mind. I felt emotional pain from allll of my internal experiences being so different from the external expectations. I felt physical pain, because something about my body just be hurting man, ever since I was a little kid. When I was 10, it was daily stomach aches–real sharp pains. When I was a teenager, it was daily headaches. As a younger woman, it was pain in my throat, my back, my abdomen, my feet, plus the fatigue. And so on and so forth.

I felt spiritual pain because who doesn’t here, separated from each other, cut off from our true nature, unaware of our history or capabilities? Trapped in these paradigms that we made up? It hurts.

I’ve also had some key moments in my life where people would approach me, out of the blue, and just tell me things like I have a calling on my life, and that I have a tremendous amount of strength available to me–so much more than I could even begin to conceive.

When I lived in Qatar and went through my terrible breakup where I lost like 30 pounds and nearly left my body and this earthly plane for real, my yoga teacher started to (gently) tease me and call me the Queen of Pain, lmao.

I wanted to quit and leave this lonely, slow, painful human experience so badly that I never, ever, not in my wildest dreams, ever saw any version of the “future” where I was in it.

But when your heart is broken, it’s open by the nature of it being broken, and during that time I completed my yoga teacher training course, where I learned that if you tap out of life before you finish your mission you have to come back and start allllllllll over again as a baby, with all of the lessons you learned in this life hidden from your conscious mind.

I said oh hell nah, only thing that sounds worse to me than sticking things out here is coming back and starting over, so if I gotta grow I gotta grow.

Tonight, the book I was listening to–yes, I love audiobooks, I get to both learn and rest my eyes–explained the purpose of that pain.

I was given this pain so I could learn how to transmute it and arrive at a higher truth, which is that I can live the rest of my life, make my mistakes, and learn my lessons from a space of love. To show it could be done.

And now I get to put that pain behind me and live the rest of my life standing on the business of love, because I earned it. Because as badly as it hurt, not only did I stick it out, but I freaking expanded. And now I know that there is no limit to my expansion–my ability to love, to grow, to develop, to know, is only limited by the limits I impose on myself.

Yours, too.

See the thing is: We are all the same. We’re made of the same stuff, we contain the same divine spark. We’re at different parts of our journey, but we’re all on the same journey, which is to gather experiences and information and then ride the divine spiral up to the light and oneness and reemerge with that from whence we came.

You can do that from a place of pain, or you can do it from a place of love. I did it from a place of pain, and I earned my reward. Now I’m doing it from a place of knowing. Of love.

Atlantic City (and Anger)

This week, I’ve been in New Jersey visiting some friends I made in Qatar, and we went to Atlantic City overnight. It was actually my first time ever going to Atlantic City, and I liked it. I had nothing but lovely interactions with people. I even won a few bucks at roulette (fuck the slots though).

One of the most remarkable things about Atlantic City was the way the people treated me. While at the (indoor) pool of our hotel, a member of what I think was someone’s bridal party invited me to join them for some wine (I turned them down, but I appreciated the gesture). The next morning, while my friends and I were finishing up our breakfast, an older lady in a white sweater came up to me and told me it was a shame I was so sad since I had such a nice laugh. I was blown away. For someone as depressed as I am, I laugh a lot, so I have no idea how a lady from across the room gauged my sadness.

Later that afternoon, my friends and I went to Tanger Outlets and I saw a psychic shop. I love getting my palm read or my tarot done, so I went in. The reader, Noelle, told me that although I use laughter and humor to heal myself, internally I’m so angry and so sad.

And it got me thinking. Because I know that the level of depression and hopelessness I can experience is disproportionate to the actual status of my life. Everyone has problems, but on any given day I’m safe, comfortable, with people I love, well fed, well rested and even well dressed. But I also know that I am fucking raging inside, and I don’t know how to let it go.

For one thing, it is some motherfucking bullshit that I as a black woman in the USA live in the only possible period in time where I could be so educated and outspoken and free, but it also happens to be the period in time when climate change is bout to drastically alter our quality of life for the worse. I am boiling inside that for all the years when Earth’s habitability wasn’t even a factor, if I’d existed as I am today I probably would have been executed for being interested in nature, well read, sexual, opinionated, ambitious, outspoken, I mean you name it. I wouldn’t have made it to 20; they would have breeded me and left me to die.

Now though, nearly every door in the world is open to me……..for the next ten years or so. I would have loved to be a biological mother in this life (I think), but I don’t think it’s responsible for me to make a new human given the way things with climate change are going. I’m furious for all the opportunities I’ve been robbed by living in this time and in this place and in this skin.

I’m furious at the myriad problems with everything that are simply beyond my control. I’m furious that I live in a time when so much information is available, but so many people don’t know how to think or empathize anymore because people who I never chose gutted the public school system of arts and civics. I’m fucking raging that the guy who made it impossible to declare bankruptcy on student loans ran for president with a campaign promise of reducing student debt then got into office and said you know what, I just really fucking hate poor students. Ol let them eat cake ass Uncle Joe.

I’m furious that Trump will be reelected in 2024 because Biden will absolutely NOT be reelected and that this is more-or-less a foregone conclusion. I cannot believe that we debate the truth and argue against (certain) people’s rights to survive an encounter with the police yet defend a “right” to carry assault rifles even when they’re used to massacare young children in their classrooms. I’m absolutely boiling inside that people consider their “right” to go unmasked as an issue of freedom, but not their children’s rights to safety in schools, malls, movie theaters, and places of worship. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

I’m utterly furious that the darkest part of our incredibly dark timeline is the only one where people like me (brown, women, queer) are allowed to live with a modicum of freedom and dignity in this country. I fucking hate it here.

And I’m so fucking angry that I’ve had to do so much of my life alone. I have had to scrape and crawl over blood and broken glass and intergenerational trauma to teach myself how to be a kind and emotionally intelligent person. I’ve been blamed and gaslit time and time again. I’ve had to handle so many big situations since I was probably six years old, and I was never taught how to do it, only punished when I did it wrong.

And I’m absolutely boiling inside that after surviving everything I’ve survived, I still have had to live most of my 35 years devoid of safe intimate touch. It is so unfair.

When I was younger, I would berate myself nonstop for not being woman enough to keep a man. And to have him pay my bills and send me flowers and whatever other misogynistic, patriarchal nonsense I’d internalized. I always knew that I was too smart to be attractive. And that I was too emotional, and too “crazy.” I thought I was pretty, so the only reason my dad left and my mom resented me and the boys rejected me had to be my personality and spirit. I never knew what exactly was wrong with me, just that it was something real bad.

I chased guys who couldn’t give anyone a safe intimate relationship, talk less of me, and then I used those failed intimate relationships as confirmation of bias. And I would get so depressed, and then I would turn on myself for getting depressed because I was too smart and talented to need the validation of men so badly.

I wished I was dead nearly all of the time, probably starting from when I was 15 to when I left the States at 26 and that makes me fucking seethe. And don’t even get me started on men and religion. When I wasn’t begging god to save me, I was apoplectic at him for abandoning me at the hands of wolves.

And I’m utterly livid that the ones I wanted so desperately to save me (men) were the same ones who perpetuated so much violence toward the women I love and depended on in front of me. It’s. Not. Fucking. Fair.

I have definitely developed my sense of humor as a kind of armor that I wear through the world. My life experience has taught me that you want to tell someone the truth, make them laugh while you do it. But if you believe in reincarnation, then I’ve been reincarnated a lot already and I’m tired. I’m an old soul and I feel like I’ve been at this work of trying to clean up people’s internal messes/the messes of the world/my own internal world for a very long time and getting nowhere. You would not believe how lonely this work is, especially when you have literally no one in your life to lie down with, or to give you a back rub.

Life is hard for everyone, I know. And I know that there are some hardships that we must endure to cultivate our souls. But those aren’t the ones I can’t make my peace with. The things I can’t let go of are the plethora of utterly horrendous problems in this world with solutions that do exist that people just stand around wringing their hands about. And the disproportionate mental and emotional anguish that I’ve had to carry alone in this life.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

ATypical Day

Astrologically speaking, January was a month of miscommunication because something something capricorn I think.

Did any of you notice?

I need to complete my annual evaluation for work, and it involves writing. Normally writing is my jam, man. I can sit down and bust out 3000-5000 words if I have a burst of inspiration. If it’s an article, I can write the article. The words come out.

But lately, I have been struggling with writing. I feel swallowed up in a massive hole of voices and I keep thinking why would I add mine to the fray?

Sometimes I try to catch myself doing something that’s never been done. I’ll be sitting in my apartment, thinking “OK. I’m sure no Black woman from the USA who has locs and a biracial mother has ever sat in Qatar watching K-Drama on her MacBook Air.” Surely that can’t have been done, right?

And I guess I could do what everyone does and “share the process of how I made it” (to where? Things are not finished yet). Or write some kind of book about some kind of grand conclusion I’ve made throughout my years of travel and introspection…..like how to find love, or find yourself, or find your ideal career. Or what all the signs mean, you know?

But I don’t know. I feel like every day I find out there is more to life than I thought there was yesterday. And less. I feel so different than everyone….but we’re all one…but how can I be everyone when I’m sitting at my coffee table at 11:30p.m. and I haven’t gone anywhere for days?

How do I express what’s “right” and “true” according to what I know? How can I assess what I know, when we as a group (homo sapiens) know nothing. Every time I see some kind of historical piece of information that says “for the first time in history,” I think “for the first time in white, male, European history–maybe. But the first time ever? Ever ever?”

Did yall know that the idea of aliens building the Pyramids and the Sphinx in Egypt could have possibly developed or been influenced by racism….that colonizers saw those wonders of the world and figured that if they couldn’t figure it out, then it must not have been done by a human, because they after all are the superior humans.

The ego of people astounds me y’all. Who thinks like that, really? Can you imagine going to someone’s backyard, liking their gazebo/fire pit/deck (yes this is my dream backyard), and being like “well since I can’t build this and I know I’m better than you and everyone you ever met in every way, it must have been done by aliens.”

Kind of a wild conclusion to make, right?

Maybe I should write about spiritual stuff, right? I personally love to read about a good miracle….one that really turns a person’s life in an extremely positive way and has a lasting effect….like how old people were wild until they “got saved,” and then they just stopped drinking and smoking and fighting and gambling and fucking on the spot.

But I don’t have that…..I am absolutely blessed beyond measure. I try not to wonder too much about how I possibly won the birth lottery and then all the circumstances in my life go in a cooperative way so that I could continue to defy the odds until this very moment, where I am healthy, safe, employed, educated, loved, helpful, well-traveled, etc.

I have moments in my life where I felt guided….on the plane in 2013 when I first left the States for South Korea, my heart was pounding and I was terrified and praying. And I remember hearing a voice tell me don’t worry, that God is with me, that we will do it.

But like then is my spiritual advice to folks to leave everything you’ve ever known and see what’s left? What follows you? What you create?

I mean, I guess yeah.

But if anyone were to follow that advice, I’d have to give them a word of caution: everything takes so much fucking longer than I thought it would. Every scrap of wisdom I’ve gained, every trauma or wound I’ve healed…and re-inflicted…and healed again…that shit did not get better overnight. It took years of work, of being way more fucking honest than I wanted to be, of sitting with demons and karma and angels and energy and prayer and memories and sorting through all of it.

Shit sucks and is never ending and excruciating and glorious.

My mom and my psychologist both told me that I’m the type of person who takes things in…who internalize things from other people.

My psychologist says this is to transform whatever negativity I encounter…kind of like to help people out by energetically taking on some of their burdens for them because not everyone can carry everything that we must in order to continue living.

She says this is my work in this life: to clean the world a bit, at least my corner of it. To remove a bit of darkness from it and give a bit of light everywhere I go.

I think that if, sometime before I came to Earth in this human form, my soul was up in heaven like “sweet! free trip to Earth and I get to help people? Sign me up!”……..I think that if that is what happened up there…then I did some typical Bryoney shit and jumped in feet first with no research, not realizing how difficult the work itself would actually be.

And even if I did know….would I have let that stop me?

I don’t think so….I’ve never let anything stop me from working my ass off for something I really wanted. I guess I really wanted to be here, on Earth. I’m really grateful for the blessings I know about and the ones I don’t, and I do hope that in my niche way, I’m a very pretty cog in this machine of life.

Well there. I guess all I needed to do to write is get started. But does any of this even make sense? I feel like I’m rambling.