do it scared.

date: 02/17/2025

This is how I thought I was living my life. The amount of uncertainty I experienced in my upbringing made literally everything scary but I did it. My mantra became “feel the fear and do it anyway” and I was so sure that I was doing this! Leave it to Chloe to show me that I may be missing this in one area of my life.

At this point in my life, I know who God’s trusted messengers are for me and Chloe is definitely one of them so when she speaks, I am literally all ears and an open heart with a little supporting prayer sprinkled in there too. We were talking about my content journey. I recently announced on instagram how I was trying to end the cycle of my constant stopping and starting creating content. I shared how I often feel like I don’t fit into the content space anymore. All of the content these days is so polished, so pretty, so luxurious and that's just not me! Once I released the burden of putting up perfect content, creating became easier. I nestled into showing my journey towards rest and slow living and I have so many videos in the drafts just waiting to be posted! But now that I’ve figured out what I want my content to be for me, and have achieved that, I’m often stuck thinking about what I want my content to offer to those who consume it.

hope. and relatability.

That’s what I wanna offer. For the Black girls trying. I hope they find me and see sisterhood, relatability, and authenticity. But I realize that if I want to offer hope, I have to be vulnerable and show more of my journey. I’m doing the content a disservice by saying I want to offer hope when all I’m showing is my current stage in life. While I write a lot about what i’ve experienced in my Substack, I don’t share all of this in my instagram. In truth, my family follows me there and I’ve had enough of my experiences being discounted because of what I’ve posted so I’ve stopped.

shared experiences ≠ shared perceptions.

I think people forget that they are outsiders to my life. It doesn’t matter if you’re my parent, sibling, cousin, significant other, or best friend. We can share the experience but you don’t know what thoughts transpired within me, what thoughts I had to fight, how I internalized it, or how those experiences affect me on my day-to-day. And you definitely do not get to choose how I am supposed to feel about what’s happened to me in my life.

you don’t get to choose how I’m supposed to feel.

I’ve dealt with people exercising their imaginary right to choose how I’m supposed to feel and let me tell you, fighting other people’s delusion is exhausting. It got to the point where I chose safety. I created distance between myself and the people I love and then I put up a barrier to prevent myself from being too vulnerable in my content. In the present, I realize how this barrier prevents me from creating community. As a marketer, I understand that consumers gravitate to a story. A story that is authentic, relatable, and inspiring. Consumers also gravitate to brands and people who put out content that resembles a life they want for themselves. I know these things, and yet I let the fear of other people’s opinions stop me from telling that story and building my community.

*Heavy healing sigh*

Today, I chose to reopen those wounds to tell my story comfortably and safely in my instagram content. But while I reopened those wounds, I made sure to add extra pad locks on the doors that I’ve closed in the past because I'm no longer allowing anything or anyone to come in and change my story. You don’t get to do that. (and don’t let nobody do that to you either, mmkay?)

I thought I was gonna reopen those wounds but then I remembered boundaries. It’s for me to know, acknowledge, and build a softer life as a result. I am redefining my life without trauma. Those wounds are sealed and healing and I’m finna let them keep doing that.

xoxo, just a girl romanticizing her life (even when it’s scary). 🌹