What did I learn today? Lessons on the Journey to Unconditional Self Love

  There are seasons in life when the lessons I thought I had mastered return with a force that shakes me awake. bell hooks teaches that healing through love is not simply personal work — it is collective liberation, soul-care, a way of making ourselves whole so that our communities can thrive. Her words have been echoing through me this week, asking me to look again at how I embody love, not just speak about it. The questions that keep rising : How do I embody love more fully?. How do I live it in the quiet corners of my life? not only in the spaces where I teach, guide, or lead. To let love shape my choices, my boundaries, my self-talk, my relationships. To let love be the ground I stand on. And yet, life has a way of circling back. Old lessons — especially the ones tied to relationships — have returned with an intensity that made me pause. I found myself wondering: Did I not learn this already? Why is this here again? But as I sat with the discomfort, I realized something essenti...

  I was nominated  to be a part of the project called - Making the Invisible Visible: Black Women 365 Days of the Year — offered me one of those moments. Pleasantly surprised and greatful. The project spearheaded by the Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage in the United Kingdom, Each day during 2026 a different woman will be showcased, whose story has shaped Black British or global Diasporic history; many of whom remain overlooked or under-celebrated in mainstream narratives I found myself sitting with five simple questions that opened into deeper truths. This is what rose to the surface. Who am I, really? My name is Akosua Dardaine  I help young  women remember themselves — not the version shaped by expectation or survival, but the one rooted in intention, truth, and self‑trust. My work is not a job description; it is a practice. I create and hold spaces where women can slow down enough to hear their own wisdom. Where young women leaving State and Foste...

  A Rooted Reflection There’s a part of us — the unhealed part, the protective part — that cannot stand the mystery of endings. The ego hates blank space. It hates transitions. It hates anything it cannot control. So when a relationship begins to shift or dissolve, the ego rushes in with its favourite coping mechanism: reasoning. It wants to name the cause. It wants to identify the flaw. It wants to assign blame — to us or to them. It wants a story that makes the discomfort feel justified. The ego says things like: “I wasn’t enough.”   “They didn’t appreciate me.”   “I should have tried harder.”   “They should have known better.” Blame becomes a kind of emotional furniture — something to hold on to when the ground is moving. But here’s the truth I’ve learned through friendships, loveships, work partnerships, and soul contracts of all kinds: When a relationship is completing its cycle, ego reasoning doesn’t heal anything.   It delays the lesso...

  There is something I’ve been noticing about myself, and I’m finally ready to name it. I don’t experience time the way most people do. I don’t track dates. I don’t mark anniversaries. I don’t measure my life in milestones or seasons. Time, for me, doesn’t arrive in tidy chapters. It doesn’t tap me on the shoulder. It doesn’t demand attention. It simply moves — quietly, faithfully — and I move inside it. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent years cultivating presence. Years learning how to stay in the Now without rushing ahead or lingering too long in the past, when I started this practice, the life I was living was chaotic, it was uncertain, unsteady and taking one day at a time was absolutely essential for my survival. I often say, “The Divine is in time, on time, all the time.” And I trust that so deeply that I don’t feel the need to monitor time’s footsteps. I let it be. I let myself be. But here is my confession. When someone sends me a photo from nine years ago, I am stunned. When I...

  J uly's word is  — Abundance. It's not  just a word. It is a shift. A lens. A way of being. My own reminder that abundance is not something I wait for, chase, or hope to deserve. It is something I practice. Abundance is a mindset. A perspective. A daily intention to return to the truth that the Source of All Things is never absent. Never withholding. Never late. Always here. Always available. Always flowing. And I am here for it. Abundance Beyond the “More” Beyond the mindset, the thinking that it is  more money, more things, more opportunities, more comfort. Abundance is not a shopping list. It is a knowing. It is the quiet confidence that even when something feels missing, something else is present. Even when discomfort rises, support is still here. Even when the path feels uncertain, provision is already unfolding. Abundance is not about grabbing for more. It’s about recognizing what already is. It’s about remembering that the Source — God, Spirit, Universe, Bre...

Yung Pueblo says that the mind is always looking for something to grab onto — a sensation, a fear, a gap in information — and from that grasping, it begins to weave stories. And if we are not observing ourselves, those stories can become the foundation of our stress. I have lived this truth intimately over the past week. Stress, I’m learning, is not just about the situation itself. It’s about the moment I stop accepting reality as it is and start swimming in the craving, the discomfort, or the negativity that I’m holding onto. Stress pulls me out of the present moment and into a realm of imagined outcomes, half‑truths, and emotional echoes. It ties itself to a sensation in the body — tightness in the chest, a knot in the stomach — and suddenly the mind begins to build a narrative around that feeling. And the mind loves a narrative. As I continue charting a course for the young women in the NiNa Program, I’ve noticed how quickly my mind can create stories when things feel uncertain or o...