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

  We slip so easily into old suits. Old stories. Old ways of being that once fit but now hang loose, outdated, irrelevant. It’s wild how quickly we can forget who we’ve become , how fast we can shrink back into versions of ourselves that belonged to a different season, a different level of awareness, a different life. But when we notice, everything shifts. This morning at the gym, I caught myself noticing. Noticing how my body moved through the drills. Noticing the strength that wasn’t there a few months ago. It was still super  hard but I did it. And the truth is, there was a time not too long ago when I absolutely could not. That’s the power of coming current. I joke with my friends about it now  “come current!”  but beneath the humour is a real invitation. Are we living from who we are now, or are we dragging around the voices of people who never knew our fullness? Are we acting from the present version of ourselves, or from the echoes of a past that no longer fit...

  Self‑love has been marketed as a glow‑up, but the real work is an inward turning.   Today, I came across a Yung Pueblo quote that I resonated with: “It is taking your evolution into your own hands, developing a new and healthier relationship with your mind and heart. It is a mixture of acceptance and transformation.” I felt that. Deeply. Because this is the part of self‑love we don’t glamorize ,the part that asks us to sit with ourselves, to listen, to choose differently. It goes beyond fixing. Beyond the hair, the nails, the curated aesthetics. This is the kind of work that doesn’t show up on the outside first. It begins in the quiet. What this quote reminded me is simple but profound: I hold the key.   I don’t have to wait for a retreat, a perfect moment, a mountain escape, or a new journal to begin. Tools help, yes. Inspiration from others can spark something, yes. But the real shift comes from a decision , a firm, grounded, internal “yes” to my own evoluti...

  I   heard Shelly‑Ann Fraser‑Pryce say something on a podcast that resonated with me. She said motivation is fleeting, but standards… standards determine who you are. If your standard is excellence, it will flow through everything you do. It was such a simple sentence, but it rearranged something in me. Because motivation comes and goes. Inspiration rises and falls. But standards , the ones you set for yourself , those are supposed to be the foundation. The way you live. The way you show up. The way you honour your own becoming. I found myself asking, almost quietly: What are my standards?   Not the ones I speak about. The ones I live. How do I spend my mornings? How do I spend my days? What am I doing, consistently, intentionally ,toward the dreams I say matter to me? It made me look at my life with a different kind of honesty. Not harshness. Not judgment. Just clarity. Because standards aren’t about perfection. They’re about alignment. They’re about deciding ...

  This month, I found myself returning to Nathaniel Branden’s work on self‑esteem, not as theory, but as a mirror. His writing reminded me that self‑respect is not a feeling you wait for; it is a practice you build. It is shaped by the choices you make when no one is watching, the boundaries you hold when it would be easier not to, and the truth you speak even when your voice trembles. As I step into August, I am choosing to make self‑respect a daily ritual. Not a lofty ideal, not a performance, but a lived commitment. These four guidelines  distilled from Branden’s teachings and my own lived experience  are the pillars I’m practising this month and beyond.  1. Look inward, not outward.: I am releasing the old habit of measuring myself through someone else’s lens.External validation is a moving target , and chasing it is a guaranteed way to lose myself. My value is inherent. My worth is not up for public negotiation. This month, I am practising trusting the divine gu...

  Inspired by the work of Nathaniel Branden  Nathaniel Branden’s work on self-esteem has always felt like that bell to me, a call to return to myself with honesty and intention. What Branden teaches is simple, but not easy: self-esteem is not a gift. It is a practice. A construction. A foundation we lay brick by brick. And that is what moves me most—this idea that I can build it. I can rebuild it. I can return to the ground of myself and begin again. Self-Esteem as Necessity, Not Luxury Branden argues that self-esteem is not an accessory we wear when life is going well. It is not a luxury reserved for the confident or the accomplished. It is a necessity—the internal architecture that allows us to live expansively, to stretch into our potential without collapsing under the weight of fear or self-doubt. Money can come without self-esteem. Titles can come without self-esteem. Achievements, applause, and possessions can all arrive without it. But keeping them,being comfortable wit...

  This morning the beach reminded me, again, that the world has its own quiet timing. I went for my usual Saturday ritual, drive to the beach, walk the shoreline, watch the fishermen, watch the sunrise.  And then I saw it while close to the end of the shore The Portal as open  Two massive rocks that prematurely ends the shoreline making it almost impossible to cross. Most days the tide is too high, the waves too wild, the space too narrow. Blink and you miss the moment when it opens. Sometimes it doesn’t open at all. But this morning, it did. Walking through the Portal always feels mythical to me. On the other side is a hidden enclave of beach, a small world of its own. So many crabs on the rocks scrurrying around Caves carved by time and tide. As I stepped through, I thought about how life works in the same way. There are portals — moments, opportunities, invitations — that open briefly. Sometimes quietly. Sometimes without announcement. And if we aren’t paying attention...

  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...

  Most people spend their entire lives inside stories someone else wrote for them. The betrayed wife. The abandoned child. The strong one. The fixer. The one who always survives. The one who never asks for too much. Roles handed to them before they even knew they had a choice. And because these stories were repeated — by family, by culture, by trauma, by silence — they become scripts. Scripts people perform for decades, sometimes without ever questioning who authored them or whether they still fit. But here is the truth: You can look at the same facts and write a new story. This is not denial. This is reframing. The facts remain. But the meaning you make of those facts becomes yours. You cannot always prevent the hit — the heartbreak, the disappointment, the loss, the moment that knocks the wind out of your chest. Life will hand you chapters you did not ask for. But you can decide whether you stay on the ground. You can decide whether the story becomes: “I was abandoned, so I am un...

  Today, I asked myself a simple question: What change am I most proud of?   I am proud of feeling my feelings without rushing to fix them. For years, I treated emotions like emergencies — something to solve, silence, or outrun. Now, I let them pass through. They rise, they speak, they leave their feedback, and they move on. They no longer take up residence in my body, waiting for the next incident to remind me they were never dealt with. I am learning to let feelings be visitors, not tenants. I am proud of showing vulnerability instead of wearing stoicism like armour. Proud of minding my own business — truly minding it — and remembering that not every conversation requires my advice, my opinion, or my intervention. Silence can be a boundary. Silence can be wisdom. I am proud that I continue to show up at the gym at 6 a.m., no excuses, no drama, just discipline. I am proud of staying calm when the money in my savings account dips low, while I search for opportunities, whi...

  What possibility lies on the other side of risking the comfortable, the known, the certain? This is what I came up with: On the other side of comfort lies the possibility of learning something new — about life, about others, about myself. The possibility of discovering an unconditional love of Self that isn’t dependent on performance, perfection, or approval. There is the possibility of being disliked. And the possibility of being deeply, unexpectedly liked. The possibility of adventure. The possibility of freedom. The possibility of living in a way that feels like truth instead of performance. There is the possibility of consistent authenticity — no shrinking, no people pleasing, no lying to protect someone else’s comfort while abandoning my own. The possibility of walking into rooms as the full, unedited version of myself. There is the possibility of growth. The possibility of courage — not the absence of fear, but the willingness to move with it, breathe through it, act anyway...

 I’ve been sitting with Alice Walker’s journals these days — not her novels, not her essays, not even the works the world praises her for. Her daily journals. The private pages she never wrote for applause, only for truth. And I must admit something: I have never read an entire Alice Walker book. I’ve seen The Color Purple, yes. I’ve read the interviews, the articles, the commentary. But the books themselves? No. And yet — she has always pulled me. There is something about a woman who writes boldly about the world’s wounds and still insists on living on her own terms. Something about a woman who refuses to shrink her voice, her politics, her tenderness, her rage, her softness, her desire, her sensuality. Something about a woman who chooses herself, again and again, even when the world would prefer her quiet. That is what drew me to her journals. And now that I’m in them, I understand why. Her vulnerability is not performative. Her authenticity is not curated. Her openness is not a ...

  I went to Medellín with no expectations. None. No grand plans, no curated list of “must‑see” places, no pressure to make the trip mean anything. I simply went — open, curious, willing. And somehow, that was the perfect posture for a city like Medellín. Because Medellín meets you exactly where you are… and then gently lifts yo u higher. Communa 13 was my first lesson . A place once known for violence, now pulsing with colour, rhythm, and a kind of defiant joy. The people there don’t just survive — they create, they express, they reclaim. Every mural felt like a testimony. Every smile felt like a small revolution. My guide was from the area and we stopped off at his house way up on the mountains, he talked about the pros and cons of gentrification and reminded me that the beginning of the change, the peace that now passes all understanding started with women waving white flags amidst all the shooting saying enough!  Then Guatapé — bright, bold, unapologetically beautiful. A to...

  This month, I am choosing authenticity. Not the version shaped by old wounds or the fear of being too much or not enough. I mean the real thing. The me beneath the armour. The me I sometimes hide even from myself. Over the past few months, a couple of  questions kept circling me : Who really knows me?   Who have I allowed to see all of me — the soft parts, the fierce parts, the uncertain parts, the sacred parts? And the truth is… I couldn’t answer with certainty. Not because I don’t have people in my life. But because somewhere along the way, I learned to tuck pieces of myself away. To manage people’s perceptions. To avoid conflict. To keep the peace. To be agreeable. To be “fine.” But “fine” is not authenticity. “Fine” is survival. And I am no longer living a survival life. When I look honestly, I see how past experiences taught me to shrink, to edit myself, to stay safe. But safety at the cost of self is not safety — it is self-abandonment. And the price of that ...