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

  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 ...

  There are seasons in life when we cling tightly to the plans we made — the timelines, the expectations, the versions of ourselves we thought we needed to become. We hold on with both hands, believing that certainty is safety, that structure is protection, that if we can just keep everything in place, nothing will fall apart. But life has its own rhythm. And it rarely asks for our permission before shifting. Sometimes the paths we plan with very little room for flex end up becoming the very things that limit us. Not because they are wrong, but because they are too small for who we are becoming. Too rigid for the wisdom that is trying to move through us. Too narrow for the future self who is waiting on the other side of our surrender. What I’ve learned — again and again — is that there are possibilities available to your future self that your current self cannot yet imagine. You don’t have the vantage point. You don’t have the lived experience. You don’t have the clarity that only ...

  Every day, I remind myself of something simple but not always easy: the ego’s main goal is to survive, I=Yung Pueblo said this and I agree one hundred percent  It will defend itself — sometimes blindly, sometimes loudly — even when there is no real threat. This is the human condition. This is also the human work. I’ve learned that the ego is not the enemy; it is simply the part of me that wants to feel safe. But when I cling too tightly to my thoughts, when I treat every perception as a fact, when I let old stories run on loop without question, the ego becomes a restless narrator. It pushes me into defensiveness, into proving, into circling the same point over and over instead of listening, softening, or expanding. So my intention — my daily intention — is to live from a place of balanced ego. Not ego erased. Not ego inflated. Ego balanced. Balanced ego feels like this: I am not threatened by every disagreement. I am not unsafe just because I feel uncomfortable. I can notice...

  There are some truths that arrive  — gentle, but impossible to ignore. Lisa Olivera’s reminder was one of those taps for me today: Words don’t just describe. They summon. And it made me pause. It made me listen to myself a little more closely. Because if words are seeds, then every sentence I speak — to myself, to others, even in the privacy of my own mind — is planting something. Something that will grow. Something that will shape the landscape of my life. And so I found myself asking, just as Lisa: What am I growing from the words I use to describe myself, my life, and the world? What am I making more vivid that I actually want to release? What am I refusing to allow simply because I refuse to practice new ways of speaking about it? What truth have I not yet put into words because some part of me is afraid of summoning it into being? These questions sat with me. They still are. People often tell me I don’t speak much. And they’re right — I am mindful of “wasting w...

  There is a distinction between being and doing. We know this in theory, yet life has a way of calling us to live it out in real time. You can be doing all the “right” things — showing up, checking the boxes, moving with intention — and still feel untouched, unmoved, unchanged. When the doing is loud but the being is quiet, something inside begins to tug. A restlessness. A whisper. A knowing. And that whisper says: Go deeper. But what does deeper mean? I’ve been sitting with that question today. Letting it breathe. Letting it stretch itself out inside me. Deeper can be releasing control.  Deeper can be surrender — not the passive kind, but the holy kind that says, “I trust what I cannot yet see.” Deeper can be making a different choice when life presents you with the same old pattern. Deeper can be sitting in the stillness without an agenda, without a performance, without a timeline. Deeper can be listening — truly listening — to the quiet voice beneath the noise. Deeper can ...

    Delays have a language of their own. I would in the past believe that delays came to frustrate us or throw us off course. I have now learnt that sometimes they arrive as quiet teachers, asking us to slow down long enough to hear what we’ve been too busy to notice. Other times they come as mirrors, showing us the places where we still rush, still grasp, still try to force life into our timing instead of trusting in divine timing. I’ve learned — and I am still learning — that every delay carries a message. Sometimes the delay is asking me to endure, to hold steady, to not let panic make decisions on my behalf. Sometimes the delay is asking me to pause, to breathe, to gather myself before I move again. Sometimes the delay is asking me to pay attention, because there is a lesson tucked inside the waiting. And sometimes the delay is simply saying, Not yet. Not like this. Not from that place. I am one who likes to rush to the solution, rush to fix, rush to do something — anythin...

  It’s been twelve days since I last wrote. Twelve days of life life‑ing in its full, unfiltered way. Twelve days of feeling absolutely no motivation to put words anywhere — not on paper, not in my notes app, not even in the quiet corners of my mind. And yet… here I am again. In the in‑between, I found myself returning to my spiritual toolkit — the practices that hold me when my energy dips and my clarity scatters. The ones that remind me who I am beneath the noise, beneath the fatigue, beneath the stories my mind tries to run on repeat. One of those anchors has been The Abundance Process by John Randolph Price. A simple, steadying study. A mirror that keeps whispering, “Look again. Abundance is here. It has always been here.” It’s been a timely reminder, especially in this season of my life where certain things feel uncertain, stretched, or slow. The practice keeps nudging me back to truth: Focus on what is present, not what is missing.   Focus on what is flowing, not wh...

  May has arrived, and with it, an invitation: How will I show up in my power this month? Not the kind of power the world tries to sell us — the grasping, the controlling, the performing, the hierarchy of who is above and who is below. No. My power has never lived there. My power is inward. It is how I breathe, how I move, how I honour myself. For this month, I am choosing  integrity over image, alignment over approval, truth over noise. Real power, the kind I am committed to, is sometimes quiet. It liberates. It uplifts. It moves with love, not force. It doesn’t need to dominate anyone; it simply asks me to show up as who I truly am. This month, I am reminding myself that I don’t have to chase anything or anyone. I don’t have to run behind opportunities, validation, or timelines that were never mine. I don’t have to prove, perform, or pretend. My only work is to show up in remembrance of who I am. To live in integrity. To act from love. To do my best — and leave the rest in t...

  T here are seasons in life when you feel the ground shifting beneath your feet — not in a way that threatens you, but in a way that calls you. A quiet invitation to step into a new way of being. A new way of choosing. A new way of seeing yourself. Lately, I’ve been sitting with this idea of Creating a New Reality — not as a slogan, but as a lived practice. A discipline. A spiritual unfolding. As I prepare for my upcoming conversation with Emily  on Monday for her podcast Coming Home, I’ve been reflecting on the questions she’ll be exploring with me. Questions about intentional choices. About dignity and belonging. About the sacredness of process. Question s that have shaped not just my work, but my becoming. Here are a few of the thoughts that are on my mind: 1. The power of the pause I’ve learned that creating a new reality often begins with a single moment of stillness — that breath between the trigger and the response. That sacred space where truth becomes louder than fea...

There comes a moment — sometimes quiet, sometimes disruptive — when you realise that the life you are living is being shaped by beliefs you never consciously chose. Some of them you crafted from your own experiences. Some of them were handed to you — by parents, teachers, religion, culture, community, media, and the people you loved long before you had the language to question anything. And as Daniel Kahneman once said, “For some of our most important beliefs, we have no evidence at all, except that people we love and trust hold these beliefs.”   When you really sit with that, it shakes something loose. Because if that is true, then how many of the beliefs running your life were never really yours? The Autopilot We Call Survival Most of us don’t stop to examine our core beliefs because the system feels like it’s working. It has kept us alive. It has kept us functioning. It has kept us from too many surprises. So the mind says: Don’t touch this. Don’t question this. Don’t chang...

  There are answers in the stillness. There are questions too. When I sit with myself — truly sit — everything arrives. The self‑awareness, the boredom, the thoughts that loop, the stories that rise like old film reels, the flashbacks that tug at memory, the self‑talk that can be both balm and battle. Stillness is not empty. Stillness is a mirror. And I’ve come to believe that spending time with Self is a kind of worship. A returning. A communion with the Most High. Because in the stillness, the Divine speaks. Sometimes in my own voice. Sometimes in the trees swaying their quiet wisdom. Sometimes in the waves that refuse to stop showing up. Sometimes in the rivers that remember how to move even when the path is unclear. Sometimes in the birds who sing without asking permission. And sometimes — unexpectedly, tenderly — in the voices of my ancestors. My grandmother. My grandfather. Their guidance arriving like a soft breeze across the chest. Anything that nudges me out of comfort, an...