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

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 ...