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Courage | Be Seen

Be Brave Series

I had a dream and I knew in my knower that this was the next blog to write in my “Be Brave” series.

Dream

There once was a chubby little girl. She had a mother and father who appeared to love her as the rest of her family. They were all in a living room laughing and talking. Prior to this scene of the dream, I spoke with the mother about her little girl’s weight. I said to her, “She eats to insulate the pain.” Her mother didn’t believe me. 

The little girl had on a pair of capri pants and hi-top Converses but she wore a trench coat to cover her upper chubby body. A man was sitting next to me on the couch. I don’t know why I didn’t care for him. The little girl, like little children do when adults are around, was walking like a runway model in front of the adults wanting to be seen. The father said something about her weight. Immediately I said looking at the father, “She’s going to have a small waist and oh the butt.” The man next to me said, “Naw.”  I changed my mind. I knew I didn’t like him. He had that pedophile glare that made me want to punch him.

The mother looked over at me and said, “I’m sorry I didn’t believe what you said to me.” I replied, “It’s okay.” I woke up.

Transparency – Let’s Share

The little girl knew she looked different. How? Someone close to her that she loved unconditionally compared her to her smaller peers. Since her family uncovered and left her unprotected this prompted the little girl to wear a covering of her own choice to hide her body. With each toxic word launched her little soul designed a line of clothes called, “I’m not good enough.” This line of clothes would produce other brands of pain and shame, i.e., not worthy, unloved, self-hatred, unnatural fear of people, etc. 

The adults thought that if they shamed her when she ate any type of food she would stop eating and lose weight. They were wrong. She became afraid of food peroidt. It didn’t matter what the food was she feared it. Food to her had no taste. It was a substance she knew her body needed. That was all. Who was getting gloriously fed? The unaddressed pain and shame. The toxic words in her soul took her fear of food and all the other toxic brand of clothing and gorged itself to no end. 

Walk Away from Trauma

This is my story of rejection and abandonment that praying, journaling, counseling and self-affirming daily has been most of my adult life. But I know I’m not alone. You may have a similar story or another area in your life that you were devastatingly ridiculed and traumatized by. Not fully showing up in the present because the past has been so hard to let go of. But little bit by little bit you’ve been eating down the elephant with a teaspoon and now you’re at a place where you know it’s time to come out of the crawlspace and be seen. I know. It is scarier coming out than hiding, but it’s your time.

You have choices and options on how and when you do it. You can come out at your own pace and space. You can either rip the band-aid off or slowly remove it, creating each moment. I can’t say it won’t pinch your insides but better that than the pain of regret. What matters is that you do it. You’ve prepared for this moment.

Take the first step and feel your feelings. Don’t back up. Just stand there and allow yourself to feel your emotions. Your thoughts will be all over the place. Let them run around and don’t over analyze them. They will tire and leave if you stand still and wait for that small voice to speak and guide you. That voice will walk with you through every place, person, and event you will attend. The Voice will send Simplicity and Ease to combat Fear. As you continue to be seen Courage will replace Fear. Being nervous is expected going into new territory – keep going. You deserve to be seen and participate in your life, your purpose. Believe it or not there are other huemans out there waiting on you to see and hear your story. Your story will allow them to remove their toxic clothing and to know it’s possible to do so. Why? Because they will know they are not alone. 

C’mon Breathe, Be Brave, Be Seen. 

Lana

Courage to Surrender

BE BRAVE SERIES

It’s 2022. Flashback.

You have allowed yourself to tell your story of pain and shame to counselors, therapists, and select people. With professional assistance, you navigated through the terrain of traumatic experiences learning triggers and unlearning what created the triggers in the first place.

In those experiences, the way you survived was to create masks that you attached to your personality while burying your authentic self. Deep down you knew you had created a false identity. But again, in those secret sessions with a person, you trusted you were determined to excavate your soul and discover your authentic self by removing each mask.

You prayed, meditated, journaled, vision board, memorized, repeated, and sticky noted affirmations and scriptures. That non-judgmental voice you met with taught you that you had options, choices, and alternate routes in any situation. It wasn’t just either/or, it was either and or, and you could plan how you wanted to approach a situation or not. They shared with you about boundaries. You rejoiced. You were given tools like a get out of jail free card in the board game Monopoly. You were being equipped to take back your power, self-respect, and dignity. It was challenging in the beginning but you learned and accepted that “no” was a complete sentence with no explanation needed.

Each excavation and learning healthy practices led you back to your purpose. In fact, each year of soul searching you found out a little more of what you liked, disliked, what made you happy, and what fulfilled you. These gold nuggets prepared you for your purpose.

It’s 2022. Present moment.

It’s time to walk in your purpose and help those who are struggling in the same areas and even more as you once did, but you are hesitating. Why?

You’ve been made over again and prepared for this moment. You have been equipped to walk in your purpose. So why do you hesitate?

Did you think that this day would never come? You expected this to happen when you were younger, healthier, more excited about it? But were you ready when you were younger? Did you have the internal makeup, beliefs, and fortitude of yesteryear? Answer honestly.

Now is the assigned time. Your health, excitement, and more will be restored to you as you surrender to the process. Let’s revisit some best practices that walked you away from earlier traumatic experiences. They’ve proven themselves in the past and they will do it again in the present.

  • Admit, out loud, your fears. A sister friend of mine says, “What you hide, you cannot heal.”
  • Pray, meditate, journal, vision board, and be still and silent to hear that still, small voice inside of your gut.
    • Pay attention to what you are feeling, look for outward signs of tips and strategies to help you presently participate in walking in your purpose.
      • Self-help books, movies, commercials, conversations, podcasts, conversations around you. Maybe someone, no matter the age is giving good advice that could help you too.
    • Eat foods that nourish your unique system and daily move your body to keep it active.
      • This promotes optimal health physically, mentally, and emotionally.
    • Write down affirmations that support your purpose and build your confidence.
      • It’s okay to walk with fear until it transforms into courage. Just keep walking.
    • If you have one person in your life that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you trust and can confide in, ask first would they mind being your accountability partner. Respect their response.
    • Lastly, but most importantly, trust God, the same Power that walked you through former traumas. That same Power that showed the unfairness of how you were treated and explained their behavior. That same Power that taught you how to forgive and discern behaviors of other’s behavior that you picked up, exhibited them, and unlearned them because they were not yours. Trust that same God now.

God wants and desires for you to not be afraid of your freedom in all areas of your life. But it’s up to you to surrender your apprehension so you can move in ease and simplicity with God as your feet are navigated in your purpose. C’mon you’ve come so far. This is your comeback moment.

Affirmation: “I ask ‘Courage’ to walk with me daily in my purpose.”

Take Off Your Mother’s Clothes

Indulge me a few seconds to go back to biology class. I promise you it will be painless. In Mark Wolynn’s book, It Didn’t Start with You, “The pioneering cell biologist Bruce Lipton stated that DNA can be affected by both negative and positive thoughts, beliefs and emotions. He demonstrated that signals  from the environment could operate through the cell membrane, controlling the behavior and physiology of the cell, which in turn could activate or silence a gene.” Once a debated theory has now been proven by other researchers how cellular memory is transferred in the womb from a mother to her child in utero. A mother’s emotions can biochemically altar the genetic expression of her offspring. The mother’s nutrients in her blood nourish the fetus through the wall of the placenta. In those nutrients she releases a host of hormones and information signals generated by the emotions she experiences. “These chemical signals activate specific receptor proteins in the cells, triggering a cascade of physiologic, metabolic, and behavioral changes in the mother’s body as well as in the fetus.”

What emotions your mother carried passed on to you. Unknowingly what clothes did you inherit from your mother that you are the designated person to remove? You are doing things and have done things that your mother and her mother before didn’t get a chance to do or made a choice not to do. What is the block that you come up against but you make a choice to either go through it or go around it? What makes you feel the fear and do it anyway? Or maybe you are not afraid and you do it anyway, but  either way you do it. Why is your way challenging and you keep pushing until you conquer the fear and excel in what you thought was impossible? What have you decided whether consciously or subconsciously what you want in your life? Why are you, as challenging as it may be, able to walk away from traumatic behaviors, situations, people, choices?

It doesn’t mean that you don’t experience the emotions, beliefs, or behaviors of your inherited cellular structure. In fact, you do, you are very aware of the patterns in the aforementioned areas. You go to counseling, see a therapist, pray, meditate, cry, journal, confide in people that you know can handle your story, your emoting, your sound, your language. You allow yourself to feel but you don’t stop there. You push yourself to rewrite your beliefs and seek out clinical and natural methods to detach from toxic emotions and behaviors. While all the while you are thriving in your business, and even though it’s uncomfortable you are connecting with people that embrace you. You are coming out of the cave and risking everything to be seen and believe in your abilities, talents, and skills. Sometimes you don’t know why you keep pushing to live out your purpose whatever that may be. You question, you have an idea but is it really your purpose? The purpose and the reason get muddled at times and you want to stop but you keep going because it feels right. What is that thing, that reason, that “it” that keeps you walking or crawling to live better, do better, be a better version of self?

You have truly outdistanced those before you. As you climb each rung you are removing the clothes of your mother and her before her, and so on. The clothes of abandonment, rejection, shrinking, playing small, fear, false identity, periphery relationship with others and self, unlovable, false humility, false pride, anger, self-hatred, no boundaries, dissociative behaviors, etc. Whereas in the past your relatives worked for someone else, you may be doing the same. But you are either working on your side hustle until one day it is thriving to be your main source of income. And even if you do continue with an employer you are moving up in positions to learn more skills and to influence your company’s culture.

You are removing your mother’s clothes gradually. Some will come off quicker than others but don’t get weary, they will come off. Keep taking the risks, keep learning new skills, keep learning new financial strategies to get out of debt. Keep connecting with people that embrace you and challenge you lovingly. Keep writing, keep singing, and dancing even though you are not getting paid the monies you deserve. Keep cooking those new dishes out of your home until that restaurant is yours. Only stop to rest and be restored and even in those moments keep encouraging yourself and affirming that no matter what you deserve to be happy. You deserve peace and to be content in any situation. You deserve to be healthy in mind, body, and soul. You deserve to have excellent relationships beginning with yourself. You deserve to have a loving companion, spouse, or, significant other in your life. You deserve to wear your own clothes that fit you, for your body, your style, your swag, with your innately created cellular structure. 

Affirmation: I Allow myself to take off my mother’s clothes.

I Allow to keep walking in Peace, Forgiveness & Love,

Lana

Series: Walking Away from Trauma- It Didn’t Start with You!

Trauma is defined by the American Psychological Association as, “an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster… Longer term reactions include unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, strained relationships and even physical symptoms like headache or nausea.”

Traumatic experiences make your thought processes become messy and disorderly. Eventually you only remember snapshots or fragments. The triggers to remember the gaps are sound, smell, taste, and hearing. Have you ever smelled a food that triggered a memory of a traumatic experience? For instance, when I would sit down to a plate of macaroni and cheese, pork chops, greens, and cornbread I heard in my head a familiar voice say, That food is gonna make you fat. Hearing that voice robbed me of tasting the food. It was so powerful that everything tasted bland and I ate in a rush. I’ve heard similar stories from other people that can identify with a song that was played and remembered being illegally touched. Unfortunately, these memories, if not allowed to speak and transformed into healthy beliefs they follow you into adulthood and steal you from living authentically in language, behaviors, and identity.

What I’ve learned in over twenty years is that what you’ve been through didn’t begin with you. If family members talked more about their upbringing you would see the pattern. But that is what trauma does, it silences you, or others that did speak out were not believed, which eventually manifested into anger, rage, denying the horrid moment and living in a fantasy world. All of these toxic emotions manifest into toxic behaviors and prevent you from living fully and confine your authentic self to an inward prison.

In this blog we will discuss ways that you can recognize, identify, and learn how to walk away from your trauma. Also, I have a podcast (“From Trauma to Triumph: Walking Away from Trauma” every Thursday, 7-8 p.m.) where I invite people to tell their story of how they’ve walked away, what they’ve learned, and how they are living authentically. I will also have therapist, counselors and natural healers to share their tips, strategies, techniques, and wisdom to guide you to your victorious side of living authentically in behavior, language, and identity. Come, join us and share. We’d love to have you!

Lastly, I will also suggest books, articles, magazines, even other sites that I read to assist me on my journey. What I say does not replace or remove what you are utilizing on your journey to assist you to walk away from trauma. I’m just a guide that if what I say can help, then I’m honored. If not, please share with someone else that it may help. Either way I thank you for taking your time to read my blog.

A new blog will be out every other Sunday and published on all of my social media sites.

Facebook.com/lana.m.hooks

Twitter: @lmhooks

Instagram – lmhooks51

Link: anchor.fm/lana337

First Episode: “Identifying and Releasing Trauma” – 6/17/21