I haven’t blogged in a while, but a crazy week has made me want to share a message with you. I have been feeling like I’m in the world alone for the past few days. My friends have been there, my family has been there, I interact with people at work, but I’m yet feeling like I’m in a bubble and not connected to anyone. This is because I have lost the connection that I once had with myself. I am a nurturer by nature. If you are sick, I want to give you medicine. If you are sad, I want to make you laugh. If you are hungry, I want to feed you. However, in the midst of nurturing and loving, I lost ROSHAWNDA. Am I sad? No. But what I am is a stranger to myself. I think the reason is because I spend so much time trying to balance the normal woes of my own life as well as the woes of those around me that I have become a casualty. As women, we want to fix everything. We want to be the best mom, aunt, wife, girlfriend, sister, friend, etc. and we tend to fall short because we have not taken the time to remember that you were you before you were anything else. You came first so you come first. People notice your change when your physical appearance changes. How many times have you heard a person say “ooooh she let herself go?” But me? I look the same, yet I have let myself go. My emotional appearance isn’t the same. Am I depressed? NO But, I am just simply not connected to ROSHAWNDA in the way that I should be. I’m telling you this because I want you to continue to be as awesome as you are, but include yourself on your priority list. Including you and taking care of you will help you to better take care of all the people that need you. You can’t give anyone else 100% until you give yourself 1, 000. This is a daily struggle for me. So I am making a promise to myself to strengthen my emotional appearance so that I can be a better friend, sister, niece, granddaughter, teacher, and more importantly child of GOD. It is so easy to get caught up into everyone else that you forget to care about you. I’m not saying be selfish; just try to remember that you matter too. And nobody else on Earth can cater to your needs the way that you can. I have decided to make a plan to devote time each week to myself in isolation. ISOLATION: meaning unplugged from social media, not texting in group texts, and just alone with me and my thought mediating on what is and not what I want it to be. I will spend this time thinking about how to be a better RO. See, the scary thing is that if I continue to be invisible to myself, I will always be invisible to others. I can’t have that and neither can you. Don’t neglect you. Sometimes the only person hindering you from happiness is you. Claim your happy back. Take back your peace. Rejoice in rejection. Know that you can’t do it all and you were not put here to. Cry if you need to just don’t fall apart. You are not a robot. You get to be not okay. You have the right to want more. You need sleep. You need food. You need peace of mind. You deserve the luxury of pampering yourself mentally and physically. Most importantly, you deserve YOU! It is okay to say no. It is okay to not have time. It is okay to want to be better. Bottom line: if you don’t take the time to know the person you see in the mirror, then you are worthless to others. I challenge you to find a day that is just for you. Give no thought to issues that have nothing to do with you. After all our souls weren’t saved by a woman, they were saved by a baby of the male gender and clearly you and I don’t fit that mold. We can’t save people no matter how hard we want to try. This (whatever it is) is not your fight. Chin up and know that it’s okay and that you are AMAZING.
~ RO
RoShawnda 