Staying Encouraged in Love When the World Around You is Trippn’

   Black romantic love! The fuckin impossible right? Obtaining Black romantic love or romantic love for any group of folks for that matter can feel like waiting for an alien to deliver a winning lotto ticket and new sex toys to your door. So many times in my journey I have felt this would be more possible than “finding” a brotha who would choose me (hella problematic btw). What I have learned about this need to be chosen is that the little girl in me wanted to be seen and fathered ironically by men whom hadn’t been fathered they damn self. In this process I have been humiliated, heartbroken and unknowingly and knowingly allowed brothas to diminish and exploit my feminine energy. I then projected my accumulated venom from child-hood chaos and romantic heartbreaks onto my friendships, my family and healthy men interested in understanding the beauty behind my madness. With my venomous actions, each of these entities at times felt the disgust that I saw when I looked in the mirror. As time progressed and negative habits of the mind took over my body, I became fixated on the idea that love in all the ways that it can manifest would never be mine. Particularly with romantic love the little girl in me continued to suffer and call out for love from Black Men. Though my mind was so sure that I wasn’t worthy or powerful enough to push through hurt, pain and fear to manifest the deep romantic love I craved, parts of my spirit knew this wasn’t true. For years, my mind and spirit didn’t align, causing them to square up, my spirit always loosing this fight.

I have found in this pursuit to actualize my desire for love that my mind is an abusive adult and my spirit is a fragile child. My mind told my spirit many times that her being neglected was normal and then convinced her to hide her true nature from the world. My spirit broken and gullible followed suit, obliging to the madness of my mind. I was engulfed in this hopeless abyss, and I continued to manifest more bullshit as I looked for love, in man after man that unknowingly laid dormant in me the whole time. Going through the emotions of this experience left me feeling love fatigued. In this fatigue, I was pushed to learn from my emotions at a deeper level. Though I still have some ground to cover, I have made hella progress, progress worth sharing to help many of you in your journey. I have developed 8 tips to help you stay encouraged in love when the world around you is trippn.

1. Love you: Let's first start by defining love and utilizing my spiritual aunte bell hooks definition. She defines love in her book "all about love" as "the act of nurturing yourself and someone else's spiritual growth simultaneously". I have struggled and continue to struggle with nurturing the deeper part of who I am behind this physical body. So many times in my journey I wanted love from a man because I wanted him to do the work for me. I wanted to escape diving into myself while exploiting the energy of the partner I craved. I am working through this in order to avoid codependency that discourages self-accountability and self-care. I have had to get super honest with myself about who I am. I have had to acknowledge that I have shit that I need to address. I have had to break down and fall to my knees, shattering my ego in the process. The eradication of ego is where the love process can truly begin. This process to loving myself is not romantic, it is not bubble baths, it is brutal and filled with scary shit that I have blocked and pushed down. Self-love is loving ourselves enough to face our fears while in fear but not allowing it to cripple our ability to stand up for the shit we deserve. I am still working through this but have come to understand that whatever we desire and deserve will never be ours until we can confront ourselves first. Secondly, even it does come to us in our brokeness, we will be too much in pain to recognize the glory before our eyes. Understand that the love we desire is rested in the trauma that robbed you of your best self! This is scary shit, this is root work and I am just scratching the surface but know that is valuable work too! Get started ! You got this! 

2. Honor how you feel:  If you desire romantic love and don’t believe it can happen for you, HONOR THIS FEELING. Honoring doesn’t mean you have to agree with it or disagree with it. Honoring instead is the process of acknowledging what it is coming up for you and not judging it. Emotions are energy in motion and when we understand this we allow for a process of introspection. Introspection gives us a deeper understanding for the why behind what we feel. In this introspective process you will explore why you don’t feel you deserve a beautiful partner. Next, allow yourself to search for solutions to help you shift perspectives that don’t serve what you really desire. So for example, you may create a list affirming all the things about you that make you bomb as fuck! Whenever you begin to move away from your power, which will or can happen, return to this list and remind yourself why the universe would be a damn fool to not let you bless somebody’s life.

3. Seek out relationships that align with your love and relationship politics: I can’t tell you how much seeing relationships that perpetuate Black female sacrifice and toxic Black men have discouraged my desire to be coupled. Or the opposite equivalent of this; Bae goals and couples who pretend that relationships are not work, like they don’t stretch you, like they don’t challenge you. I've had to block pages and people whom promote relationships that trigger the little girl in me yearning for authenticity and liberation in her relationship. Representation matters especially in a world where your desires are marginalized. Exposure to the physical evidence of our desires helps to build the confidence to keep pursuing what we want. I have been super inspired by Ericka and Eb, a Black Queer couple who radiates in honesty and friendship. Sometimes my frustrations with str8 CIS relationships is that they reek of power dynamics that usually has feminine centered beings fucked up! I have had to be intentional about conceptualizing what Black love can look like for me. I come to find that I desire a relationship that is built on laughter, friendship, accountability, respect and gratitude for each other’s divine purpose.

4. Be mindful of who you share your desires with: I’ve learned the hard way that not everyone will reciprocate and keep the same energy you hold for your joy. When sharing what you want with people you may find that folks including the people you love will spit out hurtful and venomous perspectives and comments that can kill the inner-child in you dreaming of your best life. Protect your inner-child from those whose inner-child forgot how to dream! I myself have been a person harboring jealousy and negativity that I hurled at my friends when they were radiating with joy. “Unfortunately”, we are not usually at the same places in life as our friends. Sometimes you may be in a season of becoming a mother or starting your business and your friends may struggling to find inspiration. Or sometimes we can be so in our ego that you may experience friends whom are doing fairly well but may have fears that you will "do better" than them. It happens! I am not saying its right but I am a firm believer that jealousy is a natural emotion. It is what we do with our jealousy that can become dangerous. Jealousy and envy is a powerful emotion that can hex people for the free when it goes unchecked! No ingredients needed to put a spell on someone, just our jealousy alone can be venomous to ourselves first and foremost and to those whom we are jealous of. This is why we must protect our desires and plans and keep them on hush until they have manifested. This way you don’t have to explain shit to nobody because they will see with their own eyes. Once it arrives, if the love is REAL, no fuck shit formed against it shall prosper and you shall live in bliss. (I assume so lol)

 5. Pray and trust the universe/ancestors:  Pray for what you want! There are so many ways to pray ! Getting on your knees in front of your alter(or wherever your sacred place of prayer is) is one way but sometimes just speaking out loud what you desire to yourself, when no one is around, is enough. I am slowly being shown that the universe is listening to us, so tell it what you want! This means you must get clear about what you want. Creating a list of characteristics you desire in a partner may be helpful. In addition to praying for what you want, ask the universe to send you what you need. Sometimes what we want may not be the best thing for us! For example, I have come to discover that being with a hyper-patient man is going to be imperative for my relationship to be successful. I understand this because I understand myself and the shadow sides that I come with. I have had to be mindful though that a hyper-patient man is built through his experiences. This man may have become patient as result of having children, coming from a hostile environment or having to navigate painful experiences that tried and built his patience time and time again. While these set of experiences that he comes with may not be on your want list, understand that what you want comes with a series of prep that has made that person be whom they are. With that being said, I have learned to make space for what is best for me and in my prayers I make sure to ask the universe to provide me with people who align with my destiny. As Lauryn Hill said,"What you need ironically will turn out what you want to be, if you just let it". Lastly, in our prayers not only should we ask to receive but we should ask to be prepared for what we are asking for. I realize that I am NOT as patient as I could be. I am mindful that I am asking for patience but I am not prepared in this moment to give it at the level that I would like. While some of us require more patience in comparison to others, we all still deserve for folks to be patient with us. Therefore preparation for what is for us is just as important as asking for it ! LAST but not least, trust the universe! If you ask for it and ask to be prepared, it is so important to trust that in due time it will happen exactly when it is suppose to. This is a struggle but if you lack patience like me this is an opportunity where it can be built. 

 6. Re-focus on what you want: In my journey I have had to constantly refocus on what I want! I say refocus verses focus because being distracted by the world or falling back into being trapped by our past happens! Sometimes it can feel like hella pressure to be hella focused every second of the day! So instead take that monkey off ya back, and give yourself permission to be humxn yet hold yourself accountable to return to the space that will help you get what you desire. I do this by reminding myself how far I have come, listening to music that promotes love and revisiting #2 tip: Seeking out relationships that align with my love politics. 

7. Pay attention: If you pray for something and believe that it will happen then you gotta stay woke! The universe be dropping off blessings without labels and notices sometimes. The mistake that I have made in my journey is praying for things but still believing that "N*ggaz aint shit". The universe sent me a prototype of what I asked for 9 months ago and I wasn't woke. I was still hurting, still grieving lost connections, and still stuck in my past. This resulted in me flashing on him, being abusive and him seeing that the strong vibrant womxn that attracted him was actually a broken little girl. Don't be like me! Although this man loves me and continues to stay in my life, I have caused hurt that has created an unnecessary distance between us, a distance that sometimes feels impossible to shift. Stay encouraged and keep your eyes and your heart open for love in the many ways it can manifest. 

8. Practice love with your friends: We have to do a better job at honoring love as an energy that is bigger than our romantic endeavors. Re-defining and recognizing love for all of what it has the power to do helps us to appreciate love in the many forms that it comes in. I wanted romantic love but didn't understand for the longest that the basis of any powerful romantic relationship is friendship. Ironically, I have been a trifflin ass friend several times in my friendship journey. I have cut people off when I am upset to avoid dealing with my feelings, I haven't always shown up for my friends when they needed me the most and my disregard for their feelings at times has just been outta pocket. I am relearning how to be a friend and learning what it means to love my friends and give thanks to their presence in my life. It is my sisterships that have held me down and given me the most when I was a  mess and real talk, undeserving. I figure, especially as Black Womxn if we have issue's respecting and loving other Black Womxn, we will most likely have issues respecting and loving ourselves which then trickles down into our romantic pursuits. Once our love with self is in the process of being restored we can give much more to our friends and learn to see them as just as valuable as our potential partners. This is important because we don't want to be the friend whom negates friendship when our partner does come. In fact, I am irritated with the culture that normalizes that most of our time should be spent with our partner(s) and that our friendships become replaced by them. I don't personally subscribe to this belief because I think it intensifies the chance for us to lose ourselves in relationships and to become way too codependent on our partner(s). In addition to this, besides your family, most of our friends have seen our development up close and personal. Without their love, forgiveness and light we would not be who we are thus not prepared to show up for romantic partners. So why would we downplay this love?My best friend Jewell is apart of my foundation and much like the root chakra there is nothing that can be done when the foundation is weak! Apart of my task in our friendship is to address how to practice love with her in order to keep our foundation strong. Lastly, by being grateful of the love in friendship, we are reminded that love is all around us even when it lacks in other areas. 

Blessings to you in your journey to align with love ! 

Myisha M Soule