النص 🔗
WEBVTT
00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:11.115
I don't think we truly realize how much of how we move in love is a direct reflection of what we didn't receive when we were younger.
00:00:11.115 --> 00:00:13.307
Think about yourself right now.
00:00:13.307 --> 00:00:16.179
Are you the person that you needed when you were younger?
00:00:16.179 --> 00:00:21.589
If not, when are you going to make the time to face yourself?
00:00:21.589 --> 00:00:23.333
Let's talk about it.
00:00:23.333 --> 00:00:32.040
To face yourself, let's talk about it.
00:00:32.040 --> 00:00:36.723
You are now tuning in to Love Frequency, where love grows.
00:00:36.723 --> 00:00:43.728
Welcome to Love Frequency, the podcast that helps you transform your pain into power.
00:00:43.728 --> 00:00:53.612
I'm your host and favorite love advocate, nya, and on this show we believe that love is not the problem, honey, you are.
00:00:53.612 --> 00:01:08.781
So join me every other Wednesday as we have necessary discussion that focuses on getting to the root of the problem, because when you know, you grow.
00:01:08.820 --> 00:01:12.507
One of my greatest fears has been dying alone.
00:01:12.507 --> 00:01:16.840
This has been a fear of mine since I was eight or nine.
00:01:16.840 --> 00:01:36.692
Kind of eight or nine year old thinks about shit like that Me, that's who and I honestly thought that a way to solidify friendships and connections and strong relationships was to become a quote, unquote ideal mate, whatever the fuck that means.
00:01:36.692 --> 00:01:38.625
I was a genius at eight or nine.
00:01:38.625 --> 00:01:39.569
What can I say?
00:01:39.569 --> 00:01:44.125
But through that fear, whether directly or indirectly.
00:01:44.125 --> 00:01:59.391
Many of my decisions in childhood, into early adolescence, into adulthood, were motivated by me not wanting to be alone, and I called that love for a very long time.
00:01:59.391 --> 00:02:03.200
Alone for me had nothing to do with solitude.
00:02:03.200 --> 00:02:11.406
I just yearned for a space where I felt I was wanted, included and respected, a space where I could be, was.
00:02:11.406 --> 00:02:27.681
I was searching for something that I had never experienced.
00:02:27.681 --> 00:02:39.725
This fear that I had of being alone, that was created by my pain of not having a place that I felt I could call home, created a void within me to find something.
00:02:39.725 --> 00:02:48.175
It's almost as if the math is saying being alone plus abandonment equals love.
00:02:48.175 --> 00:02:51.710
Let me break it down just a little bit further, because I know some of y'all are frowned up.
00:02:51.710 --> 00:02:56.603
Some of y'all didn't understand that math, and that was the point For many of us.
00:02:57.104 --> 00:03:20.330
When we look at the root, the true root of why we get into connections as quickly as we do, why we continue to see repeat patterns in the relationships that we are in, if we take a look at the math, it's often because of the traumas and the pains and the fears in our lives that create that strong craving for love.
00:03:20.330 --> 00:03:30.104
It's the void that we're trying to fill and all I'm saying is explain to me, sway, how pain plus fear can equal love.
00:03:30.104 --> 00:03:36.122
I don't care how good your love is, the root will always show up in some form.
00:03:36.122 --> 00:03:39.530
I don't care what anybody says, you can't run from your root, baby.
00:03:39.530 --> 00:03:42.782
That's why, when you know, you grow.
00:03:43.264 --> 00:04:02.009
And every moment I spent in connections that made me feel like I had to prove that I was worthy of receiving love were not only reflections of the very thing I thought I was running from, but actually was running toward my fear of being alone, but it was also a direct reflection of the love I was used to receiving.
00:04:02.009 --> 00:04:04.829
My bar was set extremely low.
00:04:04.829 --> 00:04:08.301
Just attention in my direction was enough.
00:04:08.301 --> 00:04:10.766
That's why that math don't make sense to me.
00:04:10.766 --> 00:04:24.175
That math requires you to diminish your value, so I'd compromise and conform until I had become a version of myself that was unrecognizable.
00:04:24.841 --> 00:04:32.173
And then we get out of those connections and we say we got to do the work and we have to heal, not realizing that there's not a goddamn thing to fix.
00:04:32.173 --> 00:04:41.908
You didn't go in broken, you just went in lost, searching for the wrong fucking things and oftentimes with the wrong fucking people.
00:04:41.908 --> 00:04:44.615
Let's all just quit shit.
00:04:44.615 --> 00:04:45.576
Throw in the towel.
00:04:45.576 --> 00:04:57.093
If it's something that happened when we were children and we're still talking about shit we didn't receive and we're grown now, there's nothing we could do about it, so we just might as well give up.
00:04:57.093 --> 00:05:01.805
Come on, y'all, the fuck you thought you was.
00:05:01.805 --> 00:05:10.889
This is love frequency, where we turn pain into power and, just like they say, when life gives you damn lemons, fuck that.
00:05:10.889 --> 00:05:15.708
When life gives you trauma, all you got to do is change your phone's wallpaper.
00:05:24.639 --> 00:05:32.060
Have you ever had one of those moments where you zone out and you find yourself scrolling mindlessly on social media, only to look at the clock and several hours have just flown the fuck by?
00:05:32.060 --> 00:05:34.725
Then what happens immediately afterwards?
00:05:34.725 --> 00:05:43.451
It's that deep feeling of guilt, like, oh, all this shit I could have got done, but I guess I'll do it tomorrow, and then tomorrow never comes.
00:05:43.451 --> 00:05:45.869
No, just me, fuck y'all.
00:05:45.869 --> 00:05:47.283
I know it's you too.
00:05:47.723 --> 00:05:49.790
So I was having one of those moments.
00:05:49.790 --> 00:05:57.149
I'm scrolling on Facebook and I come across a reel entitled change your
Load full transcript
wallpaper, change your life.
00:05:57.149 --> 00:05:58.911
Immediately.
00:05:58.911 --> 00:06:03.206
I was fucking annoyed because I can't stand clickbait.
00:06:03.206 --> 00:06:19.141
I don't know about y'all, but I feel like it's lazy, albeit effective journalism If the goal is to see how many views you can get and then not how many people actually resonate with the information you're providing, because that's just good journalism.
00:06:19.141 --> 00:06:21.367
But I digress, it's not what we're talking about.
00:06:21.367 --> 00:06:24.293
So I see the video.
00:06:24.293 --> 00:06:28.081
That's not what we're talking about.
00:06:28.081 --> 00:06:32.711
So I see the video immediately unbothered and I scroll two videos past and then something stopped and prompted me to go back.
00:06:33.512 --> 00:06:39.872
As I'm watching this video, the creator recommends that you look back at your childhood and the feelings you had.
00:06:39.872 --> 00:06:44.163
Were there, times when you needed someone and no one was there.
00:06:44.163 --> 00:06:50.877
It stressed the point that it's often our inner child's wounds that are holding us back.
00:06:50.877 --> 00:06:52.410
But what can we do?
00:06:52.410 --> 00:07:00.358
A solution they offered was to find a picture from your childhood where you remember going through a difficult time.
00:07:00.358 --> 00:07:18.619
Take a picture of that image and save it as your phone's wallpaper and over the next 21 days, every time you look at your phone, you will not only see the image of yourself, but there are four things that they encourage you to repeat.
00:07:18.619 --> 00:07:21.812
Now you're going to have to watch the video to find out.
00:07:21.812 --> 00:07:23.516
The link is in the show notes.
00:07:23.557 --> 00:07:25.088
You thought I was going to give it all away, honey.
00:07:25.088 --> 00:07:31.377
No, I'm going to make you work for it, but did your mind race back to a time when you were younger and needed someone?
00:07:31.377 --> 00:07:34.391
For most of us it did instantly.
00:07:34.391 --> 00:07:35.415
How old were you?
00:07:35.415 --> 00:07:44.790
Why did you select the image that you did, even if you thought about it in your mind and if you chose not to participate?
00:07:44.790 --> 00:07:48.399
Do you wonder why your pain doesn't want you to face this?
00:07:48.399 --> 00:07:50.331
I say you should challenge that.
00:07:50.331 --> 00:07:59.120
For me, the picture and memory that immediately came to my heart was my senior picture from high school.
00:07:59.120 --> 00:08:06.639
The reason this image stands out so much to me is it captured the last essence of childhood hope and possibility.
00:08:06.639 --> 00:08:13.769
Everything that happened after this photograph was taken changed the course and trajectory of my life forever.
00:08:13.769 --> 00:08:19.470
So, in the interest of time, let me spare you all the damn details and just give you the highlights.
00:08:19.470 --> 00:08:31.677
I also want to preface by saying it's been a very long time since I've gone down memory lane, so some of this shit is going to be a struggle for me to talk about, but we're going to get through it together because there's power at the other end of this story.
00:08:31.939 --> 00:08:37.255
So during my senior year, I was living with my father, his wife, her kids and my brother.
00:08:37.255 --> 00:08:41.809
Midway through the year my father decided to move to a new city within Colorado.
00:08:41.809 --> 00:08:45.706
I decided to stay to finish high school, while staying with my grandparents.
00:08:45.706 --> 00:08:53.740
My grandmother had been becoming more and more ill and my grandfather was her primary caregiver, in addition to them having to run a local restaurant.
00:08:53.740 --> 00:08:55.792
My grandmother passes away that year.
00:08:55.792 --> 00:09:03.379
I find myself homeless that year because I tell my grandfather after my grandmother passed that I didn't want to live with him anymore.
00:09:03.379 --> 00:09:04.910
I'd rather live with my mother.
00:09:04.910 --> 00:09:06.384
Her house was raided.
00:09:06.384 --> 00:09:08.971
My baby brother lived with her.
00:09:08.971 --> 00:09:10.455
Her house was raided.
00:09:10.455 --> 00:09:13.604
My baby brother lived with her the day that she was raided.
00:09:13.604 --> 00:09:18.711
Thankfully, I had just moved in the day before and decided to take my brother to go hang out with me and a few of my friends and just be kids.
00:09:18.711 --> 00:09:20.436
We get home and there's yellow tape on the door.
00:09:20.436 --> 00:09:26.115
So now I'm not even yet fully graduated, but I have responsibility of my nine-year-old brother.
00:09:26.115 --> 00:09:34.239
My father's moved out of town and my grandmother is gone, and when I go to my grandpa he said you made your choice, so I had to figure out what I was going to do next.
00:09:34.625 --> 00:09:45.418
During my time of homelessness I experienced people who said they were friends of the family who came to my grandmother's services and who later tried to barter a place to sleep for sex.
00:09:45.418 --> 00:09:49.293
I was very naive, very impressionable and scared.
00:09:49.293 --> 00:09:59.899
These are the moments of your life where you should be celebrating, hanging out with friends, planning your senior trip, packing for college, getting ready to leave for the military or heading off to your job.
00:09:59.899 --> 00:10:10.076
When I was approaching my senior year, I was very excited and if you told me I would have been homeless, looking for food in garbage cans and sleeping outside, I would have laughed.
00:10:10.384 --> 00:10:13.812
But my start into adulthood started with survival.
00:10:13.812 --> 00:10:15.416
I just had to figure it out.
00:10:15.416 --> 00:10:17.988
That was my introduction to womanhood.
00:10:17.988 --> 00:10:27.836
It would take me almost 20 years to get back my grounding, to get back to a place where I felt like I was not
surviving, where I felt like I was thriving.
00:10:27.836 --> 00:10:37.558
I have lived in a balance between disappointment because of what life has shown me and determination to make the best of everything.
00:10:37.558 --> 00:10:42.089
What I really needed was someone to tell me that I wasn't alone.
00:10:42.089 --> 00:10:42.969
But I was.
00:10:49.654 --> 00:10:58.562
You know, friends, looking at that photo, I realized, when all of the turmoil and chaos was taking place, I was only 18.
00:10:58.562 --> 00:11:08.804
Now I'm here before you with three amazing daughters all around the age I was back then 21, 19, and 17.
00:11:08.804 --> 00:11:15.808
And it breaks my heart to think of any of them left to the world just to figure that shit out.
00:11:15.808 --> 00:11:24.688
I can't imagine that they would go through life unscathed, unharmed, without pain.
00:11:24.688 --> 00:11:32.750
There was so much I didn't know back then and it made me first realize, god, how hard on myself I've been.
00:11:32.750 --> 00:11:37.726
I look at my phone now and I'm immediately met with.
00:11:37.726 --> 00:11:39.552
It's a mixed bag.
00:11:39.552 --> 00:11:50.019
It feels a little bit like disappointment, but in the same breath that I felt the disappointment, there was a new sense of protection.
00:11:50.019 --> 00:12:01.083
I don't know if this has anything to do with me being a mother, but I instantly just wanted to hug her and to take care of her and to let her know that it's going to be okay.
00:12:01.365 --> 00:12:13.232
When I look at that beautiful, capable, amazing, brilliant, driven, creative, funny little girl, I realized I walked away from her.
00:12:13.232 --> 00:12:19.331
I changed my first, middle and last name legally so I didn't have to face her.
00:12:19.331 --> 00:12:24.548
See, all the extremely painful shit in my life happened to her.
00:12:24.548 --> 00:12:37.952
Not Naya Keisha Janelle Thomas grew up believing she didn't have the same value as everyone else, and growing up without that foundation y'all it made it a lot easier to walk the fuck away, but you can't walk away from yourself.
00:12:37.952 --> 00:12:46.134
How ironic that the very thing I was afraid of ended up being the very thing I did to myself.
00:12:46.134 --> 00:12:54.149
Y'all, home has always been inside of me, and looking at that picture it's even crazy.
00:12:54.149 --> 00:12:58.349
I find myself referring to the photograph as her.
00:12:58.349 --> 00:13:04.868
I've been so disconnected from me that there is a separation between who I was and who I am.
00:13:04.868 --> 00:13:08.554
But being home now feels so damn good.
00:13:08.860 --> 00:13:14.024
As I said before, I'm not sure if this exercise hit me harder because I have kids, but y'all, it struck a chord.
00:13:14.024 --> 00:13:29.105
It serves now as a constant reminder that I not only get to truly be who I needed when I was younger, it also has allowed me to see why I couldn't be there for me or my daughters in the ways that they needed.
00:13:29.105 --> 00:13:45.880
It is crazy how life kind of perpetuates the same cycles, and so what I learned was to give that same very little to that little girl, and then that manifested into the type of mother I became, where I thought very little was good enough.
00:13:45.880 --> 00:13:52.193
You know the basics Maslow's hierarchy of needs yeah, food, shelter, clothing.
00:13:52.193 --> 00:13:54.684
I got you on that baby All day.
00:13:54.684 --> 00:13:55.888
You're going to be taken care of.
00:13:55.888 --> 00:14:03.475
But the emotional needs, that psychological safety, building trust, I ain't have it, so how could I give it?
00:14:03.475 --> 00:14:07.445
And this exercise really had me sit with that Y'all.
00:14:07.445 --> 00:14:12.734
I am more protective of that little girl than I've ever been.
00:14:12.734 --> 00:14:22.589
I am mindful of how I speak to her, I am intentional about how I take care of her and I love me so much.
00:14:22.589 --> 00:14:26.591
So now taking care of me is a priority.
00:14:26.591 --> 00:14:39.220
It is my number one priority, and it's so fucking beautiful to finally be home, love.
00:14:39.240 --> 00:14:42.046
You know, we often talk about doing the work, and for many people they're not very clear on what that looks like.
00:14:42.046 --> 00:14:43.990
The words sound good, but what am I supposed to do next?
00:14:43.990 --> 00:14:50.389
Right, allow this activity to be a tool that you can use for that very purpose.
00:14:50.389 --> 00:14:51.831
This is shadow work, baby.
00:14:51.831 --> 00:15:01.245
As we said before, it is often our inner child's wounds that are holding us back, and this is your opportunity to explore that.
00:15:01.625 --> 00:15:09.269
Don't you think your younger self deserves the opportunity to be cared for, looked after, loved on?
00:15:09.269 --> 00:15:26.522
You might even find that the things you once needed as a child are the things you're still yearning for as an adult, in your relationships, no matter where you are in your journey, even if you choose not to do this exercise, you're still thinking about it, love, and for that I say welcome home.
00:15:26.522 --> 00:15:30.024
You're already doing the work, whether you realize it or not.
00:15:30.024 --> 00:15:48.355
Thank you, thank you, thank you for hanging with me today.
00:15:48.355 --> 00:16:07.465
If this episode has fed your spirit and increased your love frequency, don't forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to come back in two weeks where we're talking about how your skincare routine can help you improve your relationships.
00:16:07.465 --> 00:16:17.732
Until next time, this is your host, nya, encouraging you change your wallpaper, babe, and finally face yourself, because when you know, you grow.
00:16:17.732 --> 00:16:30.404
Until next time time, I love you.