I’ve been doing interviews like crazy this week, about the podcast, and the website. About gender based violence, about my experience, and about the things that I have been through.
It’s been triggering, and it’s been difficult, I mentioned that in my last post. It’s been difficult remembering all the things that hurt me, and all the people that were involved.
But I also recognize that I have a responsibility to change my life, and the best way for me to do that is to remember first and foremost that I deserve to be happy.
Sharing my story is hard, but if I want to go in the direction I think I am headed in, I know that I need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
That means that some nights are longer than others, some days too, sometimes it feels like I am just sitting here waiting for time to pass, and other times I am so busy that I am wary of being overwhelmed without realizing it.
Moment to moment is completely different than the moments before, and I keep looking back at the person I used to be in absolute wonder and awe.
I see my former self as an entirely different entity from who I am today, I am amazed, shocked, and genuine awed by the fact that she survived as much as she did so that I could exist as I do.
I am so utterly grateful to the person that I used to be, because as I shed her existence to come into my own, I recognize I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the Devon’s who came before the Devon that is.
It’s a wonderous place to be, and it’s also kind of frightening because it means that I have big shoes to fill. The shoes of a young girl, later turned young woman, who did whatever she had to survive, including choosing to “forget” but not really, more than thirty years of sexual abuse.
Yes I see a warrior and a soldier, a person who fought and clawed in order to survive, but I wonder now what it might feel like if I felt safe enough to truly left myself thrive in my current environment. I think I am starting to understand what that means, let alone show examples of it with these posts that I am writing.
Today I started thinking that maybe I might like to be a consultant, because I have a lot of experience building websites, and with sharing my story, and I think that this is something I would definitely like to look into doing more in the future. But it’s not something I ever thought I’d be capable of before.
Today I realized that I have a lot of skills and talents that are under developed and I realized I would very much like to learn to hone those skills so that I can use them to create a functional stable income for myself. I know that it’s possible, I am just not sure how to go about it just yet.
I know that it’s something I am capable of, that’s for sure, consulting other people and offering my opinions and advice has never been difficult for me, it’s just a matter of creating something that helps people, that they will want. It’s a matter of figuring out how to do that. Something else to learn.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my goals for the future, my dreams, hopes, and wishes, and while I have plenty of them, part of them is about being practical.
I haven’t been ready to be practical in a very long time, because I have been so busy just trying to survive. I haven’t been focused on thriving, because I didn’t think I’d have enough time.
I was absolutely certain that this was the year luck was finally going to run out and that I was going to die. No one could rightly blame me for having that fear, but it’s not one that I am willing to live with for the rest of my life.
No one ever got anywhere by being afraid all the time. -Divine Secrets of the Yaya Sisterhood.
I don’t want to be afraid all the time, I want to thrive, I want to be healthy and that means taking it one step at a time.
It’s hard for other people to understand, genuinely, hard for people who don’t see my vision to know what I am going through, or how to help me, and I don’t rightly know what to tell them.
I don’t know how to explain that I know that what I am doing is the right thing to do, so I am choosing not to bother explaining myself to anyone, but myself. I am choosing to do what feels right, because that’s how I know how to operate.
I’ve been going by automatic pilot for so long, that I don’t know how to do anything but do what feels right and safe.
I got my first ever Patreon just as I was writing this post…and I am choosing to believe that this is the universe’s way of telling me that I am on the right path.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 