When this all started – as I have said many times before – I really didn’t have a game plan for what Loud Mouth Brown Girl was going to become. I know there is going to come a day when I have to actually focus on making plans to make sure that things go the way that I want them to, but right now where I am at, it’s just not my focus.
I knew that I wanted to write about mental health, but I didn’t know exactly where that would lead, there are as of checking in with Google, 109,000,000, results to the question “how many mental health blogs are there in the world.”
That is a huge amount of people talking about mental health all with different ideas, opinions, and needs when it comes to this hugely important topic.
Trying to find a way to make LMBG different is difficult because this blog isn’t just about mental health, or at least it’s not supposed to be.
It’s supposed to be a child of sex trafficking and rape learning to spread her wings as she finally in her thirties, becomes the woman that she spent a lifetime wanting to be.
I still remember being a kid and seeing dreams of my possible future, I still hear my childhood self whispering “I want that one,” and that means the absolute world to me to know that I CHOSE to be this person.
That doesn’t mean that the choices that other people made that affected my life in so many terrible ways are okay, or that I accept that they had the right to make the choice to abuse me, it means that for my entire life all I ever wanted to be was the person that I am now…the person I was always meant to be.
Even as I write this my brain is coming up with 10,000 other things that I want to do with LMBG. I want to see my brand’s name on all the things. I want to get to the point where I can start talking about fashion again, and Brown girl music, I want to have at least a dozen or more writers working on the site who are getting paid fair wages, from around the world.
I want this to be the biggest and most valuable resource for mental health advocates on the planet, and that’s going to take a lot of time and energy and some days I just don’t fuck feel like doing all of the things to get where I want to go, but this event? It’s proof that I will get where I want to go one day.
As I am writing this, I heard a voice from my past say “I am there,” that’s my voice, and I remember saying precisely that. As if my past self was checking on my future self just to make sure we made it, so when this happens – and it does often lately – I find it really hard to be frustrated, I find it really hard to be angry that I don’t have the fancy car or the big house or the giant back yard yet, because I know how long it took to get to “this place.”
I want to stay here for awhile – and yeah I know that sounds insane. I have friends across the globe who fall on all sides of the economic spectrum who could and in many ways HAVE helped me get to this point and could push me further, BUT, like…is it insane for me to say I just want to be here? Right here? For a little while longer?
This is the first time in my life that I have been truly comfortable in my own skin. A few months back I interviewed Kim Rhodes who is one of my truly amazing Ohana friends, and she said she wasn’t at war with the world anymore.
Last night I realized neither am I. Shit is gonna turn out the way that it’s going to turn out, and for right now I am merely coasting on a flat surface. I know that things might get chaotic in the future, I know that things may get stressful and scary again, but for right now I just have peace, and that…..Jesus almighty have I ever earned that.
There are people who have come and gone in my life over the last four years that I genuinely love, and despite what people may think, I have absolutely zero hard feelings towards them like I do towards my abusers. That’s not just because I have grown, it’s because I’ve come to realize that not everyone is really ready or interested in supporting me the way that I need people to be able to support me.
The hardest part about being Devon J Hall is not the name recognition because pfft no one knows who I am, it’s the interpersonal relationships. If only because I need people to understand that if they are going to be in MY life, there are certain responsibilities that I need for them to fulfill.
That wasn’t something that I understood as a child, I just figured I needed “people,” mostly because they were a good distraction from all the shit in my life, and now that I know that the shit that I had to deal with was uncalled for, unfair, and downright evil, I realize that I deserve to have better.
Better people, better quality of life, and the right to make better choices than I did in my past. As a kid I honestly felt like the responsibility to get us out of the creepy sex cult fell on my shoulders, and as hard as I tried to do the right thing, the idea of staying silent meant that I was going to die, and to be honest my life goal on this planet is just to fucking survive.
I swear to the God’s that was the challenge I was given when I got here, and I think that I have done that pretty well so far, but I don’t just want to survive anymore. I want my stems and petals to grow brightly and proudly so that I can proclaim to the sun God’s that I made it, that I did what I was supposed to, AND what I wanted to do.
I am looking around at the world that I helped to inspire in many ways that many of you will NEVER know about and I am starting to realize the power that humans have is only limited by the power and strength of our ability to believe.
It’s absolutely fascinating being the woman who is the Loud Mouth Brown Girl, because there is a majick to that, to the fact that “I” am the one who gets to say that I am the LMBG, that I cannot just put into words.
There have been so many instances when I have sat on my couch just thinking I want to kill myself, and while it may be true in the moment, it is never true forever. It’s not because I forget that life is exactly what I asked for up to this point, it’s because in the moment “death” means “Sleep” and honestly I miss having good night sleeps that aren’t filled with the nightmares of my past.
Thirteen year old me wanted very much to be a model. Fourteen year old me hated the Spice Girls because they got to be everything that I wasn’t allowed to be, but thirty-eight year old me accepts that although those years are rough I had to get through them to get here, and here feels pretty fucking amazing.
So to all the girls who came before me and all the ones who will come after, you’re amazing, I fucking love you, and I am so grateful that you are taking me to tomorrow.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 