That’s literally all psychology is when you’re practicing it on yourself. Which basically is what I’ve been doing the last several years as I try to figure out how to heal.
Today I have a mess in my house, but I’m also sick, and the thing is that like I’m not in a hospital, so I don’t really feel like I should get to take a day off, because I know that even when I’m healthy, the mess will a) still be there and b) probably have grown.
For me, watching my mom who spends most of her days in a wheelchair, getting up and going to work every single day, knowing how hard it is for her and how tired she is, I feel like I have no right to do less than that, so a lot of this website is about alleviating myself of guilt for not having a regular paying job, and that takes away a lot of the fun of building it.
These days, writing for the website is less about pleasure and more about “what is it that I really feel I need to speak on, that I haven’t already?” while still trying to find a way to keep track of where I am mentally and emotionally. Between Twitter and this blog, I spend a great deal of time talking about myself, and honestly, I’m sick of it, but I have the podcast, which allows me to open the floor to other people to speak. Amazing people.
On the 15th of this month the first new episode of Stay Lifted Sis comes out with my new friend @Tinu and I am really excited because there’s so much of her story that I resonate with. Tinu has been fighting cancer without knowing it for years, it was only a few years ago she finally got a diagnosis that was able to help her really fight for her life.
And she’s doing that, while also making space for other folks who are disabled by a variety of illnesses, to come forward and share their stories.
Women like Tinu give me hope that there’s a purpose to all the struggles and that that purpose can be lived simultaneously with the struggles instead of a battle prize that we have to fight for.
So many of us struggle every day without understanding our purpose but Tinu has decided to claim her own purpose, without waiting for it to be “shown” to her, and I think that’s just fantastically amazing.
These days it’s hard to find people that are inspiring because we’re always looking to celebrities or politicians or athletes to inspire us. “Look how they suffer” and the more famous they are the more that we want them to suffer so that “we” can be inspired, like no thank you?
I’d rather look to my community to find people to be inspired by and Stay Lifted Sis allows me to do that, I forgot that and when I started my first podcast – which was depressing beyond belief to me – I didn’t realize how much. I wanted to have the uncomfortable conversations, but I also wanted humor.
I didn’t really see Comfortably Uncomfortable Conversations as funny or amusing, I just saw it as one more thing I had to do to create content, one more work thing that would somehow “prove” I was working and therefore deserving of being here, but the thing is I have a lot of healing to do and as much as writing has helped, it isn’t the only solution.
Creating Content for Mental Health patients and other content creators is really cool because I’m starting to recognize a whole list of skills I didn’t know I had, but I’m also still struggling with crippling insecurity and women like Tinu remind me that I should feel blessed instead of cursed.
I carry a lot because I can carry a lot, and releasing it onto the interwebs makes it easier for me to take on more, but I also am reminded that it’s also okay for me to say “no” too.
That being said, saying no means I don’t get to write, and I’ve tried that, it sucks, so I think I’ll keep going as long as I can.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
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