Loud Mouth Brown Girl

I said what I said and I am saying this with my whole chest. In my 20s I was told I was born to be a healer. I didn’t want to hear this, mainly because I was tired. I was burned out, years of helping others instead of helping myself, decades of masking, pretending, being the perfect daughter, the well-behaved church girl. I was deeply, burned the fuck out.

But I kept going, and we all know how that ended up. I was the girl that everyone swore was going to be successful, but I fell down a hole and I couldn’t get out. For years I tried and I couldn’t and those words stuck with me. “Born to be a healer,” then why was I fighting so hard?

If I was supposed to help people, why was most of my life spent fighting? Fighting to fit in, fighting to belong, fighting to matter, fighting for my voice to be heard, fighting for the right to say no. Always fighting, little healing.

Now though, I see the world through a different pair of eyes than I did when I was younger. I know where I fit in. I know where I belong, and I know what I can do to help people. It took me forever to get here, like -for EVER- but I’m here.

I’m in this place of knowing, and while I’ve never really been here before, it’s not as difficult to navigate as one might think. Many folks give up before they get here. They don’t get the help they need, and many of them figure it’s never coming, and so they give up. They turn to drugs and or alcohol, they turn to sex, or alternatively, they make the choice…the final choice.

It’s always painful when you see someone you love lose their battle with mental health, it never gets easier. But if you could be someone, just one person, who might have a solution others haven’t thought of before…wouldn’t you try?

It’s confusing to me, I got lucky. I got the help I needed, lots of folks don’t or did not. Not for lack of trying, or even lack of resources, some people just don’t find the right people, that can help them.

And that’s the sad truth of life. You can’t save the world, but you can try, to make your corner of it a little brighter, by fighting for your right to succeed where others have failed.

In the USA Black people – in particular – are buying up whole neighborhoods and returning the properties to the communities again. They are refurbishing entire neighborhoods, by choice, because that’s how they can heal their small corner of the world.

I’m not asking you to go into debt, I’m asking you to think about what you know how to do, and how it can be useful to others, and then I’m asking you to believe in yourself long enough to prove it.

If you can do that, you’ll be unstoppable.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall