I unleashed my rage. Pent up frustration. Every single thing that needed to be said, hurtled from my mind and onto my keyboard into the loudest email I’d ever written IN MY LIFE.

How dare they? How dare they ignore me and then say “maybe if I had said something sooner, they could have done something to help”. 

I had been screaming, crying, pleading, for the past two years “LISTEN TO ME. BELIEVE ME. UNDERSTAND ME. SEE ME. HEAR ME. I pulled evidence of my petitions. Screenshots of emails that were painful to read again. And I thought, why am I even going to these lengths to prove myself to people who are committed to misunderstanding me. But a huge part of me just needed a witness. Even if that witness was just me. I needed to show up for myself one more time.  I needed to make myself clear once and for all. And I needed to END this. But before I left, I would make sure they knew who TF I was.

I was not who they painted me to be. I was not who they assumed life had made me. An Ungrateful. Scarcity Mindset. Petulant Black Woman with a pipedream, who didn’t know her worth or her purpose or her place in this world… In her marriage… In this life she was so delusionally creating for herself in the name of independence and ambition. Who was she to challenge the societal standard. To aim to be more than a happy wife, more than a martyred mother, more than a humble kept woman to a humble hardworking husband. 

Of course, they never said those words. They simply implied them with their sarcastic remarks about balancing babies and work, dated philosophies about gender roles, rhetorical questions about breadwinning and sprinklings of “if I were you” statements. “YOU'RE NOT ME!” I wanted to fire back so many times as I waited and waited to actually receive the few morsels of constructive therapy and guidance and coaching I was paying hard earned money for. 

I was just as much to blame. I admit. I knew it was dangerous from the first session. I sensed it deep down in a place that could not be explained. I felt it in the text they sent after we hung up - “I just saw your website. Your voice is beautiful. I’m sorry I thought you just sang like I like to sing… casually.” That’s when a voice inside me first whispered, maybe this is not for me. I didn’t know it then but it was my signal to run. It was the first of many projections in sessions to come. But I responded saying “thank you. Yes, my dream is to continue to build my career and my family because I know that’s my purpose. So I hope we can work on making that a reality”. … Ignoring those first signs of misalignment, I began to self-sabotage. I was in such a desperate and lonely place in my life, that I put my trust into everything and everyone BUT my inner voice.  And I assumed they had the answers instead of trusting myself with my truth. 

As the months passed by I bit my tongue harder and harder.  I shrank myself more and more. I twisted myself into a pretzel trying to be their definition of demure, and mindful and soft and feminine and accepting and understanding and empathizing and all the pretty little adjectives. But inside I raged against the machine. My entire nervous system rebelled. And it showed up in headaches, gut inflammation, painful moon cycles and an overall feeling of dis-ease. I was not ok. The trauma replayed itself daily in almost every relationship in my life: personal, professional and everything in between, as I silenced my own voice in foolish hopes that others would amplify it for me. It felt pathetic. But this was the work right? Trust the work. Trust the work. Trust the work….Right? 

Wrong. You see, one thing about me and my relationship with God is he will communicate with me by any means necessary… but ESPECIALLY through music. I have witnessed it my entire life and I’ve learned to recognize God’s voice, even in my own. He’s always made a way for me through music.  And It’s how I know what is meant for me will never pass me by. 

So when the day came that my musical mission was called into question during a therapy session, suddenly we hit a wall of sound. I will never forget it. That day there was no question, there was no-one else to trust. There was no-one else to validate my decision. It was like an old sweet song in my soul. As recognizable as the opening strings of a Ray Charles record, coming “sweet and clear as moonlight through the pines.”

IN that moment, I walked away. With a smile on my face and a laugh bubbling up from my chest, I began to leave it behind. The misogynistic advice, the patriarchal gaslighting and every last bit of judgement I felt would be the death of me as a woman. Something began to unravel. A thread, slowly but surely started to unwind in my life and I began to hear myself think again. 

More clearly, more fiercely, more unapologetically, more unstoppably. And the thoughts kept coming. I began writing “Dear God” letters in my journal and getting clear on what it meant to be heard, seen, understood, and believed on a deeper spiritual level. Months went by with fewer therapy sessions as I found the support I was looking for in new music , new people, new places, new community and God. I had newfound hope in the future I was creating in my career and my family. So when they reached out to ask about our last session, I heard that little voice say “I don’t know”. And as I sat with it, I heard, “your life has been so much better since you left them behind. Why would you go back to what doesn’t align.” 

Time away from them had made my inner voice louder. It was stronger. It was back. Or so I thought. That week, I faced a huge test in my life. It's too private/sensitive to share. But I found myself at a crossroads, facing a choice that would be tough on my family and could potentially derail the future I’d been so excited about building again . Uncertainty and Insecurity welled up in my mind and I reached out via email for one last piece of “advice” going into our last session... No response. Today I look back and consider that silence a blessing in disguise. But at the time it felt negligent. I had to find the strength to face life’s new test on my own and I did. A week later, I wrote another email letting them know I would not be continuing therapy due to their lack of response and the lack of progress I felt we were making in our sessions. Suddenly, a response! An excuse that the first message went to spam and then THAT LINE. The one that said “maybe if you had said something sooner”... The little voice inside me rose up in a wall of sound LOUDER, STRONGER, ANGRIER. MAD…Ari Lennox, SMOKE, Kendrick Lamar , WACCED  OUT  MURALS all the way down to GLORIA, Cynthia Erivo , DEFYING GRAVITY, Joy Woods MY DAYS . The hair stood up on my body and as my blood began to boil, every lyric lunged to the surface. These records were the musical fire that fueled my final email. 

I unleashed my rage. Pent up frustration. Every single thing that needed to be said, hurtled from my mind and onto my keyboard into the loudest email I’d ever written. I screamed into the internet. THE END. And as if it were my very own MAD SCENE in the dramatic work that was my life…I left my therapist, and the version of me who didn’t trust herself …behind.

To every woman who knows in her heart she is meant to live a full life with both her family and her career. Know this. You are playing BIG every day of your life when you work towards your dream. Don’t let anyone ever make you feel small because they are short -sighted and cannot see the future God has for you. Trust your instincts. Trust your path. Trust the vision that God has placed in your heart. Just because someone has a qualification, doesn’t mean they are qualified to help you. Trust yourself enough to know the difference. Find yourself the RIGHT THERAPISTS, the right coaches, the right relationships, and the right communities that will cheer you on when the going gets tough. Because to quote Kendrick, you “deserve it all.” 

I can’t wait to release new music in 2025. It’s been a journey learning to trust myself with my gift. But as God is my witness, it is finally happening and I have A LOT to say. And I will release it LOUDLY, PROUDLY and maybe even MADLY. So as we observe the final full moon in 2024, I hope you release Every. Single. Thing. that doesn’t align with your soul’s purpose. Cheers to 2025, lovelies. It’s only up from here!

https://www.instagram.com/p/DDoGnorOjxD/?igsh=NW1pbGwxOHhja2U5