I can hear you.

“No one is writing anything these days…”

I get it, yet there is something about writing things down.

Ideas have short lives in your mind but you save them when you put them on paper. If not it’s easy to lose track of those ideas as they get mixed up in the streams of new information constantly entering your mind.

We live in a hyper self-improvement age where we drown in all the things about ourselves that we need to fix. Our bodies need fixing. The way we were trying to lose weight is crap – we need to follow this diet or that exercise regime. Wherever we go, someone is telling us, no we can’t, it’s not possible.

Yet so much is possible, if we became our own cheerleaders.

Start rooting for you.

Keep a book of wins – things you did well – things that worked well for you.

Today is my sister’s official performance on Broadway.

Sang calypso at City Hall at 8. Sings pop songs on Broadway at 48. Grateful doesn’t even begin to describe it. I’m already crying.

Melanie La Barrie

If she had listened to the naysayers, she wouldn’t be here today.

You are worthy and worth loving, but it starts with loving yourself. As Nanisca says in Woman King

It was the girl who was silenced in those shackles by those men. but I’m going to hear her now.

Writing a love letter to yourself allows you to hear you. Only when we allow ourselves to open up and see who we really are, can we be authentic in this world.

How many of us don’t like our bodies? How often do we say unkind things to ourselves in the mirror?

I’m reaching for my dreams and you’re so quick to say what I can’t do
You criticize my actions but I don’t see you standing in my shoes
I’m going the wrong way, I’m doing the wrong things…

These are the opening lines in Whitney Houston’s “Tell me No”, yet we are our own self saboteurs. We criticize our actions. We think we are going the wrong way and doing the wrong things…

Other people just complete those conversations in our heads.

The only way to change things is to change the narrative.

I have never done this myself, so I am writing this for me but if it resonates, then please give it a go!

When we talk about others we are never lost for words. We speak in glowing terms about their accomplishments, what they had to overcome, and how they still managed to do what they set out to do.

What do you love about yourself, physically, mentally, emotionally?

Do you love your calves, the way your mind works, that you always see the best in others?

Write the letter.

I am going to take up Christina Stuarts challenge to write a love letter to myself for the next 30 days.

I underlined a quote today in one of the books I’m currently reading – Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter by Curtis 50 Cent Jackson.

If all your shine comes from somebody else’s sun, what happens when that person moves away?

Be your own goddamn sun!