YOU HAD TO CRUMBLE

Happy first week of June and summer has officially started! I always view Memorial Weekend as the transition period to summer. For many of you parents, I know that this week is also the last week of school for your kids. Happy summer to them and hopefully all you parents out there can keep your sanity until the kids return back to school! 

As we are in June, we are already six months into the year! It’s been a fast six months. On the first of this month, I sat down with my journal and re-read my list of intentions that I had written on January 1st. I read my list out loud and also re-read my journals. 

I had so many emotions reading my journal from the first few months of the year. I noticed that I needed a lot of rest! Winter was definitely a time for me to rest and I was going through transitions, especially when I made the decision to transition out of therapy. Sometimes, when we make big decisions,  it impacts our mental, psychological, and spiritual health, which in turn, affects our physical health. 

In the past five years, I’ve had to start over, re-start a path, take detours, change destinations, and wonder if the path/s that I am taking is what I am supposed to do. I’ve had to change my whys, re-write my whys, and remind myself of my why’s on days and weeks when I don’t see the results that I have hoped for. 

I’m not going to lie, some days I pity myself and compare my journey to others. It’s easy to wallow in my self pity and question why I’m not seeing results that I had dreamed of. It’s so easy to dream of the fast, easy, and viral success that a lot of people portray on social media. But I remind myself that it’s all an illusion. Social media is the ultimate illusion, it’s like magicians who only showcase the magic but behind the scenes, that’s where the real work is. 

I remind myself that everyone has a hard and I CHOSE my hard. I can easily have chosen the easy, and I did, but I got bored and my soul always yearned for more. That’s why I took a leap of faith by listening to my heart and following my soul. 

My chosen hard is HARD and yet satisfying. It’s hard because I am building from the bottom. Funny, I never thought that I was creative because art was never my strong suit. I realize now that being creative goes beyond the traditional drawing that I boxed myself in. I am an artist, with a blank canvas, the beautiful hue of colors that I get to create from each day when I create (heck this blog is art!). 

The canvas is part of my foundations. As I forge my path, I have my foundations figured out. Now, I’m in the building phase of my life. It’s a slow process with planning, consistency, and honestly, a lot of erasing, crumbling, drafts, sitting in silence to get clarity, and then listening and going with my intuition. 

When I started this blog over a year ago, my intention was to empower all the amazing women who I know my hope was  also to reach other women who may have felt lost, stuck, and were hiding themselves to make other people comfortable but were ready to make changes. 

This blog was intended to empower all women that they have a choice.  They could either stay where they were or own their power, strength, and will to forge their path regardless of where they were in life; and to especially empower women who who were lost, down on their luck, and needed a reminder that it may seem easier to remain a victim, make it your identity, than to pick up the rubble and start rebuilding.

A LOT of my readers are some of the most BADASS women that I’ve had the pleasure of networking with and building relationships with. When I hear all of their stories, I notice one common theme: they’ve all had to crumble, some had to hit rock bottom, and some due to circumstances out of their control, could have easily crumbled but refused to stay and be in debris. 

They’ve all had to slowly get up, figure out their foundations, and rebuild from those foundations. Once the foundations were strong and stable, they slowly started rebuilding their lives, never once listening to the naysayers who thought they were too broken, too old, or too whatever because those people wanted them to remain as wreckage. 

I don’t ever wish ill on anyone but sometimes, life forces us to crumble; and when we do fall and hit rock bottom, at that moment, we don’t think we can ever recover from the pain, guilt, shame, suffering, and at times, the stupidity, especially when we have been taken advantage of. 

When the crumbling happens, it forces us to re-evaluate ourselves, lives, and the foundations that we thought were unbreakable. We were so sure of the masks that we hid behind. We may have been masking the facade, pain, unhealed wounds, to put on a show to the world so that we can receive the applause after the curtain comes down. 

I know that the above statement may not resonate with everyone. If it doesn't, I am happy for you! Unfortunately, I have met way too many people who built their foundations on trauma/unhealed wounds, and were hoping that the masks they worked so hard to build, will never wear off or crumble. 

Life can be so beautiful and yet painful at the same time. When life crumbles, it forces us to rebuild so we can rise stronger than before. Life may have been saying, “you need to crumble before you can rise because breaking down is the beginning of becoming real.” 

At first, when the crumbling happens, it may feel as though you failed. You didn’t fail, it was a learning experience, a stepping stone, that will make you resilient. 

Here’s why the crumbling is sometimes a necessary initiation into your most authentic path:

• The Crumble Reveals What Was Never Solid: When you break, you see what was built on survival, perfectionism, external validation, trauma, or fear. The life, identity, job, or relationship that collapses, often wasn’t aligned to begin with. Many times, you were just coping, surviving, performing,  and not thriving. The honest truth? You can’t build new foundations until the old ones break. 
• 
  It Forces You to Let Go of the Masks: I said this before and I’ll say it again, crumbling strips you of who you were performing to be. When things crumble, you are forced to be your raw, honest, and unfiltered self. When the masks and filters come off, you finally see yourself for the first time. 
• 
  Pain Creates Clarity: The moment you break,  is often when you finally admit: "This isn’t working anymore.” It brings you clarity and peace knowing what you’ve known for a long time but may have been afraid to admit: that it’s time to choose yourself. The mask ball may have been fun and thrilling but you knew that midnight was coming and eventually, it will be hard to keep up what was never real. 
• 
  Rock Bottom Has No Noise: It’s quiet there. No more pretending, comparing, or distracting. All the people who used to be by you, are nowhere to be found. You see people for who they are. The ones that truly care about you and want you to rebuild, will be standing right there while you rummage through the rubble as you pick up the pieces and start rebuilding. And in all this stillness, something new emerges: your own voice and strength. 
• 
  Your Rebuild Will Be Intentional: After the crumble, you stop building out of expectations and external validation. Instead, you start building from intuition, truth, and desire. The version of you that rises is no longer built to impress anyone; it's built to embody the new intentional YOU. The one that no longer lets others sway you into abandoning yourself. 

Here are some things to help you reframe when you crumble and feel that all is at it’s end: 

You're not falling apart.
You're shedding what no longer belongs.
You're breaking open, not breaking down.

As I stated before, I never wish for anyone's life to crumble or fall apart. There are aspects of our lives that we can control and what is beyond our control. I’ve found that the more we try to control, the faster it falls. 

How you choose to continue on after crumbling is all within your power and control. Will it be easy?  NO. It will likely be one of the hardest things you’ll ever have to rebuild from. There are days you will cry, be angry, lay in bed, and be in despair. Allow yourself to feel, give yourself time to grieve, and lots of compassion is a must. 

To all my BADASS Queens, know that when you crumble, view this as an opportunity for growth, for learning, and for self-discovery. When you start to see your hardships in this light, you unlock your power and  inner strength.

This journey is not about being fearless; it's about being brave in the face of fear. It's about acknowledging your vulnerabilities and working to overcome them. It's about taking small steps towards a bigger goal, even when the task seems insurmountable; it’s about showing up every damn day, being consistent, and going to your canvas to draw/paint on the blank canvas that has been gifted for you to create. 

That is all for this week my darlings. Don’t let fear, doubt, or the unknown STOP YOU from rebuilding or blocking  you from your full AWESOME, BADASS, future! As always my loves, OWN IT!