Welcome to my new mini-series, Metamorphosis Monday! These mini-episodes are meant to help you start your week off with the right intention and mindset. Aside from the holiday breaks we have, sometimes we need to take time out for ourselves to mentally recharge. We become heavily conditioned to our routine or schedule to the point where we ignore moments where we need to stop and release all the situations we haven't truly been dealing with. In this episode, I discuss the importance of taking...

Our families play a central role in our development. It establishes the importance of kindship, morals, values, beliefs while creating a sense of community and "belonging". Our family members are our first initial encounter to receiving love, care, and support. Though the family is important across cultures, unfortunately, not all of us experiences a healthy childhood experience. The word "family" can invoke various emotions that trigger our deepest wounds, and our family could be the main...

Welcome to my new mini-series, Metamorphosis Monday! These mini-episodes are meant to help you start your week off with the right intention and mindset. Our society highly glorifies being in a negative state of mind, but sometimes we need to take a step back and think of all the things we are grateful for. The power of saying "Thank You" and being on the frequency of gratitude heightens our awareness, it motivates us to act sincerely it inspires us to treat ourselves and others with...

Welcome to my new mini-series, Metamorphosis Monday! These mini-episodes are meant to help you start your week off with the right intention and mindset. We all have certain expectations that we hold ourselves accountable for, whether it's from ourselves or others around us, expectations can be healing, but having unrealistic/ toxic expectations or not reaching our desire outcome can affect our confidence and lead us to be too hard on ourselves. How can we create expectations that are...

On this rollercoaster called "Life", we often go through a variety of transitions and growing pains of establishing who we want to be while trying to understand and bring closure to who we were, along the way, we run into various stages where the experiences and wounds that are sometimes difficult to understand heal from. In this episode, Adrian talks in-depth about how his childhood experiences such as bullying and sexual assault and explains how he was able to heal from these traumatic...

Welcome to my new mini-series, Metamorphosis Monday! These mini-episodes are meant to help you start your week off with the right intention and mindset. Life is a rollercoaster, but it's also a balancing act. Everything in our lives requires balancing responsibilities and prioritizing our time, but we can get caught up or spend too much of our energy doing something while neglecting our own needs in the process. How can we balance our mental health with the other parts of our lives that need...

Every woman has their own story and life experiences that contribute to their journey to embrace and connect with themselves in a unique way, and sometimes, people come into your life to help guide and support you along the way. In this episode, I am joined by my best friend, Cassie Obi, who I met in college and through our friendship, we learned how to grow together, face our growing pains, learn about toxic relationships, finding our passion, and building a stronger connection with...

Welcome to my new mini-series, Metamorphosis Monday! These mini-episodes are meant to help you start your week off with the right intention and mindset. This first episode covers the idea of change. Butterflies are notorious for symbolizing hope and change, mainly because they go through a process called metamorphosis. They change from their immature state to a beautiful adult form. We may not have wings or spin ourselves in a silk cocoon, but we do go through drastic physical and...

Along our healing journey, we learn to become resilient, courageous, and open to learning new things, but sometimes our growth can be experienced within the relationships we create with others, especially relationships with our significant others. This week's episode features a couple, Aaren Hilson and Katelyn Huether, two individuals who shared similar lifestyles, morals, values, and beliefs, crossed paths and through their passion and love for each other, started their business, learned...

*Support this podcast with a small donation to help sustain future episodes! Your donation would be greatly appreciated!: CASHAPP-$butterflyeffectpdct We all have ways we handle stressful and traumatic experiences. When we have become conditioned to a certain environment and meeting up to the expectations, we find ourselves mimicking behaviors as a means of survival, but at what cost? Experiencing trauma is one thing, but dealing with the trauma of being the victim is another. In this...

*Support this podcast with a small donation to help sustain future episodes! Your donation would be greatly appreciated!: CASHAPP-$butterflyeffectpdct Have you ever felt lost before? Not when the GPS takes you in the wrong direction, but when you feel like life has brought you to a point where you don't know who you are, what goals to set, how to start a project, or make the next transition in your life. Feeling this way is completely normal, but can leave us feeling anxious, fearful, and...

*Support this podcast with a small monthly donation to help sustain future episodes! Your donation would be greatly appreciated!: CASHAPP-$butterflyeffectpdct This episode was inspired by the Youtube video "Why Voltaire Said: You Must Cultivate Your Own Garden (https://youtu.be/S22xeq8xxFQ)" by "The School of Life (https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/cultivate-own-garden-voltaire/)". Throughout our lives, we embark on this exploration and journey to understand who we are as people,...

*Support this podcast with a small monthly donation to help sustain future episodes! Your donation would be greatly appreciated!: CASHAPP-$butterflyeffectpdct Human connection is important, but sometimes the people we are surrounded by can hinder and discourage our journey to self-love and healing. These people can be family, friends, or other individuals that we want to hold on to or feel cutting off. Some connections can cross our paths again and we have the opportunity to reconcile or...

*Support this podcast with a small monthly donation to help sustain future episodes! Your donation would be greatly appreciated!: CASHAPP-$butterflyeffectpdct Losing a friend or romantic partner is always difficult. The relationship we build is not just based on how much we invest in the connection, but an emotional and mental attachment that strengthens our bond. In this episode, I will discuss why losing a friend or romantic partner can be difficult, what you can do to go through the...

Regardless if you consider yourself an introvert or extrovert, we are social beings and we learn to navigate through life with the help of others. We share our beliefs, values, culture, and experiences with each other and grow an attachment. Our first attachment is in childhood through the care of our parents, but based on our experiences, we weren't exposed to healthy relationships, so as adults, we end up attracting connections that tear us down on our journey rather than build us up. In...

In 2013, Dr. Gary Chapman, a marriage and family counselor published the book "The Five Love Languages".  It became widely popular because it outlined ways for couples to truly understand each other and feel loved, valued, and cared for, but the concept of love languages goes beyond romantic relationships, it can be used to help you understand how you show love to yourself and build solid relationships with any connection or relationship. In this episode, I am joined by Joshua Armant to...

Acknowledging our past and relearning to love and accept yourselves are important courageous actions when deciding to take the steps to heal from our experiences. We learn to maintain our emotions, triggers, and understand ways to cope, but the biggest roadblock could be attempting to develop healthy boundaries. Our experiences can have a drastic impact on how we think about boundaries and can have a variety of consequences. In this episode, I discuss why establishing boundaries can be...

On Episode 12,  we discussed defense mechanisms, and you might think that defense and coping mechanisms are the same, considering they pertain to the way we handle stressful situations, however, they are quite different! Coping mechanisms are behaviors we do purposely and consciously to manage external situations. In this episode, I will be discussing in-depth the difference between defense and coping mechanisms, define the different coping strategies, and list adaptive and maladaptive ways...

Every living thing has a way of defending itself and we are no different. We have things that defend us against disease and sickness, but we also have ways to defend ourselves psychologically. Defense mechanisms help us manage the intensity of emotions and situations that threaten or challenge parts of our ego. This week's episode discusses theories proposed by Sigmund Freud, defines defense mechanisms, explains parts of our ego, and identifies different behaviors that are defending our ego...

Along our healing journey, there are a variety of internal and external factors that stop us from fully acknowledging our experiences, and we begin to allow others to silence our inner child and intimidate us from healing the way we want. You might feel as though you have to "force" yourself to heal or feel as though you have to "prove" yourself worthy in the eyes of others. In this episode, I and my special guest, Seema, discuss the blockages to healing, understanding who your inner child...

This episode is HEALING, VULNERABILITY, AND HONESTY. There are external and internal factors in our life that can negatively impact how we think about approaching our healing journey. Because some factors can make our wounds deeper and amplify our triggers, we might feel compelled to abandon our idea of wanting to heal completely. As your host, I wanted to share my experiences with you, how I learned to acknowledge my traumas, outline some of the difficulties in healing, and how I remained...

"Everything happens for a reason!", "Good vibes only!", "Don't be so negative!", "It could be worse!" These are common phrases that have the intention of being positive, but actually devalue, minimize, and invalidate how we truly feel. Along our mental health journey, the words we say to ourselves and others can greatly impact how we learn to acknowledge our experiences. In this episode, I discuss the power of our words, define toxic positivity, explain how to recognize when we use these...

Mother Wounds refers to the physical or emotional absence of a mother figure. This is a form of trauma due to the lack of mothering in our childhood, and extremeluy influences how we formulate relationships as adults. This week's episode discusses what mother wounds are, discussses the impact of motherhood, factors that contribute to mother wounds and how it can effect you, and outlines ways you can heal from these wounds.  Don't forget to like & share this podcast with your friends...

The article "Racial Trauma: Theory, Research, and Healing: Introduction to the Special Issue", it defines "racial trauma" as a "form of race-based stress, refers to People of Color and Indigenous individuals’ (POCI) reactions to dangerous events and real or perceived experiences of racial discrimination. Such experiences may include threats of harm and injury, humiliating and shaming events, and witnessing racial discrimination toward other POCI. Although similar to a posttraumatic stress...

This week's topic is going to be expanding on the topic of father wounds, but how it affects women. These wounds are formulated from the emotional and physical absence of fathers. Father wounds can be due to neglectful, absent, abusive, controlling, or withholding fathers, and their actions and behaviors influence who you are as a person. This episode is divided up by gender because I wanted to give justice to the struggles each gender might feel. This one is specifically dedicated to my...