You understand the vision 🤝🏽🤝🏽🙂‍↕️

The only thing separating me from joining the u-haul movement is having to share space 🤣🫣

“Old man?” Lol

The extra attachments are calling my name 🥲

😭😭🤣

But if God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power working in us, they don’t need no name. They already knew me before I was queerfully and wonderfully created!!

**falls out**

I appreciate your prayers 🫶🏽

Awwnnnn sweetie, means the world to me. Amen and amen! 🙏🏽🫶🏽😭

The first step I took in loving me this year was applying to programs I actually liked, investing money in my studies.

The second, was resigning from my job to focus on studies and wellbeing full-time.

The third and most important is giving up alcohol.

The final act will be finding a therapist.

And what I am finding is that when you've been groomed and socialized to served others your whole life in a religious context, it's extremely hard to break the cycle of being well because the world depends on you vs. being well because you need and love YOU.

Drank when I was happy. Drank when I was sad. Drank with others. Drank when alone. Drank earlier and earlier in the day. Never drunk. Not once ever actually drunk, which is also a problem. But we can talk about that another day....

Sure I left the church. But I still went in non-profit, centering the wellbeing of others. When the life I was building got derailed again, I began to drink. And while life has had many ups and downs these last 5 years, I am afraid to say, until Dec. 1 2025, I drank nearly everyday.

Two weeks before our flight was to take off, the airline calls to say, "we have been hit with a pandemic. Your flight is canceled and service animals for your condition are no longer accepted on this flight."

Leaving the church and heading into Animal Welfare leadership may have been the worst and best decision I ever made in my life.

For yrs, felt like the dream. I was living out my vocation, getting paid, selling & packing my shit, making moves to head back to Br.

The drinking stopped.

That's the thing about following a call that centers and profits from the labor and care of Black women without ever centering our wellbeing.

I got out after reporting abuse to my Superintendant/Bishop and was told to pick between a career and my wellbeing.

The drinking worsened.

For years.

Still, I grew in my career, traveled world-wide, led orgs, coached hundreds of folks, and I found myself producing and showing up as if I didn't have a problem. In fact, felt like if I were a productive human-being, then why stop the self-destructive behavior?

The reason the divorce hit me so hard was because I was earning 35k/yr with no benefits and lost access to medication as well as the local community I had developed over the years. That combined with post election stuff leading a church in Western CO, nearly did me in. I drank heavily.

During that year, I moved to a new state to become a senior pastor (the only of color in the whole 100mi radius) and was divorced. For a moment there, the only meals I ate were church casseroles washed down with beer and MJ for dessert. Thank God for church mothers and their flourishing gardens!

First time I should have known I had a problem was when I used it to self-medicate before being diagnosed with clinical depression, social anxiety, ptsd. But because of the treatment I got and the relief I felt from the medication and therapy, I didn't think about it at all again until 2017