HELP

My Dearest Daughter, 

Asking for help is innate. You've done it ever since you came out of the womb, and you do it all the time now, pointing at things, gurgling with your adorable toddler voice, "Dis, dis" or the way you call out "Mama" in a certain tone. I wonder how most of us lose the ability to ask for help. For me, too, at a certain point, I somehow associated asking for help with weakness, with being a burden, so I stopped doing it. I'll have to do some digging into when and how that happened, because my dear, I do not want you to think this way. Being independent and needing help does not have to be mutually exclusive. They can live in the same place. They should. You need your community, your tribe, as much as they need you. We are stronger as a team than individuals, but it still takes strong individuals to make a strong team. Don't forget that. 

Love Always, 

Your Mama

SPEAK UP

My Dearest Daughter, 

Advocate for yourself. You never know, by advocating for yourself, you may be advocating for your future kids, for your coworker or classmate, for your fellow sisters of color. 

It's something I'm just learning how to do in my 30s. 

You are worthy of speaking up, speaking your truth, speaking your experience, standing up for yourself and taking up space. 

I hope you do not have to live in a world where you have to carry around a gun, taser or pepper spray to protect yourself from our fellow man. 

I hope you do not have to live in a world where you are ignored, belittled, discriminated against or even killed because of the color of your skin, your sexuality or gender. 

I will do everything I can to advocate for myself, for my mother, for you and all the other daughters out there. So that you don't have to live in that world. 

I Love You, 

Your Mama

SELF-WORTH

My Dearest Daughter, 

I've been struggling with self-worth more actively the last couple months. I say "actively" because I'm finding that my self-worth has been on shaky ground for quite some time, but only recently it has come to the forefront due to some life changes. 

It's why I haven't been writing letters to you. How do I give guidance when I need it myself? I suppose having you see behind the curtains and be witness to the sausage making (in this case, personal growth) could be of value to you. 

Ever since your dad and I met, I told him one of my dreams in life is to be my own boss and run my own business.  Also, he now knows that when I've committed to something, I am COMMITTED. I live and breathe it, almost to the point that it is not healthy. That's what was happening when I was at my previous company - I gave it my all. My time, my energy, time with family, etc. COVID didn't help b/c working from home made it that much difficult to separate my time with family and myself with work. It was a strain on our relationship as well as my mental and physical health. So combining those two factors, he presented the idea of starting my own business. Like, really starting my own business. Not just as a dream, but something I could do now. Like, Now Now. Not in the future. Not in a year. Now. So I did it. I quit my job, which I was excelling at, and took the plunge. 

Well well well, how humbling it has been. Starting my own business, that is. I quickly realized several things. #1, things don't move as quickly as I was so used to with budgets of millions of dollars and large teams with different areas of expertise. I thought I could actually do things more quickly without the barrier of bureaucracy and the need to get buy-in for my ideas. And yes, in a way, decisions do get made more quickly now. But it's the actual execution that takes a long time. Because I'm now the person that has to go execute everything and with very limited people and resources to help me. Which leads me to #2. There are SO many things I don't know how to do. Even within my own wheelhouse, Marketing. LOL. I didn't know how to navigate the business tool on Facebook. At one time in the my career, I knew it like the back of my hand, but that was so many iterations ago and I realized I've become so removed from the actual "doing" of things! I've gotten so comfortable with strategizing, planning and directing others that I forgot what it was like to actually go and execute my plans down to the nitty gritty details. So I may know what I want, but how to get it? Bahaha. I'm almost learning all of that from scratch. Now onto #3. Why we're all here today. 

I have been valuing myself on productivity. Like a good middle-class corporate employee who has been indoctrinated with the belief that my worth is based on how much I can produce. Yikes. The lack of results (sales) coming from my business and my efforts has taken a massive toll on my confidence. I had so much internal negative talk, putting myself down, telling myself things like, "maybe I'm not cut out for this," "why did I decide to do this?" "what does my husband think of me now," "what would my friends think when they find out that I left my job for this." It all boiled down to me thinking I was not enough. 

I'm still battling this. I wake up fighting the urge to just take another corporate job (especially a recent opportunity that sounded like it was custom-made for me). I have to tell myself, "I am worthy," at least 5x a day when I catch myself equating my self worth with something I did that wasn't satisfactory or with something I ended up not doing. With perspective and practice, I know one day I will believe I am worthy without having to remind myself.

This is something I wrote in my journal that I keep going back to when I need perspective and practice. Though I do hope that your self-worth is strongly rooted and that you know deep in your heart that you are invaluable, here is my little journal entry just in case you need a little reminder:

I am MORE than enough. I have everything within me to be my most authentic joyful, peaceful, generous self. To make my wildest dreams come true and achieve everything I want to achieve. I have so much to give myself and others around me. This negative belief of not being enough comes from others and my comparison of others - and at the end of the day, that belief is merely a thought. And thoughts are subjective and can be changed. We are all uniquely made up of different traits and gifts, and there is an abundance of joy, growth and success for everyone to have. 

I am MORE than enough. 

   Love,

Mama