We are all, different expressions of the same light trying to find our way back to love.
First for ourselves, then for one another, then for the world.
Everyone of us is always seeking to find, be, or give love unconditionally. The issue is most of us don't live in the current of this flow. Even fewer of us know what that really means and yet, this is our most fundamental conditioning. When we realize love is the answer to most of our wonderings it also becomes clear that we have to figure out how we love instead of how we have been conditioned to receive love in order to give that substance and receive the sustenance in the pursuit of it. Being aware of the disconnect in the two can help us understand ourselves and our needs as well as what makes us feel empowered and nurtured.
As I reflect on this I also reflect on my personal journey from empowerment to love and my truest self, as well as the lessons that rediscovering my light have revealed. The most exciting of which has been the realization that who I became and who I am when I feel my best are now one in the same. The pain of the life I lived created a super hero persona that had to be better and stronger for everyone she loved in order to feel loved. Because my identity was then rooted in my abilities and not who I innately was, when lost my ability to do gymnastics at an Elite level and then when I felt I lost my intelligence due to concussive trauma felt I’d lost everything.
The truth is, I was shedding the layer of me that boxed me in, and gaining a mindset that freed me to be everything I am in the eyes of God, and not man. I had to let go of most of my programming and all of my boxes in order to heal myself and start truly LIVING as my best self. This version of Zoya cannot be boxed in. In fact, this Zoya, the Zoya who walks like she knows her name literally means LIFE loves to take the box and use it to form the foundation for something new.
The boxes of my experience were shame, a victim mindset, fear of failure, and insecurity. All of my boxes were mindsets brought on by my experiences and thus in order to deprogram them I had to start immersing myself in experiences that healed and challenged me mentally, physically, and spiritually. I had to start surrounding myself with people I saw myself in who came from different experiences and thus responded and reacted in ways that challenged what I'd known. While I navigated all of this I also had to become patient, understanding and loving of myself and these were the keys that unlocked it all. I call these the tools of becoming because they truly were the keys to becoming the love I was seeking.
Once I was able to give myself the love I was seeking I became more able to pour what others needed and not force what I thought I was supposed to give them. I learned this passively through coaching and then as I continued to mature in the concept I solidified this in the building of my spiritual family. Those who have become my sisters and brothers in the family I've been able to choose became my friends and loved ones because I saw myself in them. I saw parts of myself that I wanted to encourage and help amplify and I saw pieces that I wanted to encourage them to heal because I knew they could and I now had an ability to help them to.
This love reshaped the way I formed all of my relationships and allowed me to respond from a place of Love, first for myself, and then for them. Learning this with my gym babies first fast tracked it everywhere else because it forced me to set a standard for the reciprocation it took to maintain a healthy dynamic teacher student relationship. A relationship that understands its role is multidimensional and must adapt based on the circumstances and situations it is placed in. I realized that if I could set a standard of reciprocation for 4-18 year olds and college aged young adults, I better be willing to set standards for the people who were supposed to be helping me be my best self in order to do that.
The self love that came with patience, understanding, and mindfulness of myself empowered me to LIVE my dreams out loud despite fear of how others would respond to my vulnerability and that vulnerability opened the very people I was trying to reach up to receive the love they needed and I could now give. The pain that I experienced was pain they or someone they knew knew. It was pain they knew from the outside looking or vice versa.
As I continue to grow into myself I know my story is one that needs to be told not because my journey has been so grand or out of the ordinary but because it was so relatable and connecting. The premise of my story being that we all have the ability to live above our traumas and turn our lessons into weapons against our fears, we simply need to be the love we needed in order to become the love the world needs.
All of this is to say I entitled this piece "Queendom" not because I am renouncing my Kings, but because I am making a declaration that I want my Kings to stand beside me and all the Queens I am surrounded by. I want us to do this intentionally and joyously because in this union is everything we need and more, not only for ourselves, but for the world and the generations to come.
This is how we sustain ourselves, this is how we replenish ourselves, this is how we build Empires that understand that the lighting of another's flame does not take away from our own, instead it gives it true purpose by connecting it to more than the self.
That my friend, is a Prescription For Life! To Journey from Empowerment, to Love. First within and then without
To choose to Live!
To elevate above a Life where we simply Survive
By Choosing to THRIVE <3
Know that I See YOU!
Nuff Love,
Zoya Yaseka
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCwX6UUuP-A