"One of the first self-care things I decided on earlier in the pandemic last year was that I am going to stay grounded in my faith regardless of what's going on. If this is the new way of living, I need to adapt. Adapting has been a big thing for me because we focus on what we have control over. I get to choose joy in this house and I get to play Black films — I watch Soul Train, In Living Color, and A Different World. I literally seek joy and remember where we come from and how great we are regardless of what's going on out there. As far as self-care, I do a staycation every two months. I leave the children at home with someone and I go to a hotel for at least 24 hours. That gives me time to reset. Because we're all going through the pandemic and the kids are struggling with school, everything is not the same so I have taught them about boundaries and self-care.
We still live in a world that is trying to tarnish our legacy, our beauty, and us as people. As a Black woman in America some of the things that my family, friends, and myself want are basic things: to be left alone, to not be judged, [for people to] not steal from us and not give us credit, to love what we produce [while also loving] the people producing it. I seek Black joy because I constantly see things that keep trying to tell me different than what I know my magic is about.
Faith and prayer. I have been praying consistently for the last two years. I started taking faith seriously in October 2018 because that's all that I had at the time to help with what I was going through. Prayer is big for me because it's shown me results from nothing else but my faith and being concentrated in that. It's helped me show up better as a mother, have more patience, caring, and understanding, and [allows me to] give myself grace and extend it to others.
I also like to sage a few times a week. I love candles, and even though I'm a mom of two, I make sure I get a lot of alone time. If I'm working from home, I have two bouts of reset moments: a half hour where I put my phone away, and I also put a timer on my social media so I don't go past an hour."
