Writing Prompt: Write a letter to your younger self introducing who you are today. Let them know you’ve come back for them. Description: This week establishes connection. Many people have never consciously “met” their younger self with compassion. This exercise builds emotional safety and begins the re-parenting process. Shadow Questions: 1. What version of me have I been avoiding acknowledging? 2. When did I first feel unseen or unheard? 3. What did I need most at that time that I didn’t receive? Associated Emotion: ➡️ Vulnerability Affirmations: • I am safe to meet myself with honesty and compassion. • I am willing to see and hold every part of who I was

How do we rewrite our future when many times we have not even come to terms with our past. How can one see their future when you can’t even see past today!

Becoming the Fire Turning pain into power — reclaiming your voice.

As I sit here looking at my hands, I see more than just mine. I see the hands of two beautiful women. I see my grandmother, Ellen Louise. I see your strength. Your hard work. I see the sun spots from all the countless hours you spent outside planting and tending to your gardens. I see you digging up the backyard just to make me a swimming pool — with a canopy, I might add. I remember you using cow watering cans just to make sure I stayed cool in the summer. I see the pride you carried in these hands with every meal you made for your family, cooking with love every single time. But I also see the pain you endured. The times you weren’t seen. The times you weren’t heard. The times you were misunderstood. You stayed because that’s what women did. You carried it quietly, and you kept loving anyway. Then I see the other set of hands — my beautiful mother, Diane Rose. Your strength looked different, but it was just as powerful. You fought the fight, Mom. You never gave up. You never said you couldn’t do something. Even in a wheelchair, you believed you had no boundaries, and you were determined to prove everyone wrong — even the doctors. I watched you fight again and again to beat the odds stacked against you. Momma, your heart was so big. You cared for everyone, even when people treated you wrong — men and women who saw you as less than. But you never saw yourself that way. Your elegance was more than beauty. It was class, with a little touch of “bougie,” just like you used to say. You always said a woman doesn’t need to show her body to be classy. And if you couldn’t be rich, you could at least look rich. No matter where we lived — even in the roughest projects — you made it a home. You made it ours. I am so grateful for your wisdom and your guidance. I wish you could see me now — healed, full of love, full of joy. I wish I could sit with both of you just one more time and say thank you. Thank you for the tough love. Thank you for the lessons. Thank you for never giving up on me, even when, in my pain, I told myself stories that you didn’t love me or that you were bad mothers.

What is the guilt and shame you have had to swallow. Put this week’s writing on this post.