Freedom, is A Mindset

What I’ve learned along the way

I was sitting in a room the size of a New York studio apartment. I can’t recall the color of the couch exactly but I feel like it was dark green. There were beautiful, curtain less windows to my left where I could stare at the parking lot.

I took a breath and sat upright, spreading my legs to give my hips reprieve. I was a little over 6 months pregnant with my second child, — who is now going on 8 years old.

My therapist was a beautiful curvy black woman with an illuminating smile. She opened her mouth and asked me a question I’d repeat to myself over and over throughout the next decade.

“What do you want?”

“I want to be free,” was my response to her. In our years of work together over the next 8 years, she would remind me that at the start of our work together, I just wanted to be free.

As I sit in my Santuary Room, 8 years later, I ask myself, are you free?

I look around at all my art and musings on the wall. I stare at the vapor coming from the diffuser. The candle flame flickering beside it. I am, in a sense, I say to myself.

After years of work and healing and questions and decisions, I realize freedom is more of a mindset than a place in life. I used to think I would…