Week 10: Sunday Service Announcements

Sometimes the lesson God gave us is really for us to learn to grow through, not be saved from.

Ain’t nothing more holy than walking in your authenticity proud and unapologetically. Walking by faith is a coded language to take action in that thing with the faith in yourself that you have everything you need within you including a spiritual army behind you making it happen on the other side.

You know, ordering your footsteps.

Opening doors that man could not open.

We live in a world where she is copying her, and he is copying him so who is the real and who is the fake?

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Build your safety net, save your life.

Ashleigh Vaughn

I think some of us would be much better off during our rock bottom moments if, when taught the importance of a safety net, there wasn’t only an emphasis on the financial aspect. 

It is ingrained in us from the time we first begin to learn about money that we need to save at least three to six months’ worth of expenses in the bank for times of crisis, usually in the form of job loss or underemployment. Either by termination, lay-off, illness, or in my case, the need to save your life. Some of us don’t have the luxury of making enough to live and save anyway so we’re left without much of a net to fall on during hard times.

When I needed a safety net to catch me from hitting rock bottom the most, long after the hefty savings were gone, my community showed up and showed out. What kept me here, both physically in my home and literally in my body is the safety net of non-financial securities that I relied heavily on: 

• Knowing which friend to call when the thoughts of my own death wouldn’t stop and who to talk to when I only needed a laugh. 

• Having a treatment plan in place to follow, even though I hadn’t seen my medical specialists in months. 

• Having the awareness of which environments to avoid in order to not become overstimulated and irritable.

• The wealth of knowledge and resources accessible by me because I sought them out while I was well enough to do so have kept me here. 

This week, think about the tools and resources needed to build your safety net. What do you need to store more of to keep you here during the rough times? Is it more rest? Medical intervention? A new community of support?

Ruminate on that and be well.

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God told me ‘Your MANE has its own Name.’

EL☀️Writes

My relationship with my hair went through trials and tribulations. 

Phases to say the least. 

Experimentation

Manipulation

Obsession 

And insecurity. 

I think it’s no coincidence how the zodiac sign Leo, rules over hair AND self-expression 

Hair is a form of expression, so it’s no surprise that my hair journey enmeshed into my creative journey. I’ll dive into that another time.

Even though I was told to keep my hands out of my hair, I did what every curious-natured child does when told not to do something-

Tried 👏🏾  It 👏🏾  myself 

I tried being my own 

Stylist… 

Which entailed me cutting a chunk of my hair

Just to see what it would look like if this piece of hair was gone. of course, my mom thought this was awful.

But I could honestly Careless

I was more amazed at the fact that scissors could do that 

Hair was like a science experiment, 

I was excited to stumble upon all the tools, test them, and mentally document my findings 

It was F U N 👩🏾‍🔬

The only reason I begged and cried for a doll baby was so I could style the hair 

However, I quickly became bored because there was nothing else to do but brush and comb. After attempting to “flat iron” the Doll Baby's head, I did come to find out that Synthetic hair doesn’t perform too well under high temperatures. Oops! 

The later parts of Elementary School are where the discomfort and anxiety started to creep in through the social awareness that I was one of the few who actually styled their natural hair. I didn’t get braids too often, as they were treated like a “Special Occasion” only hairstyle. What’s considered a “special occasion”, I couldn’t tell you.

There’s this one distinct memory I have from Elementary School

When a teacher decided to stick her hands into my hair and announce to the classroom 

Her findings 

She asks, “Why is it so Dry?”

Too humiliated to respond, I stare 

At the woman whose hands were the same shade as mine 

Wondering when it became okay for Black people to hate their own features

This would be the first, not the last time, a Black person has color-coded me for showcasing my blackness 

There would be many more “when you gonna get your hair done?!” statements to come

Once I got into Middle School, the tango dance between me and my hair became more like an entanglement full of fairy knots and breakage

Only wearing my hair in puffs, never letting it out to breathe

My scalp was stressed and depressed 

I was grieving the curls I never had 

And despising the ones that emerged from my scalp 

All the curl-defining creams, detangling brushes, and edge controls couldn’t save me 

From the shackles of European Beauty Standards

I was in the T R E N C H E S with my self-esteem 

That meant I was willing to do anything to be seen as worthy 

So I did everything 

Edges Laid 

Hair (attempted) slick

Curls clearly defined

And after squeezing my hair into this beauty standard 

I still felt “ugly” 

The shame was in the spaces between their comments or 

The way I felt in-between hair “styles” 

Either way, the consensus, was always the same 

Good hair was straight hair or however close you could get to whiteness.

I became the Neglect Queen 🫅🏾

I decided that if I followed all the rules and didn’t get my desired results (curlier hair) 

Then it must not be me, it’s my hair 

I had a bald-head attitude with a full head of hair?!

I wanted to separate and divorce myself from what felt like a curse. a tad dramatic but true.

I remember a girl that I used to hang out with in middle school told me that I had “4Z” curls 

As if being ashamed wasn’t enough, I also had to be the laughingstock

I fucking H A T E D it

How Black Woman with tighter curls were the first to be joked about and the last to be seen as beautiful 

For so long, I was struggling to embrace and accept my hair

Then I realized that’s what society wants me to do

Hate E V E R Y part of myself that I’m desperate to C H A N G E it 

Hate my curls so much that I dominate them into straightness 

Hate my skin so much that I hide behind a mask 

I was approaching the relationship with my hair through a colonized lens. 

CONTROLLING.

MANIPULATING.

FORCING.

I stopped treating my hair like a pet, 

Because it’s really a goddamn l i o n 

My hair doesn't take orders from me 

Because it's its own thing 

With a name, voice, shape, and color. 

It's a LIVING being

So my mane tells me when she needs to be nourished 

How she wanna be cleansed 

What styles she wanna wear 

Ever since I began acknowledging my hair, 

Greeting her with compassion and Adorning her naturalness 

I’ve never felt more beautiFULL 

Or in my essence 

Granted I don’t have perfect hair, she's actually a little damaged right now 

But Nowadays I take the necessary steps to repair her 

So that she can Bloom f r e e l y 

What a beautiful process it is to watch me her grow 🌺

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Bask in your belief that no matter the storm you always come out better than you started. 

Jacquie Verbal

To learn how to remove the limitations you placed on your abundance, you must first unlearn your belief in scarcity.

God is working on your behalf to show you just how good life could be for you, but your limiting beliefs are blocking the abundance.

I am going to break down this download by using music. The energy you are currently putting out into the Universe is Bag Lady by Erykah Badu. See you are carrying the baggage of your past, which is slowing you down and making you miss opportunities that are orchestrated for you. 

Your past can control your future because of your inner belief about what you deserve, this is reflected in the song, The Weekend by SZN. You know the lack of mindset is causing you more harm than help. However, you continue to believe the bare minimum will still fulfill your needs. Completely missing the message that your cup will run over when you are fulfilled rather than settling for temporary satisfaction. 

"I know I deserve more yet I continue to accept less"

God is asking you to embrace the transformation like the song Feeling Good by Nina Simone. Embracing that transformation is a feeling not a physical change, it's a mental shift. When you can look at your past experiences as lessons rather than mistakes. Understanding the lessons was a gift to help you in this moment to grow and elevate.

Detach from the idea that when you embrace the transformation of abundance your bank account is going to be the first sign of change. Abundance is a lifestyle, the freedom to live by your own standards. When you embrace the transformation, you free yourself of the limiting beliefs that kept you in a scarcity mindset. 

This piece was an original newsletter before I had a Substack from September 20, 2022 at 11am EST. This was during a time I was living in my grandmother’s house and the thought of moving to California felt so freeing but so far away. Almost two years later it’s amazing to see myself LIVING my dream life in California. I did it! I got that one way flight and it changed my life.

My story bought the stability to my life, sharing it through my words makes my life feel free because writing doesn’t feel like work. It’s creative, I enjoy the process and it provides a fruitful life for me. My abundance spilled into my family and my wife is in her dream career that doesn’t feel like work. And my daughter is free to be herself with no conditions.

Maybe there is something you’ve been working on that you might not understand why but it’s the groundwork to lay the foundation for what is to come. It’s time for life to start getting good, on purpose.

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Prayer Hotline

Let us bow our heads, and close our eyes to pray.

I pray this week you experience more peace than you did last week.

I pray you open your heart to more positive experiences.

I pray you allow yourself to redefine your love languages in your terms.

I pray you love who you see when you look in the mirror.

I pray you celebrate yourself for all your wins.

I pray you never see your “not now” moments as failures, it’s a delay.

I pray you know you are protected.

I pray you know you are loved.

I pray you find faith within yourself and put less of that in others.

I pray you learn to stop disappointing yourself and stay consistent with showing up for yourself regardless if the task doesn’t make sense, your future self will thank you for doing this now. Trust me on that one.

I pray you drink more water, speak your affirmations into your water before you drink it, and pay attention to how you start moving/feeling different.

I pray you get comfortable with being successful. This is one of the things they don’t tell you about when you make it, the success can be overwhelming and make you want to give up. What keeps you going is your skill set of being able to sit with your emotions, permit yourself to be in your feelings to navigate why they are surfacing, and allow them to pass. You will be surprised sometimes by what we are truly feeling when it seems very petty or surface, no it’s deep explore it.

I pray you give yourself grace, you haven’t been an adult before none of us know what we are doing, we are all just winging this shit. Oops, I told the secret.

Let the church say Amen!

Amen!

And Amen!

Church is adjourned you all are now welcome to fellowship in the basement, Sister Barbara is doing a Cake Sale again this Sunday.

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BlackStack Reads:

This week our good sis

EL☀️Writes

gave us her hair story to help us get excited about Part Two of the Black Hair stories that are a part of the F.U.B.U. Collections.

Each month Black writers have been emailing in their Black Hair experience stories and I’ve been curating them into our newsletter series to publish on the last Saturday of each month. This Saturday will be the second newsletter release. So be on the lookout, and if you aren’t scheduled and would like to submit your story the email to submit is info@theblackstack.org.

Here are a few of the F.U.B.U. Collection newsletters already curated by some very talented Black writers within the

BlackStack

community.