LISTENING TO MYSELF, LITERALLY.

Time just comes and goes! Happy to have a letter to share with you all today. 

We always think about moments being grand when we feel our lives have changed in a drastic way. Having a baby. Getting a new job. Moving. A new relationship. Losing someone we love. 

I’m reminded today that my life can, and has been so many times, shifted in a deep way through simple things. 

I started voice journaling in my iPhone voice memo app many years ago and still do it to this day. OFTEN. When I have solitude driving in the car or in my house, I’ll hit record and let whatever needs to come out, come out. Sometimes it’s a raging situation and sometimes it’s just recapping the day or week. It’s been a life line to release pent up words, thoughts and energy from my body without vomiting on my loved ones and in between therapy sessions. Or suppressing emotions. I have over 800 recordings in there, y’all. 

So on my way home from a vacation, I was pulled into my voice notes app and started listening to them, something I haven’t done in a long sitting before. They ranged from 7 minutes to 45 minutes. I bounced between the months and during my entire traveling back home, I listened to myself. Talk about new opportunities, about fears, about goals, about difficult situations, about falling in love. A whole podcast of my own life the last few years. 

I heard cycles. I heard spinning. I heard anxiety. I heard excitement. I heard pride. I heard happiness. I heard uncertainty. I heard pain. I heard disappointment. I heard LOVE, like deep love. And softness. 

I can’t explain to you how it feels to fully SEE and FEEL and LISTEN to yourself, literally. You might experience something similar when reading your journals. I went through all the emotions listening to myself. I wanted to hug parts of me. I laughed out loud on the plane. I shook my head at how much I was trying to control situations that in hindsight I see that I never was able to. I had so many moments of “GIRL, you thought” lol. 

It really changed something inside of me. 

I feel so strongly today about listening to myself. I feel so strongly about how much I admire myself. How much I love myself for being a beautiful human being. I feel so strongly about witnessing myself choose hurtful paths and also hurting others and still being proud of my essence to want to keep growing and learning. I really keep trying, no matter what. I let myself be defeated and then I get back up. 

I’m so sold on listening to myself. That energy is all over me right now. 

I highly recommend a journal or reflection practice. Spill it all out. We hold so much inside of these minds and bodies. I had no idea that listening back to my voice journals would be so life changing for me since they started out just being a release in the present moment. But your own testimony is truly God speaking to you, through you. Wow. 

SHANI