Dear Oshun

Life has been keeping me busy. Making incense has been such a peaceful and positive experience. My life has shifted profoundly in ways that I never could have imagined. At first, I considered the most drastic thing that had ever happened to me to be getting hit by a semi-truck on the highway. But as I look back and reflect, describing it in such a plain and straightforward way doesn't actually capture the gravity or totality of the entire experience.

The car accident was simply the climax of all the events that had both led up to and followed from that moment. And as I reflect now, I realize that I never actually took the time to fully process how the experience affected me spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. I never took a moment to truly reflect during that time because I was so busy trying to get through the moment. I wasn't present. If you've kept up with my blog posts and read Poem: Shattered (Ready for More), you may remember that I mentioned how, before the car accident, I had been feeling emotions of unrest, discomfort, and tension. My spirit was telling me that I was ready for change, so that's where I focused my prayers and intentions. And yes, change came—just not in the way I expected.

Spiritually speaking, that experience affirmed a principle that has always been rooted within me: our words truly have power. Spellcasting.

A phenomenon that is often considered to exist only within the world of fiction. But I believe it has existed in reality right before our very eyes. We speak from a level that we are able to perceive, and what we perceive is shaped by our beliefs. This is why I don't believe we should speak without aim. This is why I fight to remain authentic in my writing. I don't write to compare. I don't write to appease. And I don't write to compete. Writing is simply one of my ways to reflect.

In my former blog post, I wrote about how I felt like the Universe had fated me to experience the car accident to teach me to be grateful for the life I had instead of desiring more. But I had to unlearn this type of guilt-based thinking. Since then, I have learned to give myself Grace. I realized that this way of thinking was such a self-limiting thought pattern. Why would I not deserve to desire more? Why would I not believe that I had every right to have wants and desires like the next person? Why did I not believe my happiness mattered? And if my happiness didn't matter to myself, why would I expect it to matter to others?

Again, as I mentioned before, the car accident was a test of faith. I've been in a chapter of fully learning to comprehend faith—not faith by rules, not faith by religion, but faith by spirit. And as I look back and reflect in this present moment, I can honestly say that I am proud of myself. Throughout this time, I have not allowed my faith to be defeated by such an experience. That's not to say that times haven't been hard, but when it came time to let my stress make me or break me, I maintained my faith. For a long time, I have been affirming to myself that, no matter what, the Universe is always aligning in my favor, even when I don't realize it. So that is what I affirmed to myself every day, especially on the days that were the hardest. Maintaining this perception of my faith has kept me not only in a state of peace, but has also allowed me to release my compulsion for control. And by releasing control, I learned to focus more on my spirit, my intuition, and my faith.

And I must say, having the ability to release my need to control everything has been another major factor that has led to my growth and my evolution. It taught me to ask for help and rely on others.

I have been completely self-sufficient for almost my entire life. I have never been very good at asking for or receiving help from others. It put me in a state of vulnerability that, quite honestly, I have never been comfortable with. I mean, what can I say? We all have our flaws. But over time, I've undergone a shift that practically forced me outside of this boundary. I was without a car, and I wasn't in a position where I wanted to jump back into another extended car note. I was just beginning to gain a better understanding of financial education, so I was looking forward to paying off my car, especially because I had very little of a balance remaining. I was looking forward to using that extra money for more investment and growth opportunities. So not only did my financial planning come to an abrupt stop, but I was also left completely emotionally vulnerable because I had to put my pride to the side and rely on others.

But, maybe that was part of the lesson too. I've overcome so much, but when I really sit with it, I realize that so much of my growth began with something that sounds so simple: believing that I deserved to be happy. I had to begin understanding what self-love actually meant, beyond the way we often describe it. For so long, I had associated love with what I could give, what I could sacrifice, what I could tolerate, and how deeply I could love other people. But I eventually realized that if I continued defining myself through how I loved others, I would lose myself in the process. There is a difference between loving someone and abandoning yourself to love them. There is a difference between being compassionate and ignoring your own boundaries. There is a difference between being giving and believing that your own needs should always come last. I had to learn that the love I was searching for externally had to begin internally. That meant learning to honor my own beliefs, understanding my boundaries and limitations, allowing myself to grow, and most importantly, allowing myself to want things simply because I wanted them. Self-love became less about trying to convince myself that I was worthy and more about actually living as though I already knew I was.

That realization has changed the way I see almost everything, including my relationship with love itself. One of the first spiritual pieces that came to mind during this reflection was my Oshun statue. She has been in my home for quite some time, and while cleaning and tending to my space, I realized something that honestly caught me off guard: I hadn't really looked her way in a while. I hadn't been paying homage to her in the way that I once did. And the more I thought about it, the more I understood why. Somewhere along the way, I had started rejecting softness because I was trying to survive. I have a tendency to do that when I experience something traumatic. I close myself off from the very things that make me feel vulnerable because vulnerability can feel like a liability when you're trying to protect yourself. Love was one of those things. I didn't want to need it. I didn't want to feel it. I didn't want to be softened by it when I was already trying to hold myself together. But I'm not that same girl anymore. I maintained my faith. I maintained my softness. I fought for my beliefs. I worked on my weaknesses. I allowed myself to remain open without allowing openness to mean a lack of boundaries. And there is something incredibly powerful about realizing that I don't have to become hard just because life has been hard.

I think that realization is also connected to the way I've evolved in how I see my own future. I have started designing a completely different world for myself, one that isn't built solely around surviving, but around creating. I have developed a deeper understanding of what foundational wealth means to me and how that foundation can eventually lead to generational wealth. This has become one of the greatest motivations behind my entrepreneurial goals. I don't simply want to make money. I want to create something sustainable. I want to create things that reflect my knowledge, my creativity, my spirituality, my curiosity, and my willingness to keep learning. I want to build something that can grow beyond me. And honestly, that has become part of my definition of wealth. Wealth isn't only what sits in a bank account. It is knowledge. It is freedom. It is creativity. It is having the ability to make choices that align with who you are. It is having something to pass down. It is having the capacity to create a life that doesn't require you to constantly abandon yourself just to maintain it. I feel like I've started vibrating at a different frequency—not because I believe I'm somehow above anyone else, but because I've become more intentional about what I allow to influence me, what I give my energy to, and what I am trying to create.

And with that evolution has come a deeper understanding of my own power. I don't think I used to understand what power actually meant. I associated power with control, certainty, having the answers, being independent, and being able to handle everything on my own. Now I understand that power can also look like discernment. It can look like knowing when to move and when to be still. It can look like recognizing when something is aligned with me and when it isn't. It can look like understanding my own energy while also understanding that my nervous system has a response to the things I experience. I have gained so much wisdom through simply paying attention to myself. And although I still have moments of chaos, I have developed something that acts almost like a checks-and-balances system within me. My faith reminds me to zoom out. My intuition reminds me to listen inward. My understanding of energy reminds me to pay attention to what I'm creating and absorbing. And my awareness of my nervous system reminds me that not every reaction requires action. Sometimes my body is responding to something before my conscious mind has even had the opportunity to understand it. Learning to recognize these things has helped me become much more discerning about what I give my attention, my energy, and my belief to.

So when I say that the Universe is always aligning in my favor, I don't mean that everything that happens to me will always feel good. I mean that even the experiences that challenge me can become part of my alignment if I am willing to listen to what they are teaching me. Sometimes alignment looks like receiving something I've prayed for. Sometimes it looks like losing something I thought I needed. Sometimes it looks like being forced to slow down. Sometimes it looks like being humbled enough to ask for help. Sometimes it looks like being confronted with a part of myself that I have avoided for years. And sometimes, it looks like realizing that the thing I thought broke me was actually the thing that introduced me to a version of myself I had never met before. The car accident changed my life, but it did not get the final say in who I became.

And maybe that is why I felt so strongly about writing this poem for Oshun. I wanted to honor the part of my journey that I spent so much time denying because I didn't understand it. I spent years trying to understand love through other people, through relationships, through what I could give, through what I could endure, and through what I thought I needed to become for someone else. But I understand something differently now. True love begins with the relationship I have with myself. It begins with recognizing my own worth. It begins with allowing myself to be soft without being weak, powerful without being controlling, independent without refusing help, spiritual without needing to fit myself inside someone else's definition of spirituality, and ambitious without feeling guilty for wanting more.

This poem is my way of honoring that realization. It is my way of honoring Oshun, but it is also my way of honoring the woman I have become. The woman who survived. The woman who questioned. The woman who broke down. The woman who prayed. The woman who learned. The woman who remained soft. The woman who finally realized that wanting more from life was never something she needed to apologize for.

I spent so much time denying love because I didn't understand it.

Now, I think I'm finally beginning to understand what true love is.

And perhaps the greatest love I've been learning all along is the love of one's self.