My Healing Is Not A Competition

By Ayasha J. Roberson, MAS, CSLC

On the special edition of SaturYourDay, I want to tell you about my healing journey. I believe that we are all at various levels of healing in our individual journeys. In my journey of healing myself and working in the mental health field for 17 years, a lot of people use healing very loosely. For instance, they don’t want people to notice how jacked up they really are or want to put on a front that they everything is perfect. Most people that fall into either of these categories try to uphold one or both one of these images. They usually end up coming to the hospital seeking crisis care or being referred into an inpatient psychiatric unit for treatment because they had a mental breakdown. I don’t know one person who hasn’t been a victim of placating to the images of what their family, friends, or society sets for them. I have been the victim of this as well. My mom raised me to act like everything is perfect even when things aren’t. It is not my mom’s fault because she was doing what she knows because it’s what her mama taught her. However, my healing is not for my mom, dad, sister, cousins, family, friends, colleagues, or anyone else. My healing is for me. For this reason, the universe unexpectedly decided I should write this special edition of SaturYourDay. I had no intention of writing my next article until Gemini Season. Maybe God wants me to share my healing journey with you because it may help whatever trials and tribulations you are struggling with.

As most people know, usually healing starts after you experience a painful loss or trauma, such as the end of relationship, the death of a close family member or friend, or a diagnosis of a terminal illness or disease. My healing started when I was 27 years old after a painful breakup with a boyfriend. I met him when I was 20 years old while taking summer classes at Community College of Philadelphia (Shout Out to Philly). He is a part of an historical Black fraternity, and I am a part of an historical Black sorority. At the time, my 20-year self wanted to date, then marry another Black Greek. My thinking back then was very superficial and materialistic.  I have come an exceptionally long way since then. In the beginning, he went to school in Upstate PA and I was in college in South Jersey, so we decided to not establish a relationship with each other. For the next four years, I would see him at the Philadelphia Greek events in the city. At the age of 25, we decided to be in a monogamous relationship.  However, he cheated on me about three to four times, then got another woman pregnant. At the age of 27, I was heartbroken and felt at the time that I was subconsciously attracting men into my life who would be unfaithful and dishonest.

My healing started but I was on the verge of a rude awakening. I didn’t realize how f—ed up I was and didn’t know it was going to take such long time to heal. Initially, I told myself that this process of healing shouldn’t take longer than five years. At 27, I had placed a timeframe on when my healing.  However, I didn’t take into account other areas of my life, such as educational, personal, and career goals. Because I had been conditioned by my parents, especially by mother, I had to reprogram myself and dis-create a lot of resistant thinking that was holding me back from manifesting greater things into the present moment and my future. I will say this took several years to accomplish. This wasn’t an easy part of my journey; I was so conditioned to think very negatively about myself without me being subconsciously aware that I was doing this.

However, as I have learned over the years, there is no time limit for healing. Healing is an endless journey through life. Sometimes we go through life thinking that we have been healed from something, then someone says or does something, and we realize it still hurts. This is an indication that you aren’t healed and there is something within yourself from which you must heal. I like to look at healing as a continuum which is nonstop. As I continue to heal and grow spiritually, I find that situations, people, and circumstances evolve along with me. For instance, I had a family member that cursed me out six years ago, for no reason simply because she is jealous and doesn’t like me. This family member called me every name in the book (Bitch, Slut, Hoe, etc.) and even threw my breakfast away. However, I completely ignored her and remained calm. She apologized an hour later, but she had rage, resentment, and jealousy towards me. I didn’t get upset or curse this person out like I had done in the past.  Because I had healed substantially at that point, whatever she said or threatened to do to me didn’t bother me. But my reaction left her even more upset and stifled as she tried to figure out how to drag me down to her vibrational level. I would not allow myself to go down to her level because spiritually I knew that this family member was going to explode soon. I just didn’t know when, but when it did happen, her energy was intense and volatile. I have done so much healing on myself, nothing she would say could faze me. I came out of that situation realizing that how long and how much work it has taken me to get this level. I also know that I still must continue to heal and pray for my beloved family member’s healing as well.

The difference between a secular and spiritual timeline

For those of us have gone to college or trade school, when you first start to pick a major or trade, you are given an anticipated date of when you will complete college or trade school, which is based on your status of either part time or full time. Once you receive the date, you work towards completing required courses so you can graduate by this given date. Now sometimes that date changes, for instance, it you take a semester or year off from school or transfer to another school. But you still have a new tentative date for graduation once you complete all your course requirements.

On the other hand, spiritually it works differently, at least in my case. There was no coursework for me to complete physically. However, I have been accomplishing things little by little as I heal myself. Before I became a Spiritual Life Coach, my healing journey started 14 years ago in January 2007. I had broken-up with my boyfriend a couple of days before New Year’s and sent a nasty email. I was so distraught, but this made me feel even worse. I had told myself then that I would start to figure out what I was doing wrong. (These are the words that I used back then, as at the time I had exceptionally low self-esteem.  I thought it was my fault the relationship did not last). For the first 6 months, I focused on myself, but God helped me begin to pull me away from other unhealthy and toxic relationships with both family and friends. At the time, I did not view these relationships as being toxic; I was just used to being treated poorly by the people I cared about. At 27 years old, I knew that loved ones didn’t value or respect me but treated me  negatively.

 In June of 2007, I also made a promise to God to become celibate, which I did for 10 years. Again, there is no rule book to follow. I didn’t know that I was going to do this. Just one day while I was at the beach before going to an overnight shift at work, I made this sacred vow to the universe. You do not have to become celibate to heal – I am not telling you to do this. However, this was part of my healing process. I didn’t go into the process thinking I was going to be celibate. My initial thinking was to give myself a year to focus on myself, then I would be able to attract a healthy relationship, which would lead to getting married and starting a family. However, as the saying goes, “human plans, but God laughs.” Everyone’s healing is different and there is no timeframe for how long it should take you to heal. When you are spiritually evolving and aligned with the universe, the answer to questions will be revealed to you in divine timing. You can’t rush divine timing. It will happen when God wants it to happen. All you must do is keep on learning, growing, and evolving into the great spiritual Be-ing that God wants to you to become.

As I healed, I continued to grow, which allowed me to become even more spiritual aligned with God, the Holy Spirit and his heavenly beings. It is a beautiful thing to grow like this and it has nothing to do with being single. I know plenty of single people who aren’t healing and instead are stuck at an emotional age of 14-17 even though they are 35 or 40-years old adults. They may have successful careers but are emotionally unstable. My  painful experience led me to where I am now, and I am incredibly grateful for what I had to endure. If I didn’t, I would not have become a Spiritual Life Coach or been able to evolve as much as I have in the past 14 years. I didn’t know my healing journey was going to completely detach me from my family members and friends. If you asked me this 15 years ago, I couldn’t imagine my life without my family. Now I am so happy with life and love who I am. Now I have learned to create emotional and physical boundaries with my loved ones, because if I don’t, they will take advantage of me. Who wants to be taken advantage of? I have learned over the years to create healthy boundaries with my loved ones because if I don’t, my healing can easily become undone. You make a lot of sacrifices to reach certain levels of your healing. I refuse to throw my healing away because of people who don’t respect or appreciate me.  I do have to take photos with family, for “The Gram” and to show people I share in beautiful family events and gatherings. But behind closed doors when no one is looking, you treat me like… Girl Bye….

My healing journey is about me being a spiritual being, living a human experience, while understanding more about myself through the trials and tribulations that I go through in this journey called Life. I never realized that the more I heal, the more I understand people. It’s a beautiful experience that most people don’t ever get the chance to have until after they’ve gone from mortal world and move onto the spiritual world.

I always tell my clients, friends, and others that healing takes time; it is not a quick fix. It has taken you a long time to reach where you are emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. It will take some time to undo all the negative programming of your thoughts, memories, and behaviors that you associate with who you have become, not who you are. Remember: Don’t beat up on yourself. Look at it this way: if you are reading this article, you are ahead of the game and you are finally ready to take the steps of healing. Be proud of yourself! In the words of Maya Angelou, “When You Know Better…You Do Better!” I don’t worry about what others may say or think about me — I just focus on me.

Unfortunately, most people aren’t ready for this journey because they are not ready to heal on a spiritual level yet. It is okay. I am still here for you whenever you need a shoulder to cry on or to talk. I know what you are going through, because I can relate to it and know that it will get better. As I previously mentioned, God has removed negative people from my inner circle, which is absolutely a blessing. I am very thankful for God’s grace and mercy because he saw the intentions of others weren’t good. It is a blessing that he saved from what I did not know back then.

We will sometimes hear this little voice in our heads saying, “oh, it’s my mom, dad, sister, brother, uncle, aunt, child, and they would never do anything harmful or deceptive to me because they are my family, and they love me.” Even if you feel in your spirit warning signs to stay away, we continue to resist because we think our family and friends are all that we have. But then, an incident may occur that ends up being worse than what we could ever imagine. Have you ever had a “come to Jesus Moment?” I know I have. I’ve had to say to myself, “if I just stopped talking to so and so, I would have not ended up in this situation.”

In the Bible, it says that we are always battling between spirit and flesh. Therefore, you must have the spirit of discernment to the know the difference between the two. Now, if you have low vibrational energy like I did many years ago, it is challenging to tell the difference between the two. During the first five years of my spiritual journey, I read the Bible daily, and prayed and fasted a lot. Now, at the beginning of my healing journey, I didn’t have anyone physically instructing me to do or that. The only instructor had was God. I didn’t know it at the time, but by praying and fasting, my vibrational energy was changing. By year six, I start to implement meditation into my spiritual diet. I just would sit silently after I worked out or just while I was in the house and meditate for less than five minutes. (I didn’t learn the spiritual distinction meditation until I became a Spiritual Life Coach two years ago.) God would guide me through a meditation between 1 to 5 minutes long. Usually through the meditation, I was doing yoga stretching; by doing this I was activating my chakras. I had no knowledge of this this until about four years ago. But I had already started to heal my spiritual and metaphysical level. Currently, I wear spiritual bracelets and stones which also help with my healing. I also do the Agesta code daily, along with reading my Self-Mastery Disciplines, practicing Spiritual Distinction Meditation, 3-6-9 manifestation, etc. As you can see, I do a lot of daily spiritual work as I continue to heal. Like I said at the beginning, healing is a process, and it is not a one-stop shop like a Costco, BJ’s, or Walmart. Healing is my journey as a spiritual Be-ing, living a human experience. I believe that this article will empower you either start your healing or re-start your healing journey. For more information about Spiritual Life Coaching Sessions, email me ayasha@urbansocialitesnj.com and you connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn @ayasharoberson Lastly, you can follow SaturYourDay on Instagram @SaturYourDay