Walking Myself Home (Within & Outward)

+ all the things that led me away and all the ways it led me back

May 15, 2025

TW/CW: there is a brief mention of abuse and slavery in this post. Nothing graphic, only mentioning the words. Also, mild use of profanity.

I’m pouring my heart here with my story and journey.

To share my experiences. To share my point of view. To share the roots of my approach to my work. In doing so, the following may stir up feelings within you. Maybe you have a similar path.

Maybe you resonate with my experience with dysfunctional family systems. Maybe you resonate with my journey of exploring genealogy. Whatever you feel, whatever comes up for you, hold it, feel it, and allow it to provide clarity.

The search for who I am started back on 2017 when I was confused, concerned and, quite frankly, just tired of my shit.

Tired of the stagnation in my life.

Tired of feeling like I couldn’t make sense of my future, with no real direction.

I felt like no matter how many steps I took to go forward, I was pulled back and had to start over. Mostly, it was because my past hadn’t been dealt with.

I started the journey by looking back, trying to see who and where I came from.

Trying to learn about my roots, my ancestry.

Trying to tie myself to something, someone.

Maybe they had something for me to bring into this reality.

Maybe I could continue something they started.

Maybe I could inherit their gifts and continue their legacy.

I only have one living grandparent, one elder, and I didn’t and don’t have a stable enough connection with them to feel tethered to this plane.

I was left wondering who could share their wisdom with me?

My parents gave me what they could. The family on both sides was estranged in many ways. Sometimes because of pride, other times because of physical distance that couldn’t be made up for over the phone.

I searched and found information on my paternal grandmother’s side. She met me as an infant, but I don’t remember her. My parents shared stories about her, but that didn’t do much for me. What was surprising was that I found information on her mother and father, and found their parents—the connection went all the way back to slavery, to the point where I traced back to an enslaver.

This reality was hard to grasp at first. To see my lineage connected to someone who did heinous things. To actually know their name and where they lived.

I searched to connect the dots, to form a picture of who and where I came from. I yearned to be guided by someone. Life has felt and at times, still does, feel hard to navigate without someone who has endured years of life. I do realize now, in the search for guidance, if I had received it from those who came before me, I might have been even more confused because they came from a time unlike the one we are in and they couldn’t provide the solutions I sought because the issues needed fresh eyes.

Those eyes were mine.

Being the first to question, asking the hard questions, and speaking up against what has always been.

“As we got older, moving meant a time for reinvention, a chance to reset our lives…. Of course, there was the grief of leaving behind all that had become familiar.”

“Away from dangerous things” essay by Desiree Cooper in “This is the Place” by Margot Khan

I started to dive into self-help and self-development books. I wanted to become more confident and make big strides in my life. Some of the first books I read were “Year of Yes”, “13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do”, “You’re a Badass At Making Money”, and “Eat, Pray, Love”.

The year after, I faced the most important pivotal point in my life.

I was given a stark chance to be brave and speak my truth or to continue engaging with and allowing myself to be around people who didn’t truly have my best interest in mind. I had to speak up about what’s truly held me back in my life. I had to release what I thought I would take to my grave.

The biggest lesson I learned from that experience was that this kind of patterning was exactly what those before me had done— they bit their tongues, they repressed their anger, and it ate them up from the inside out.

How many times can One continue to bite their tongue before it is cut off?
How many times can One allow One’s Self to be engulfed by the fire of one’s anger before they burn themselves alive and disintegrate into ash?

Holding it all in without a space to release.

Holding it all up without a space to let go.

And with that realization, I’m here to create a supportive space, a container, to hold and to release. I’m tasked with the psychological and emotional aspects of what it looks like to surrender to what is instead of trying to force and control. To learn what it looks like to create structures that allow for growth, expansion, and accountability.

A couple of hands reaching for each other — Photo by Bharath Kumar on Unsplash

Also, I noticed the difficulties of not embracing the energy of receiving.

There’s been a lot of shutting oneself down and refusing to feel the emotions as they arise. There’s an energy of rushing to get it over with. At the core, there’s a sense of not feeling safe, secure, or deserving of needing to cry or asking for help or to take time away from responsibilities as they process emotions. It was a privilege to stop for a moment to digest the chaotic current. There was a deep fear of being caught off guard or being punished.

Of course, I understand that the times were different then. I am in a much better position, given the resources I have within my reach to make a change, plus I have the willpower and desire.

“While the idea of home carries with it the notion of safety, or at least the hope of it, in reality, home is often the place we were first afraid.”

- “This is the Place” Margot Kahn

Thanksgiving and the holidays were never the same after my uncle passed away in 2007. For about 5 years after, which would be 2012, my grandma refused to cook Thanksgiving dinner or have dinner at her house. The grief of losing her oldest, her firstborn, took a toll on her. Each year after, she would either order in or dine out. In 2009, I spent my last Thanksgiving with my grandma. I believe we are at Applebee’s on that occasion since Ponderosa was no longer at Bay Plaza in the Bronx.

There was a time when I enjoyed the holidays, but by this time, I was over being reminded of the mistakes or mishaps I got myself into, or the embarrassing memories.

The only thing I missed most were the homemade meals.

One of those past Thanksgivings, my mom, aunt, grandma, and I all “put in the work” to prepare pasteles together. It was our first and last time doing so.

I recall my grandma saying:

“The pieces of our skin and blood from grating the ingredients would make the pasteles taste even better”.

a window with a curtain and a potted plant in front of it — Photo by Evie Martinez on Unsplash

So many memories were made at my grandma’s house.

So many tears, so much anxiety, so much yelling, so much arguing, and sprinkle in some laughter.

Most of my childhood took place in that apartment.

A lot of my pain came from within those walls.

Like that time, being a kid playing around, I accidentally knocked over my grandma’s mango tree sculpture. That was the first and only time my grandma spanked me.

She never laid another finger on me again, but I continued to experience the pain of her silence, the pain of her ignorance, the pain of her disconnection.

I remember spending nights sleeping in her bedroom on the floor in a sleeping bag.

I didn’t like sleeping alone in that apartment.

I always felt like someone or something was watching me.

I always felt a presence that led me to run from one room to another. It led me to avoid using the bathroom at night, too.

It didn’t help that my aunt would try to scare me with things like Candyman and Freddy Krueger. It didn’t help that she would make me stay up with her to watch TV because she didn’t want to be alone.

I’ll never forget listening to my burned CD of different songs from Evanescence and other artists, and still, to this day, I can hear the part where the CD would skip during “Going Under” when Amy says, “Blurring and stirring the truth and the lies”.

It would skip between “truth and the lies”.

I never had a space of my own to sleep in other people’s homes.

No one created a space for me, one with an actual bed to be comfortable in.

Always a sleeping bag or a sofa, or sharing a bed.

“And I realized, too, this is how things so often exit our lives. We beg for them to be gone, have fantasies of that empty space and how we will put that to use. And then when it finally happens, neither the eye nor brain can quite fathom the absence. It takes a moment or two to register the empty space”

- “Home in Four Acts” essay by Akiko Busch “This Is the Place” Margot Kahn

How can you feel at Home in environments that never considered your needs?

When I finally spoke my truth about being abused as a child, it was under dire circumstances. My mom was in the hospital at the same time as my grandmother in February 2018. With the whiplash of events that unfolded, I couldn’t continue pretending. I could no longer keep doing things “for the sake of keeping the peace”.

via Instagram: image created by **op_e___n**

What set me free came at a cost.

I changed the narrative when I became the hero of my story.

I wanted more. I wanted better. So, I made really hard, painful, confusing decisions. They were only hard, painful, and confusing because I felt like going against the grain was betraying others, but it was actually me whom I’ve been betraying for most of my life.

Betraying and dishonoring my intuition.

I didn’t know what to believe as everything was now coming to a crashing halt. The vehicle I’d been driving for years crashed and flipped over, and I was in a fog, a daze.

It felt like I was being rushed to surgery, and now they had to remove the tumor. Once it was removed, I felt the gaping hole in my heart.

At first, I blamed myself for speaking my truth out loud because it meant the dynamics of my family would never be the same, but then I remembered this was never how family was supposed to feel.

I had to deconstruct the meaning of family and love, of safety and security, of intimacy and compassion.

The past seven years have been a masterclass in what it looks like to transform your wounds into true power and wisdom.

The biggest lesson I have learned is: I can begin again.

As many times as I need to.

I get another chance to improve.

Yes, life is short, but right now, I’m not focusing on my mortality. Right now, I’m focused on my morality.

I am committed to my evolution as a person, as a parent, as a lover, as a guide. There’s a lot that I have to integrate, as do all of us. You learn something, and then you must give it time to marinate in your psyche so you can have sustained change. Integration and conscious awareness allow you to notice when you are about to repeat a pattern, a behavior. Now that you have previous experiences, you can use the wisdom you’ve attained to change the narrative.