sista stop apologizing

In this episode, I discussed themes in the book “Sula” written by Toni Morrison alongside my personal experience of reading the book and admiring Sula as an unapologetic black woman. Sula, to me, represented what it’s like when a Black woman refuses to be told who she is and spends each day figuring it out for herself. I discussed the dynamics of life in a small town and how Sula’s unapologetic nature shaped how people interacted with her and perceived her. Sula was grounded in HER view of the world, regardless of how anyone else felt or saw her. 

I feel like one of the most powerful things you can do is tap into your own energy and become so authentically in tune with yourself that your blessings and aligned opportunities know where to find you. Slowly, I’ve been learning to stop apologizing for needing things like rest, slower days, and my peace. To stop labeling myself as good or bad and allowing myself to just be Bre and what that means for me at the moment. Once you learn how to tap into your intuition, you find out what’s aligned and what isn’t.

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Hey, this is over, and this is the Divine Intuition Podcast where I try my best to make space and learn how to take up that space. Heroes back with another episode. I know it's been a minute. I've been doing the whole thing of making space and learning how to take up this space. Taking things day by day. I said that for my experience in grad school, I really wanted to challenge myself to um, I guess, put to action some of the things that I walk away from undergrad, feeling and thinking and journaling about, and really just using this part of my journey to not feel like I have to, how do I say this as a recovering perfectionist and a recovering who how do I say this? When I first got into undergrad, y'all, I felt like there was a point I had to prove to myself that I could hold my weight into space almost. Not feeling like things have to all be right, not stressing about a grave, genuinely just showing up and spending each day focusing on my habits. So getting back in the gym, focusing on like, what am I eating? Like, how frequently am I eating? Because in underrated, y'all, your girl had a hit. My friend would literally have to be like, have you eaten today? And I would be like, I had an apple, and they're like, Girl, that is not, you know what I mean. Like, did you eat something for real? Um, so I really just taking the time to, especially since this is grad school, it's completely different beast. So I think I've just been taking the time to remind myself to build healthy habits, and that's been like a really cuz I finished week four today. So we in there, we're we're going strong. So I've just been trying to build healthy habits. I get up, go to the gym, move my body, do my affirmation, still journal, still just still. Like, don't allow being in school. Oh my gosh, y'all, this is a big one. The the amount that I've been having to hold myself back. I am a recovering sign yourself up for everything, girl. Oh my goodness. I have had to hold myself back from so many applications and nominations and just writing my name on stuff. And I think that it's really different from when I was an undergrad. Because an undergrad, I signed myself up for everything because it was the first time in my life I had like that many extracurricular activities and like they're they're technically, well, they're not free, you gotta pay student fees, but that's neither here nor there. It was the first time I had access to that much stuff. Y'all, I was having a mall. I was like, you need to tell me I can write for the newspaper, take pictures, go over here, organize for this, do that, organize a fashion. This is cool. I didn't even know people could do all of this stuff in the course of one week. Also, I don't know where your girl energy went to. I need the energy back I had in undergrad because I don't know how I would even want all of that stuff in the course of a week. Neither here nor there. But, anyways, I've just been taking the time to, and I've actually been doing this for the past couple of months because I work and I kept telling myself with my job, I was like, well, Bree do you want to go pick up something else? And I kept telling myself, no, because what you're gonna do, you're gonna pick up something else, and then school is gonna start, and then you're gonna be overwhelmed, and then you're going to carry that being overwhelmed and operate in spaces like you did not sign yours, like you didn't sign yourself up for it, you know, like and I guess I just want to spend my grad school experience. Um, how do I say this? Because I don't think it's that I wasn't intentional in undergrad. I actually was extremely intentional. I think that intentional for me just means a different thing. I want to be intentional about showing up for myself through my habits, through just all of that. I just want to be very intentional with teaching myself to breathe through it and not allowing it to not allowing my nervous system to get caught up and swept up in the chaos of being a recovering perfectionist hayacier. I guess that's the best way I could put it. So I'm just taking things a day at a time, but just also while my episode is probably gonna be a little bit more spread out. Your girl was gapping the first half of the year. I think these last couple of months. I still got some gap in me, but the episode is probably gonna be a little bit more stretched out. This episode is actually one I've been wanting to do for a minute. I just need to give y'all a life update. And it's called Sus to Stop Apologizing, and I actually typed it up a lot back because I wanted to use this space to talk about Sula. I really wanted to use this space to talk about Sula by Tony Morrison. And I'm naming this episode Sus to Stop Apologizing for many reasons, but I'll start it off with this. Another reason why it's taking me so long to record is because I was in my head about propping the camera up, and I had to bring myself back to if you get stopped, Sus to stop apologizing, like this is literally a space you created for yourself. Stop placing boundaries and limits on a space that you literally created for yourself to make space and take up space. So I think I know that Sula was a book that really it was a read. Like the first time I read it, I sat with myself and I was like, do I want to read it again? Before I try to give like a book review, analysis, summary, whatever you want to call what I do on here when I talk about books, Sula. Sula is a book about a woman who was unapologetically herself. She was so herself that to me, through every chapter of the book, I felt themes of just individualism and being an unapologetic black woman who defines the world for herself in spite of the world constantly trying to tell her who she is. Sula grew up, she had a home girl. And Sula's home girl was, I'm not gonna say that she was the opposite of her. Nail wasn't necessarily the opposite, but they did. You know how it is when you got a home girl and y'all just navigate through life different. It was it was one of those types of situations. And uh Sula was kind of raised by a woman who was a little bit more sexually free. Like they, her mother didn't mind, you know, talking to different me, and sometimes even married me. Um, but she had a thing where like the women in the community didn't mind her because she was a nice woman, and then she always said they mean that home to them. So they was like, okay, girl, you cool with us. Nell, on the other hand, her mother was on the more so church mother side of things. So Nell was kind of as she came up, she became kind of what you think of as like the black woman who was a pillar in society, like really into community service, all of these, right? And there was incidents that happened when they were younger. I'm not gonna get too much into details because I don't want to tell you the book. I really just want to lay the framework so you can walk with me through the conversation. But as they got older, Nail stayed home. Like she stayed home, she got married, all of the things, pillar of the community, right? Sulla, Sulla has been traveling, she's been doing her own thing, she's done cultivated her own style, she comes back home, and uh her grandmother has like a like a boarding home situation. Like, the best way I could think to describe it while I was reading it, all I could think about was like, hey Arnold, where you got all of these people in this boarding house, and like there are all these different energies going on in there. And uh there's stuff that happened with Susan and her grandmother because they're all throughout the book, I also felt a lot of things of like matriarchy and uh black women, and uh just relationships and different types of black women and navigating womanhood and femininity and stepping into themselves and what does it mean to be themselves. And so throughout the book, I noticed themes of Sula and this idea of like true freedom. And when I say true freedom, I mean Sula was gonna choose, she had this thing where even how she described stuff was very, I think it goes back to when I talk about definitions, like she was herself, she had her own way that she would get things, she wasn't too quick to pick up other people's definitions, she wasn't too quick to accept others' opinions and things as her own. She was always gonna do her own thing and she's gonna make sense of the world the best way that she could with her knowledge. So much so that even if she did something that was outrageous and out of pocket, and I think if you want to read the book, the further you get into it, Sulva kind of grows up to be a little bit more on the sexually free-side. So she's she's doing her thing, she's doing her thing, and there's actually an incident that allows her to clash with the nail. I'm not gonna get into the specifics because you really gotta read the book. It's a good, it's a great book, actually. And I think even their dynamic following the run-in and just the difference between the way that Nail perceived the issue versus how Sula perceived the issue because the both of them were working on two different definitions of just love and relationships and boundaries and marriage and what all of these things mean. Like you can really tell that these characters are just very different because of their live experience and the way that they perceive the world around them. But I think really getting into like Sulla and the things of like individualism like herself. For one, I love Tony Morrison's writing style. I always there is there aren't too many things I've read of her that I don't kind of fall in love with just because her writing style and how she brought kind of like this small town to life. From the way that people were talking to each other to the dynamics of what somebody needs from a small town, I was like, yeah, girl, like I can visu, I can visualize these people, and I think that especially for the community, I think the dynamics around Sula was really interesting. I think it was interesting because when you grow up in a small town, it's very word of mouth centered. Like it's it's very, I heard on the street centered. Like it's gossip on the street is like news when you run a small town. And uh throughout Sula, the themes are really funny to me because it's almost like when you're an unapologetic black woman and you do what you want to do and you be who you are, that your vibration kind of controls the setting. Like it's it's almost like she captivated their attention from the minute she got back home. Because everybody's just like, oh, like that's that's Zula back? Like, what's she doing back here? But it was also just the feeling of her having her own thing going on, her not caring about people's opinions, her not subscribing to other people's version of what they feel like life is supposed to look like and how they feel like life is supposed to be lived, and how, especially when you're in a small town, it's kind of like of course you become the talk of town, the talk of the town, because it's a small town, there's nothing really else going on. So it's kind of like a soap opera, but in real life. So Sula has this thing going on where it's almost like she set the tone. Like, if if they thought that, oh my gosh, I'm trying to think specifically about the scenario. I think a little boy came and knocked on her door, but he ended up falling. But the community was like, oh, Sula pushed him down the steps, because small town. People will take a story and twist it and turn it, and by the time it gets to you, it'll be a completely different version than what actually happened. Um, and so of course, the news goes across the town. They're just like, yeah, Sula pushed your little boy down the steps, right? The funniest part to it about me is that the little boy's mom, normally, the book said it's nothing. She was normally a questionable mother, right? She wasn't really studying the little boy. She was a very, I'ma just say questionable. She you gotta read the book, y'all. She starts being nice to her son because she thinks that Sula pushed him down the steps, and she wants to be kind to make the point that Sula isn't kind, but she's kind. And I think that that theme, it kind of washed over the whole town. So you had this instance of there was an instance where Sula and her grandmother had a running. And now everybody in town just wants to be super nice to their grandmother to make a point that they're not like Sula because they're nice. And there, you had all of these people in this small town who typically did what they wanted to do, who completely, well, I'm not even gonna say typically did what they wanted to do. They marched to the beat of the rhythm set by the town and of the rules set by the town. So now you had this town, this group of people who have completely changed their rhythm, simply so that they can almost make a point about a woman who has shown that she doesn't really care about what anybody thinks about her. And I thought it was it was a really interesting dynamic, how even their decision to be kind was almost a direct rebuttal against their belief that Suza wasn't. Or even where you had this dynamic where people were fine with Susa's mom sleeping around, but because she's nice, it's fine. Like now there's Suza's deck and she's not smiling in your face about it. Like now it's like, oh uh-uh, we don't like her because at least her mom would be nice to us when she moved around. It's just these dynamics where it's it's interesting to see, and it was interesting to see how, regardless of whether you felt like what Susan was doing was right, wrong, left, right, neither you nor there, it was just interesting to me to see how the almost molded around her. And I think I came to the theme of Sus to stop apologizing because when I got this book, I got it a while back actually, but it took me a minute to read it. I have a friend, um, my friend named Yasmin, love her, and she was just like, girl, you gotta read Sula. Like it's such a good book. And I'm like, girl, I'm gonna get to it because we we swap books and we we love a good book. We can talk for hours literally just about books. And uh I got Sula and I finally started reading it because I have this thing where I get book, I have a collection of books, and I gotta get all of them. And I've told myself that you're not buying another book until you get through. You got books at home. It's like what my mama used to say, you got we got food at the crib. You have books at the crib, literally. Go home read. Um, I have this thing where I get books, but I only read them when they speak to me or when something in me is telling me to just read the book. I started reading Sulla, I guess near the beginning of when I was trying to figure out what divine intervention, what the space was gonna be for me. And it was such a powerful read because essentially I make a space to stop apologizing, to stop. I created the space of divine intervention because I have always known that one of my biggest fears was being sang, and I asked myself, what's the boldest stroke you can make? Which is from one of my favorite things on Netflix. But I asked myself, what's like the boldest thing that you can do to force yourself out of that? Because you can't live your whole life being afraid of speaking, especially Leon, you feel like you were created to communicate, to write, to tell stories. You you can't be hiding and apologetic about the literal thing that you felt like you were put here to do. And reading Sula really, the more I got through the book, I was just like, this woman is crazy. But I got to the end of it, and I was like, you know what? I like it because I also felt like there's this thing of being so unapologetically yourselves and vibrating at the frequency that you are created to vibrate on, so that everything that's meant to find you, find you. I started to ask myself, why Bree, how many opportunities, how many things, how many people have, I might say pass because I don't I don't really believe that things can pass you by that are meant for you, but it made me ask myself, how can you be so unapologetically yourself loudly and proudly that all of the things for you know what are fine? You know, like to me, God will never deliver anything at the wrong doorstep because God knows exactly where you're at. And when I think about sayings like faith without works is dead, I also think about the aspect of how afraid I used to be, or how apologetic I used to be about just taking up space and asking for help, or taking up space and being vocal about who I am and what I do and what I have to offer and standing in that and not apologizing for, not apologizing for taking up space, not apologizing for being a light, not apologizing for having a light. How it does not now this saying it it can matter in certain situations, but it does not matter if you were it gets to a point where even with the series like I'm a good person, I promise, the reason why I wanted to talk about this idea of being good is because sometimes I would get so caught up in the good and the bad that I would forget to just be myself. Through experience, you're gonna figure out what is and what isn't. But if you spend so much of your time being apologetic and not fully stepping into yourself, not fully self-actualizing, not fully developing some type of a sense of self, how will the things meant for you know where prime you and how will you figure out who you are? So I guess that's what I have on this episode. If you get the chance, I really do recommend you should read Sulla. It's a really, really, really good book. I loved it. I love any book about black women and friendships and navigating friendships, but also just when you can see dynamics and you can see people's personalities. I think Tony Morrison did a good job really making the characters distinct and even with their voices. But yeah, I really hope that you know if you made it this morning that you got something out of it to take away from it. And yeah, go water a plant, take a nature walk, touch some grass, um, buy a journal, and I'll see y'all in the next one.