Reflections .

Define: R E F L E C T I O N:

1. An instance of reflecting; especially : the return of light or sound waves from a surface

2: The production of an image by or as if by a mirror

3a : The action of bending or folding back

b : A reflected part : fold

4: Something produced by reflecting: such as

a : An image given back by a reflecting surface

b : An effect produced by an influence the high crime rate is a reflection of our violent society

5: An often obscure or indirect criticism : reproach a reflection on his character

6: A thought, idea, or opinion formed or a remark made as a result of meditation

Creator of “A to ZEN of Life Blog”.

A personal blog in which I write and pour out my soul. Where I lay out my rawest forms, thoughts, passions, love, feelings: it’s all in the palm of your hand. My sanctuary. A piece of me. Right here, on this computer, through this screen, in black and white with no grey.

This is ME. The new-found, self-loving, confident, strong, beautiful, ambitious, self-cleansed, self-motivated, ME.

For those of you who have been following me on my blogging journey, in my post:

“Patience is the key to my life.. Pt. 2” I mentioned most of my insecurities,

especially regarding my body. It is very difficult for women in this generation to become comfortable in their own skin nowadays. I admit I am not perfect, nor am I the beautifulest woman to exist, but I can say here today that I have learned to love my small boobs and my imperfectly perfect body.

My whole life I’ve been told by my male-counterparts “you’d be bad asf if you had a fat ass” “Damn Dali all you need is bigger boobs and you’d be bomb”. This how men respond to women who have a B cup breast size, and wear a size 7 or a size 9 in jeans in our generation. Don’t get me wrong, YES I have come across men who will say to me “you don’t need to change anything about yourself, you are beautiful just the way you are” and those are the individuals who capture my attention. Why would I want to continue to have men in my life that are constantly telling me how to enhance my female body parts so I can be more appealing to them? Honestly, what do you get out of telling women these things? You can’t have what you want all the time, and that is the cold truth. My men, you are out here degrading your female counterparts without you realizing it. Y’all fantasize on women who look like a Kardashian or Nicki Minaj instead of appreciating a woman like Jhene Aiko or a Kehlani. Y’all want women with fat asses, and big boobs instead of women who look “just right”. #LittleBoobsNeedLove #LittleButtsNeedLove

(Image captured by: Bryan Sampson Jr. @thevisualsensei)

Well let me tell you,

Mid August of 2016 up until January of 2017, I was in what I consider to be a very interesting but profound space. Everything around me was a gray cloud. Due to my surrounding circumstances, I began to question who I was, who I would become, and who I could become. Most importantly, I began to question how I can find self-love within myself.

It is normal for us as humans to go through these periods in where we do some deep reflecting on life: past, present and future. I found that how you respond to these reflections is what matters the most. I began to take time for me out of the day too. It is important than when you are constantly multi-tasking and juggling multiple things in life all at once, that we take the time to take care of ourselves.

“A woman’s body is beautiful and the way she wants to cherish her body is her choice” - Carmen Eusebio.

Now I am at the age of 22, and I can truly say that I am at my happiest. I am a solid 145 lbs, this literally has to be the heaviest I have been, but I am learning to love my weight and just appreciate it. Yes, sometimes I wake up and feel like my cheeks are too chunky, my thighs are juggling too much, shoot: my boobs bouncing too much and I don’t even have none lmao. Even though I say “ I’m fat”, I love myself. Even though I also opened a gym membership to begin working on my body because it’s all about self- love when it comes down to my body insecurities. I am so used to being a 125 lb person that I don’t know how to feel comfortable in my happy skin.

Admitting my insecurities is always a priority to me. I am creating self - awareness. If I want to be happy or feel good, it’s important to take the time out and to talk to myself. There’s nothing wrong with that either. So, furthermore, a few years back I was still just a “kid”, I didn’t know what it was to love yourself for who you are because of all the stereotypes, and pressures from society for women to look a certain way. I wasn’t aware of what I was capable of, and how powerful and strong I could be from the beginning, hence I would have avoided half of the shit I went through at this age. And most importantly, I didn’t know what it was like to take care of myself, physically, emotionally, and mentally. If you have been reading my recent blogs, I also mention how I have broken down into these three components: physical, mental and emotional. So for this post, I decided to go more into detail about all three things.

Physical: you have to make your body feel right. Whether it’s going to the gym, or doing yoga, your body has to be right. You have to take car of nutrition, sleep, activities, etc. You can’t get mentally right without getting physically right. You have to love your body, the body that you are currently in. You can think about how to improve it, but you definitely have to know how to beautifully learn to love it. Your physical well being is very important to improve our daily routines. When you taking care of yourself, your body starts to feel better which affects your mental believe it or not.

Mental: your state of mind should be stable. Try to take care of yourself mentally and always work on it, the mind is our biggest power. We can do anything, think or believe anything that the mind decides on. “Think with your mind not your heart” is a common saying because the mind is stronger than we tend to realize. Take time out of your day to stop using your mind for once, freestyle a verse, free-write, meditate, believe it or not, all things that relax your muscles and your mind. Try to have a clear mind most of the time to avoid unnecessary stresses and frustrations ladies and gents!

Emotional: it’s important to have a hold on your emotions. You should know how you are feeling and why to better understand yourself! If you bottle up all your emotions like I used to do a long time ago, the most innocent thing will make you explode and you don’t want that. That's how we do things we will eventually regret and we don’t want that now do we? You have to emotionally take care of yourself. Personally, I don’t fucks with you if your someone who will bring me nothing but bad vibes. I rely on people too much sometimes and I have learned to not do so that much because I’ve been burned a few times already. My emotional state is something I protect the most, being that I rely so much on them. It’s not ok to rely and expect much from others without taking care of yourself because YOU come first. When you don’t care about who you are, as a person you can enter a state of depression, confusion, etc.

Now, I am well aware that “depression” is a heavy term but a lot of people have taken the term out of context, being in a state of depression deals with “shutting down” because of overwhelming feelings and thoughts. People hear depression and immediately say, “omg that person is crazy, they are having suicidal thoughts, etc” no, that’s not the case. In my situation, I went through a period in which I had to tap into some of my deepest parts of my mind to bring feelings forward. I don’t like to feel numb, the minute I feel like my mind is clouded I get to stressed out. I am someone obviously who is very in touch with my inner thoughts and feelings and even when some of them are unwanted, we still need to allow ourselves to feel, a way of reminding ourselves that we are nothing but human. Now, when tapping into my thoughts or feelings, I tend to push people away, I want to be alone, I want to be able to think and have nothing distracting me. It’s like venting, or coping matter of fact.

We all need to cope with contained feelings right?

Anyways,

I am not someone to regret past decisions, I am a strong proponent of “everything happens for a reason” because look at me now, had I not went through all the bullshit I dealt with within these past couple of years, I wouldn’t be writing this to you today.

I don’t need to do anything I don’t wanna do. I don’t need an attitude adjustment, if I did, I wouldn’t be myself. If I wasn’t from the "hood", I wouldn’t understand the struggle, and I wouldn’t be able to relate and know what it’s like to be a part of the second-caste like system. AND if I was more submissive, I’d be controlled and I’d be a fool who wouldn’t ever amount to shit. I know what it’s like to struggle, I am no stranger to it, but I also know how to be responsible, and independent, and I owe that to my momma. I am tired of people criticizing, judging, and speaking on my name. There is constantly something being said, YES some of you don’t like my blog, some of you have ancient beef with me, some of you don’t support or empower me as a Latina woman, many of you don’t support my career choice, some of you think I’m a b***h and a damn looney and some of you like to throw false promises my way and I don’t fucks with it. . O h k a y.

You can leave, click the X button at the corner of the screen, and watch me werrrkkkk.

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I learned that nobody has more control over my life than myself. I chose to deal with everything I was dealing with for a reason, and I choose to STILL deal with the people, situations and thoughts that I deal with today because I want too, and that’s the key. . I know that by dealing with these things, I would eventually get to where I am at today. It took some time, but I couldn’t be more happier. (Even when I complain) lol.

My feelings of being lost, confused, unhappy, and insecure have led me to the opportunity on being able to share this with you now. . .

Self- love: self - discipline, we have to discipline ourselves in order to love ourselves. Loving ourselves includes all of these below, in which become essentials to your growth process. Loving yourself is being selfish enough to care about you: what you want, how you want to do things, how you want to feel about things, it’s all you. Being selfish is not always wrong, yes it’s looked down upon, but when used in this context, selfishness is crucial for self- love and self - discipline, the sooner you realize that, the easier it will become.

Self-awareness: be in touch with your inner you. Be in touch also with your outer you. Be in touch with YOU. Who are you? Be aware that you are amazing. You are full of love, pain, passion, pleasure, flaws, and even when you no longer feel like you can do something, make yourself aware that you can do anything you dedicate your mind too.

Self-reflections: take 1-5 minutes out of your day. Think. Breathe. Feel. How has your day been? What do you have to do today? How can you improve? Are you happy right now? N O ?! Then what the FUCK. Go do something that makes you self - reflect. You want to be capable of finding time to be conscious of what’s going on around you and what has (past tense) been going on. Make yourself feel so you can process ideas, thoughts, problems, etc. You want to be someone who is able to speak and spill when possible in order to avoid bottling emotions.

Healing: ahhhhhh. Baby put a bandage over that wound, and get yo little butt up. Healing can be a lifelong thing. Sometimes, people can take longer than others to heal, and that’s ok. You have your own timeline at all times. You are the deciding factor on how fast or how slow you deal with specific things. Healing is about forgiveness, but never forgetting. You go through pains for a reason, we have to suffer on this earth one way or another. There’s no possible way to be happy 100% of the time. We are always feeling some type of bad feelings (lied to, cheated on, bad day at work, money is tight, struggling at home, can’t make ends meet, failing college, stuck working a sucky 9-5) all forms of suffering. It’s how you deal or account for these sufferings and how you bandage them.

Inspirational Quotes:

“Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle”. Napoleon Hill

“Being alone & actually sitting with our own thoughts can lead to such growth and realizations that are rare in our everyday busy lives”. Kourtney Kardashian

“Growth is painful. Change is painful. But, nothing is as painful as staying stuck where you do not belong”. N. R. Narayana Murthy

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart”. Helen Keller

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection”. Buddha

“Self-care is never a selfish act—it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others”. Parker Palmer

Ps. To all my beautiful gals, and handsome gents, I can admit, I am the first one to put my mask on when I don’t want to share my feelings or thoughts, or like recently, been feeling unmotivated to write. So I take my time to take in my own advice right now. Remember to practice (self-love, awareness etc.), and also remember to stop relying on other to do things for you, nobody has you like you have yourself, so stay mindful of that. Also, remember that it's very important to take care of who you are. I know that you are all busy, some of you may be going through a rough patch or so (whatever the case is), still take the time out of your day to be there for yourself. You can’t help others if you can’t help yourself. AND, most importantly don’t let your insecurities , negative thoughts cloud your judgement, create doubts, or create a sense of longing or discomfort, feeling clouded is normal because it wears off eventually, be patient, it is the key to life. Take on some of these quotes, show love to yourself, and do me a favor today? S M I L E.

(Image captured by: Bryan Sampson Jr. @thevisualsensei)