Are you breathing? Uhm, yeah...are you BREATHING??? Are you taking short staccato breaths or long deep breaths? I ask because I recall when I thought I was breathing, but when asked to do so...I actually wasn’t. Crazy right??? Or not so crazy??? It was October 2020 and I was invited to a free virtual Breathing yoga session. The question was posed, “Do you have time to breathe?” It sounded like an easy enough question to answer, yet it was profoundly difficult for me. Being a survivor of Intimate Partner Abuse, a single mother of a 6 year old son at the time and being a Black woman in America during the middle of the first year of the COVID-19 Pandemic, I realized I was indeed NOT BREATHING. In fact, I was only consistently taking short breaths to keep me in “survival mode”. Sound familiar???? Well, approximately 5 years prior to that moment of being asked the question, I was walking on the beach while in the middle of figuring out what to do with my life. I was working hard to survive as an instant Single-Mother with the remanence of a broken marriage riddled with psychological, financial and spiritual abuse that had nearly killed me 3 times the previous year. I had next to no money, no job, and no place to live of my own (living in a tiny spare room of my sister and brother-in-law’s house with my baby while sharing the main house space with them and their 3 children).
In the MIDDLE of all that….GOD SPOKE TO MY HEART. He put Angels on my path that led me to an AMAZING Christian non-profit that is working to end the cycle of domestic abuse, Hagar’s Sisters (https://hagarssisters.org/). During the middle of my second semester at Hagar’s Sisters where I was doing much needed, yet grueling at times, healing…GOD SPOKE TO ME….”BREATH”. Uhm, breath??? “Yes, BREATH”. I had NO idea what I was supposed to do with this information, but KNEW in my heart that this was a profound message for me that would continue to show up and show out as I healed and pushed forward to make a new life for me and my son. Now, years later, IT’S HAPPENING!!! I have learned that BREATH is not only the source of life for us human beings, but is also the difference between choosing to survive life or to live life. Step by step, moment by moment, breath by breath I had survived for 6 years through multiple jobs, a separation and then divorce from my now ex-husband, two places of residence and 6 years of single Motherhood. Year 7, the year of Jubilee, was MY YEAR to confirm MY TRUTH and the life that I have always wanted and felt called to live.
On Tuesday, October 5, 2021 I not only turned 45 years old, but founded this company, Breath To Awakening, Inc. ~Your Destiny Awaits. The message God placed in my heart during one of THE MOST difficult times of my life, now turned from “ashes to beauty” (Isaiah 61.3). I am now able to reach back and pay forward to help others find their Authentic-Selves through BREATH and AWAKEN the God given TRUTH of who they actually are and can become...one living breath at a time. 💗
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