Exchanging Pain for Love

“Walking alone to hear your pain

And feel the sound of your shame Exchanging pain for love

Exchanging pain for love”

I wrote those lyrics in 2008

So YEARS ago

I wrote it in attempt to try and grasp the feeling I felt inside of me.

That feeling of hopelessness, darkness and despair. I wanted someone to rip that feeling out of me.

I look back on it now years later with different eyes and a different perspective.

At the time that I wrote this, I wrote it in an attempt to try and be deep, because I felt so deeply within myself. I guess I was trying to process the things I didn’t know how to say.

I read it now and maybe I wrote it for the other people in my life, or for people who knew me. Maybe I wrote it to my future self….

We all have pain or some kind of trauma from our past. Maybe that pain or trauma resurfaced recently, maybe something was done to us.

Maybe it was something we did or something we said to others, and we can’t get over it….

Exchanging pain for love could mean different things to people. For me it often means writing poetry, prayer, and reading the Bible.

It also means for me to learn and relearn to love myself, learning to listen to people without shooting off at the mouth or waiting for them to finish so I can talk about something different.

It also means sometimes you don’t need to post on social media everyday, it means it’s okay to sit in the silence and be still, sometimes you don’t need the music on 24/7.

Maybe the silence is what we all need

Maybe if we exchange all our pain, all our trauma, all our past mistakes for Love, we actually will experience inner peace.

The Almost Breakdown

Hey beautiful people hope you all are doing well.

So I want to talk to y’all about something that happened a few years ago, looking back it was kind of dumb to freak out about but it was what I was going through at the time.

So a few years ago, I nearly had a breakdown due to me not being able to write or create anything for weeks possibly even a month.

Silly I know…

Why would I have an almost breakdown just because I couldn’t produce any new piece of writing?

I guess the reason for that was I was so used to writing practically everyday or every other day. I put so much of myself into my writing, it became my identity.

I remember sitting on the floor with my back against my bed and just so down a pit of despair, and then having the thought that maybe I’m as only as good as my last thing I wrote.

Y’all that was probably one of the most terrifying thoughts I’d ever had…

So what I nearly had a breakdown or something, its not like its the end of the world if I don’t produce any new writing within ten seconds of eachother.

Like I said, I made writing for my blog my identity, an idol. The fact that I wasn’t able to produce anything was scary as hell, I put so much of myself in my blog, into my writings, I worshipped writing.

I think the two things I forget to do is:

1. Take time away, come back to it later, you don’t want to force the creativity, let it flow naturally.

2. The other thing is to just breathe, just breathe, it’s okay to take a break, it’s okay to give things time.

It’s crazy because I don’t freak out as much as I used to about not producing anything, I still have my moments at times though, I’m a work in progress just like anyone else.

Why I Write Poetry

Hey beautiful people, hope you all are having a good end of the weekend.

So some of you know I write poetry and speak it (Spoken Word Poetry).

Now here’s the reason why I write poetry and speak it…

What you all might not know is that I tried writing poetry for the first time in 5th grade, and of course it was terrible, I tried a few more times with no success

So I did what came naturally and I gave up…

I tell you all that to tell you that in 2017, I went to see one of my favorite poets Chris Bernstorf. During one of his love poems he was performing, I just couldn’t stop smiling and I felt the Lord’s Presence and love in my chest, it was like He was telling me I was gonna write and speak poetry.

And He did just that..

Ever since that day, I’ve been writing/speaking poetry and I love it.

I write poetry because it helps me vent, I try to write real, honest poetry, I write poetry because I believe it can heal hurting people, I write poetry because its a dear friend, its a constant in my life.

I thank God for poetry, I’m grateful for poetry because words have power, and words can shape and mold people, words can heal people and its such a beautiful thing to see.

That’s why I write/speak poetry