 Welcome back to another therapy Thursday. I just got out of therapy. It's bright outside because they got rescheduled to Saturday again, but excuse my voice and excuse my eyes if you could see. Today's session was heavy. I'm just trying to catch myself a little bit. So I had a very productive week, but it also had its moments of difficulty because of the random thoughts about my children's father. Next month will make a year since his passing and I keep thinking about forgiveness. So I brought it up in therapy today because it's been heavy on my heart and I actually did have a couple breakdowns this week. Not breakdowns, but a few moments of release because that's what crying is. You're releasing. So I brought it up in therapy so that I can, so she can help me navigate what I was feeling and what I was thinking. He just kept coming up, whether it was busy working and some random thought about something that happened while we're in Ghana come up or I don't know. And then my children, my four-year-old, brought him up several times this week. One morning I was getting them ready and he told me about this. He told me he had a dream last night and I was like okay so what was the dream about? He said remember when we were in those three houses, when we went to those three houses, I was like what three house? He was like before we came here we was in three different houses. So I had to think back because we did live in three different spots when we're in Ghana. So I said when we're in Ghana and he was like yeah. So I was like okay what happened? He was like a man was there. I was like what man? He was like I don't know just the man. I think I know what man he was talking about but I will not call or reference his name on any of my videos ever. And then I said okay was your baba in the dream? That's what he calls his father baba. And he was like yeah I said so what was your baba doing? And he said nothing. So he started talking about his baba and how his words exact was I miss my baba so much. He used to play with me and teach me things. I'm not gonna cry. So in that moment just to validate his feelings I said it's okay to miss your baba. I miss him too and right after saying that I felt like I was lying to him because I don't miss him. I don't miss him for me at all. I miss him for my children in terms of them being able to say their father they have their father they have a relationship with their father but I don't miss him. So I was telling my therapist about it and I told her like I felt like I was lying to him but I said it because I just wanted him to know it was okay to miss his father. He doesn't understand death yet. He doesn't understand like I tell him I don't lie to my children. They're young but one thing I never will do or ever have done is lie to them. If they ask me something and I just don't know how to explain it to them in that moment then I'm gonna say I I'm not ready to talk about that okay remind me later like something like that but I'm not going to lie to them just to avoid having a tough conversation. So my son knows why I left his father. My son has seen his father abuse me. My son has been in the midst of us fighting arguing. He have seen way more than his little eyes should have ever saw and he remembers a lot even I don't know if you could tell but I have a scar on my nose right here maybe in a later time I would tell you all the story about that but he knows why I have this scar. I told him the truth. I do not lie to him. It's hard when he brings up his baba and in those in a good light which I don't want him to remember like how to put it. I want him to remember his baba. I want him to remember all of the good things they used to do together like I want him to keep those great memories he have with his baba but he also has some bad memories and sometimes those come up too but in the moments of when the good memories come up I do my best to validate those memories for him and to make sure he feels good about remembering those good things but doing that while still healing from the shit that he put me through is hard. I was telling my therapist like I don't think I've forgiven him yet and I don't know if I can. I don't know how it feels like how do I know if I truly forgive him and she said you will know when it happens you will know and she just reminded me that like there is no timeline on when you should forgive him like for some people it takes years it takes decades to like really forgive somebody that has caused him the amount of trauma that you know he has caused me because I kept feeling like if I don't forgive him I'm somehow holding myself back because as they say forgiveness is not for the person it's for you so I keep questioning myself like if I haven't forgiven it give if I haven't forgiven him yet like what is that doing to me and she's like I have to be patient with myself I have to give myself time to go through feel through and then release everything when I do forgive him I will know that was pretty much the main topic of my therapy session and I was just like it is so hard because you have two people here you had a loving hands-on father and then you had the person that violated me in the worst way possible and those two people those two people yeah I don't like to cry on camera but I am trying to be consistent with these videos and not shut down just because one of my sessions were a little hard the same way those two different people exist for me they also exist with my children because they saw books the same way I saw books the easy way to deal with this is to just not think about him and just kind of try and erase him from my mind but I can't I have three reminders every day of this man and I don't control when my children decides to bring up their father and I do not shut them down when they bring him up because I don't want to create that type of trauma for them so I entertain their conversation even my two-year-old is like he's starting to remember stuff like he would grab because I have a picture of their father in their room and he would grab the picture and just run around saying this is my baba this is my baba and it's not something that I do often as in to show him like hey this is your baba so he's starting to just remember and know that okay this person is my baba even though he was only a year when I left I'm gonna have to do it all over again when the baby gets older because I'm gonna have to explain to him how his baba died when he a few months after he was born I'm gonna have to explain to him why I left his baba and like how we ended up where we ended up because again I'm not gonna lie to my children it's like a never-ending thing but as my therapist told me today it's coming out because you have to face it and feel it before you can release it and my children is going to force that because of the situation because he is their father and just happened to be the person that abused me and violated me raped me it's going to be harder but if you look at it on the other side it's actually also a blessing because I'm not gonna be able to hide from it which means I may even be able to heal faster from it I'm just gonna take that as a as a good thing and continue to face it and feel it so I can release it because I don't want to hold on to him in that way and it's going to be very hard for me to continue to honor him for them while I'm still hurting in this way from the things that he did but I'm doing it for them I'm doing it for them because I don't want it to traumatize them anymore than it already has I want them to grow up knowing that they that they father loved them and that the only reason I left was for our own safety so that they don't end up resenting me because at one point that was my fear I feared that my eldest son would start to resent me he's young he's young and the only thing he know is that I'm the reason why he was no longer with his baba so when I first came back home it was so hard it was so hard we have come a long way and as he get older he's starting to understand more so things have gotten a lot better and what my therapist explained to me is that because the bad behavior has stopped and he's not witnessing those bad behaviors anymore he's starting to be able to acknowledge the good memories because when we first came back all my son will say is like I don't like when baba hits you I don't like when baba break my toys and you know because when he would get angry and he would break things it didn't matter what it was whether it was the children's toys or my phone or whatever so like when we first left and came back home he would say a lot of those things like I don't I didn't like when baba hit you and you know like because those were the it was fresh on his brain so now time has passed he's not seeing that bad behavior anymore so it's not at the forefront so now he's starting to remember the good things about his baba he's starting to remember the good memories like I am happy he's remembering the good but for me personally it's hard to have to engage in those moments with him when I'm still healing but I'm gonna do it yeah that's what this therapy session was about it was really heavy there's some other things that we touched on that I don't want this video to be too long so I'm not going to go into that but the main thing was me just feeling like I had to hurry up and forgive him like if it's like if I'm on some some type of clock sure he minded me that I'm not I am going through the healing process I am healing intentionally I am literally feeling and facing everything whether I want to or not that shit is in my face every day so I'm doing the work in order to come out on the other side and although healing is continuous it doesn't stop I have come such a long way and I am actually proud of all of my progress and I'm gonna continue to heal and feel it and face it and release it because I am preparing myself to be the best person for myself and my children and whoever the universe bless me with in the future anyways that is it for this video it's the way longer than I wanted it to be but if you're not going to therapy or thinking about going to therapy but haven't decided yet let this be your reminder to start because it is helpful and I honestly don't know where I would be if I was not in therapy right now because it's been so good to me navigating all of this this trauma to all of my melanated women protect your womb by any means necessary and to everybody watching protect your peace by any means necessary I wish you all love light and prosperity and you'll see me in my next video peace make you proud