“There is no way you can know more about yourself if “yourself” is no longer there.”

I have always thought that i know myself well enough👍🏾…I thought I could predict my every reaction to every action around me. Until I discovered I was wrong👎🏾….as a matter of fact I was so ignorant. The only thing I knew was how to please others, instead of focusing on my self growth, I focused on working on ways to make myself more acceptable in the society, in my community, in school, in church. “I wanted to be important to others”😔…I wanted to fit in so hard that I kept loosing myself in the process and i was not even aware of it.

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All that happened from a very young age until my early 20s. Yep, when I came to SA to complete my studies, I was all of a sudden on my own. It took my parents every single bit of courage to let their little/cute/adorable/angel go(….🤣🤣just kidding, i was no angel trust me….i saw the look on your face tho😂😂😂..)

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I was 19 when I arrived here. Nobody really warned me about the challenges I would face being here on my own. I guess that’s because nobody knew. I learned the hard way that I needed to teach myself how to stand up for myself. Mommy and Daddy ain’t gon’ be there to stand up for you no more…(they are still gonna do it but from a distance…) I believe that, it was the fact that I was so far away from my parents, that triggered my self discovery journey….Mind you, at 19 I was still a little girl(in my opinion)…and for a last born for whom everything was done and all, I didn’t really know much about doing things on my own. I am really grateful 🙏🏾to my parents for trusting me enough and letting me go on a whole different journey in a different country.

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I struggled to integrate tho 😂😂….dude the struggle was real! First of all, the language issue showed me 🔥 y’all😰😰…I remember going to a shop and asking them to give me a bottle of Fanta Ananas!!!😂😂😂 the seller was like Fanta ananas???😳😳😳..I’m like “yea can I please have a Fanta Ananas??!!! In my head, I really thought I was right, I was even so confident that I noticed the confused expression on the seller’s face😂😂🤣….and then I was like, lemme help her out maybe she is new to all this thing🙈🙈🙈…and with a big/confident smile I said :” ma’am I want the yellowish Fanta please😊!?. And she said “oh you mean Fanta pineapple??…guysss🙈🙈🙈🙈the embarrassment 🙈🙈🙈…You know that embarrassed smile 😃😃😃😃, the kinda smile that hurts your face when you stop🙈🙈🙈🙈…cut long story short : Ananas is French for pineapple…😂😂😂

Coming back to more serious matters, so I have encountered many difficulties in the different domain of my life. However, I came to the realization that, in order for you to be relevant to yourself you sometimes have to become irrelevant to others and this is because not everyone will ❤️ the real you. But it’s okay and it doesn’t really matter because those that are willing to stay with the real you are the ones who were supposed to be part of your life anyway.

Creating this website and sharing/expressing my thoughts on this platform is a huge step in this journey. It allows me to let the world know about the real me. I did think hard about it tho😅…questions kept running my mind like: what if they don’t like you?😱Are you really willing to become so vulnerable to people’s opinion?😒…they gon’ judge you😒….what about the criticism?🤭” I had all of those👈🏾 thoughts in my mind.

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Then I was like well, there must be at least one person who loves this…and guess what? I am that first person✋🏾😊…(high fiving myself in my head)….I will stop here for today but before I go lemme ask you this question:

Do you know yourself ?

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom”

Aristotle

Until we meet again…À plus!!!!

My journey to self-discovery has been more of a rough awakening experience than anything else 😒…I’ve had to learn the hard way that the world doesn’t revolve around me. Amongst many other things, I am also still learning that letting things go is in my own benefit, but I’m still not good at that trust me!🙄🙄

But how hard can that really be? REALLY?!!!🙄

I mean letting go should be one of the easiest things to do right? All you have to do is just to freaking let go😳😳😳…but nope! I keep holding unto things, as if me and them have a superglued/inseparable kinda relationship😒😒

The worst part is that most of those things are things and situations that I can’t even control, things that I will never be able to control. I know I’m not the only one with this bad habit, right?!🤨

I’ll tell you more about this later but before I move unto that….here is a brief summary of my background:

I’m the last born of a family of six, so I’m pretty sure you have now figured it out :”yes I have the last born syndrome🙈🙈” lol…don’t judge🙈you can google it if you don’t know what it is😁…I think google provides a description for this..

I am originally from an African (Wakanda🙅🏾‍♀️) French speaking country but I now live in another African (Wakanda🙅🏾‍♀️…why don’t we have Wakandans Emojis already???🤷🏾‍♀️) English speaking country and I’ve been living here for up to 8 years now and let me not even start talking about the struggles of integration:::it’s crazeyyyy😱😱😳😤

…moving on, I just completed my masters degree in International Relations (yaaayyyy…thank God, coz it was a struggle)! Oh and I managed to get married and give birth(twice) while completing my studies ( talk about a challenging situation 😅😅)…but “mama I made iiit..” so we thankful🙏🏾

A lot can be said about me and my life experience to this day, is best described as a roller coaster, like a really unpredictable roller coaster😰😅…but since this is my first post I’m not gonna say too much right now😊…but don’t worry I will tell you more about it in my next post.

So please do not hesitate to come back next time…🤗

Until we meet again…A plus!!!

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton