A month ago I started therapy for the first time in my life. Feeling a somewhat leading to do so and not knowing exactly why, it took me approximately a week to do- to find the strength, the power, the tingling of desire? To go. When feeling out one of the final questionnaires to be matched with a therapist online it asked me from who did I prefer my therapist be. As a young black woman I found my eyes scrolling quickly over all the options (man, woman, black, white, Asian, islander and on and on) and darted quickly to the title reading black woman. For some reason I couldn’t get myself to click it and be done with the anxious process of signing up for therapy. I could hear all the voices and all the stories of people in the African American Community sharing their stories, their truths of their visible invisibility of being a black person, especially in America and the great significance of representation. Two of my family members, both female and black have a therapist who looks like them, so wasn’t it a no brainer? Wouldn’t I want someone who looks like me, who can relate to my struggles or pain, who has a similar background? Isn’t that my desire.
I looked up at my questionnaire and peeked over my laptop at my writing partner who was in her own groove with music in her earbuds. I sighed deeply to myself as if filling out this questionnaire was set in stone, as if there was going to suddenly be a loud voice in the clouds that would ring Final Answer! I knew it wasn’t true, but it felt so…permanent. I knew I could change my mind but in the midst of signing up for therapy I already wanted to back out. This is too much, I thought. What am I even doing? And then I took a deep breath. Follow your instinct and choose, something inside me called. You already know the answer. I scrolled back over the list, passing the title of black woman, and with a click of my mouse I chose “no preference”. That’s how I truly felt. It didn’t matter to me whether it was man or a woman or what race and background they had, what mattered was that they could help me, and one thing I learned in these 2 years traveling overseas is that life lessons can come in so many shapes and forms and from the most unexpected of people.
I love to journal and often do. What is posted here will not always be linear. Sometimes I do not know where I am trying to go or where exactly I’m coming from, but it only revealed when the words hit the page or coming back to a reflection or an experience again and again but in a variety of ways. There are no set titles, no lesson/wisdom pieced, no one theme; there will be stories from my own experiences, poems, songs, sentences. There is no expectation here, I am simply leaning into the practice of being. My diary entries are my personal attempt at a manifestation of just that.
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