by Cleo Wade
People will tell you to find your purpose. They will tell you to find your passion. And I am honestly not sure about that. We are all such multilayered beings with an abundance of gifts, talents, interests, and ideas. Why are we putting the pressure on ourselves to have one purpose or one passion?
We all grow and shift so much in our lifetime. Who’s to say that your purpose in your twenties isn’t going to evolve into something else in your thirties, forties, fifties, and beyond?
I have never really felt like I had just one purpose. And attempting to live life like I did always felt stressful and inauthentic. Instead of concentrating my energy on one purpose or passion, I try to focus my energy on what it looks like to bring passion and purpose to everything I do.
I do this by asking myself: What type of kindness, care, joy, and patience must I harness in order to bring purpose and passion to my relationship with myself and those around me? What level of openness and curiosity must I own in order to bring meaning to jobs and tasks in my life (even, or especially, the roles that don’t spark an immediate sense of excitement within me)?
I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had jobs that they didn’t like on the way to finding the job they do like. I am definitely one of those people. I have babysat, sold t-shirts with photos of crawfish and hot sauce on them to tourists in my hometown, worked in fashion, and as an office manager. None of these jobs were meant for me, but as I went to work answering the phone or pinning a dress, I still tried my hardest to remain curious.
Even on the days where all I wanted to do was pretend to be sick and have a Gilmore Girls marathon with my roommate, Molly, I would conjure whatever inner strength I could, show up, and try to continuously look for what that work experience had to teach me.
In fact, I have found that during the moments of doing the things that I liked the least it became the most important to say to myself, “Okay, it’s easy to not like this, but what can I learn from it?”
I have also found that our nine-to-five jobs do not have to be how we identify ourselves. They can be, but are not always, the place we feel our greatest sense of purpose or passion. Sometimes a job is just how we pay our bills, which is absolutely fine. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Some of the best advice my friend Grace’s dad ever gave us when we were struggling with some of our early jobs was,
“Don’t stress about what you have to do during nine to five. Focus on who you are from five to nine.”
If you are someone who feels like you know your one true passion or purpose, that is also a wonderful way to go through life, and I am rooting for you every step of your journey. If you are not so sure, I just want you to know that it is okay. Let go of trying to identify yourself by one idea or goal. Instead, commit yourself to bringing purpose and passion into each conversation, workspace, and home space you are a part of.
This page
has been placed in this
book for no other reason
than to tell you
that
you are doing just fine.
Give yourself a break
and
start fresh if you need to
start fresh.
I love you.
How to create a healthy media diet
Food is not the only thing we ingest. We also absorb the energy around us, including what media we allow to be constantly in front of us. One of the best things I ever did for myself was create a media diet that did not trigger my anxiety and insecurities.
This is not to say that I do not keep informed of what is going on in the world or that I hide from the tough stuff in a bubble of privilege; it just means I have boundaries that allow for me to have more of a choice when it comes to how much and what type of content I allow to be a part of my day.
For example, I am very strict about how I get my news. For me, the news has to be about getting information, rather than becoming addicted to different media personalities discussing the information. When I pay too much attention to the commentary that surrounds the news, I often feel like the news is getting worse and worse rather than being able to distinguish that the commentary around it is often just becoming more dramatized.
I find that when I focus on the information and give myself space to reflect on what is happening, I am better able to authentically understand my feelings about the current state of affairs. I am also better able to handle what may emotionally come up based on what I am processing.
My media diet also extends to how I participate in the online world. I find that when I create firm boundaries to only follow social media accounts that share tools, information, and positive imagery, I am less inclined to feel self-conscious, like I’m missing out, or that no matter what I do or have, I will never be enough.
The digital world can be a beautiful space to build friendships and share ideas, but it can also be pretty toxic depending on how you choose to exist in it.
My boundaries have helped me to see that there is absolutely no person or social media account that is worth making me feel bad about myself. Once I had that realization, it became so easy to unfollow or skip over any content that wasn’t right for me.
What are you allowing to be a part of your media diet? Does the way you interact with the media in our world add to or chip away at your emotional stability or sense of self?
Create boundaries that make you feel good and stick to them. Our media surrounds us, whether on a screen in our living room or the palm of our hand, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Learning to manage your relationship with that constant flow of chatter is critical to finding and owning calmness in your life. You are in charge of the amount of commentary and opinions you allow to fill your day and some days you will need to turn it off or log out for a while. It is always okay to disconnect to focus on your mental and emotional health.
Mantra for anxiety:
This is not you. This
is something moving
through you. It can
leave out of the
same door it came in.
People often think that because of the nature of my writing I am always in a good mood. On the contrary, I have moved in and out of depressive phases, have had to lean on friends and family to help me manage stress more times than I can count, and struggle to move through feelings of overwhelming anxiety regularly. These life experiences are what inspire most of my writing because it is in those moments that I create words that, similar to a prayer, hold me together when I feel powerless to emotions that are attempting to unravel me. My writing is not about a supernatural ability to avoid hardship, it is about sharing the ideas that keep me together in the midst of it.
I wanted to include my mantra for anxiety in this book because I use it more than anything else I have ever written. It reminds me that my life, my spirit, and my sense of self is bigger than one particular feeling. One rule I have made for myself is to never say that I have anxiety. I always say that I move through anxiety. I do this because I don’t want to own an emotional state that blocks me from my personal power. Do I live with waves of anxiety coming in and out of my life? Yes. Do I sometimes need help to cope? Definitely. But am I my anxiety? No. I refuse to be. Our identity is rooted in who we are, not how we feel at a given moment. You are more than whatever it is you are going through.
Never underestimate
the power of hope—
it can keep you
warm on even the
coldest night.
In the summer of 2018, my friend Julie invited me to her temple for a conversation between her and psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar. (Fun fact: In the spring of 2006, his course Positive Psychology 1504 became the most popular class in the history of Harvard University.)
The entire talk was amazing, but there was one thing in particular Ben-Shahar said that hit me like a ton of bricks. He said,
“The difference between depression and sadness is that depression is sadness without hope.”
For we
eks after that talk, his words stayed with me. I thought about hope. I thought about what it looked like to hold on to or have access to hope. His words had suddenly made having a relationship with hope more important to me than ever before.
A few months later, DeRay Mckesson released his book, On the Other Side of Freedom, and in it he created what became my favorite definition of hope. He wrote,
“Hope is the belief that our tomorrows can be better than our todays. Hope is not magic; it is work.”
I reflected on this definition for a while. I soon realized that practicing self-care is the first step in our relationship with hope.
When we are not taking care of ourselves, when we are run-down, exhausted, or fed up, we feel defeated. We feel like we are not good enough. We feel like there is something wrong with everything. We feel helpless. We feel cynical, like nothing will ever change. And it is damn near impossible to tap into optimism or hope when we are in this state of mind.
People often look at optimism or hope as character traits that are reserved for people who are either superhuman or completely delusional, but in my experience that is completely untrue.
We earn our optimism.
We earn our hope.
We do this by caring for ourselves mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically so that when we show up in the world, we are able to show up with the best of what is within us.
When we show up as a person who is cared for and loved, we have the energy and ability to approach the world’s problems with optimism and hope. When we are cared for, we are in the best possible headspace and heart space to find solutions for our communities that are kind, humane, just, moral, and ethical.
No matter what your day looks like, I encourage you to find a moment to give yourself care. Self-care is more than a trend or a set of products someone is trying to sell us. Self-care is how we claim peace of mind. When we know how to gift peace to our inner world, the pathway to creating peace in the world around us is so much clearer. When we approach our community as our most cared for and loved self, we are able to offer divine healing, joy, and solutions to those around us. I can’t think of anything better to share with our community.
holding on to it
hope
got a little harder
today
still
I cannot let
these types of days
rob me
of my faith in
humanity
for it
is
these types of days
I need it the most
how to breathe when you want to give up
today I am breathing through fatigue, fear, and feeling overwhelmed.
I breathe because when I breathe, I am reminded that I am alive.
I am reminded that to be able to fill my body with air means that I have the ability to keep going.
I am reminded that my time on earth may be short but it can be powerful if I dedicate it to love and fairness.
when I breathe
I am reminded of Mary Oliver when she wrote,
“tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
so I breathe
and let my breath
turn into a smile that says back to her,
“as much as I can.”
one more thing
if all of your
dreams
came true
would they just change you?
or
would they change the world?
dream bigger, loved ones. bigger, and wider, and deeper, and further.
NOTES FOR YOUR BEGINNING
(a space for you to finish this book)
Whoever you are
waiting on…
stop waiting
on them.
Change starts
with you.
Freedom is never really won. You earn it and win it in every generation.
Coretta Scott King
Acknowledgments
To everyone who allows my work to be a part of their life, thank you. I treasure it. I treasure you and I am so grateful for your support over the years.
There is not a single person who spent more time working on this book with me than Eleanor Vernon. E, you made this book happen. Thank you.
Thank you also to Dana Sloan for the endless hours of work and care you put into this book.
To Cait Hoyt, thank you for being the most incredible co-dreamer on this journey.
Simon, thank you for pushing me, supporting me, and loving me so well. I am eternally grateful that I get to share my life with you.
To all of the Ancestors: the artists, makers, writers, thinkers, and activists that fought for my existence to be possible, thank you. I promise to get up every day and try to use my one life to make you proud.
More from the Author
Heart Talk
About the Author
CLEO WADE is the author of the bestselling book Heart Talk: Poetic Wisdom for a Better Life. Her poetry, artwork, and prose speak to our collective power to create change through an individual commitment to self-care, beloved community building, and social justice. Cleo has been named one of America’s 50 Most Influential Women by Marie Claire, one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company, and the “millennial Oprah” by New York magazine. Cleo lives in New York City, where she sits on the board of the Lower Eastside Girls Club, the National Black Theatre in Harlem, and the advisory board of Gucci’s Chime for Change.
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Jacket design by James Iacobelli
Author photograph by Rony Alwin
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ISBN 978-1-9821-3879-0
ISBN 978-1-9821-3880-6 (ebook)
