Episode Transcript
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Nia (00:00):
I don't think we truly
realize how much of how we move
in love is a direct reflectionof what we didn't receive when
we were younger.
Think about yourself right now.
Are you the person that youneeded when you were younger?
If not, when are you going tomake the time to face yourself?
(00:21):
Let's talk about it.
To face yourself, let's talkabout it.
You are now tuning in to LoveFrequency, where love grows.
Welcome to Love Frequency, thepodcast that helps you transform
(00:41):
your pain into power.
I'm your host and favorite loveadvocate, nya, and on this show
we believe that love is not theproblem, honey, you are.
So join me every otherWednesday as we have necessary
discussion that focuses ongetting to the root of the
problem, because when you know,you grow.
(01:08):
One of my greatest fears hasbeen dying alone.
This has been a fear of minesince I was eight or nine.
Kind of eight or nine year oldthinks about shit like that Me,
that's who and I honestlythought that a way to solidify
friendships and connections andstrong relationships was to
(01:31):
become a quote, unquote idealmate, whatever the fuck that
means.
I was a genius at eight or nine.
What can I say?
But through that fear, whetherdirectly or indirectly.
Many of my decisions inchildhood, into early
adolescence, into adulthood,were motivated by me not wanting
(01:54):
to be alone, and I called thatlove for a very long time.
Alone for me had nothing to dowith solitude.
I just yearned for a spacewhere I felt I was wanted,
included and respected, a spacewhere I could be, was.
I was searching for somethingthat I had never experienced.
(02:27):
This fear that I had of beingalone, that was created by my
pain of not having a place thatI felt I could call home,
created a void within me to findsomething.
It's almost as if the math issaying being alone plus
abandonment equals love.
(02:48):
Let me break it down just alittle bit further, because I
know some of y'all are frownedup.
Some of y'all didn't understandthat math, and that was the
point For many of us.
When we look at the root, thetrue root of why we get into
connections as quickly as we do,why we continue to see repeat
patterns in the relationshipsthat we are in, if we take a
(03:10):
look at the math, it's oftenbecause of the traumas and the
pains and the fears in our livesthat create that strong craving
for love.
It's the void that we're tryingto fill and all I'm saying is
explain to me, sway, how painplus fear can equal love.
I don't care how good your loveis, the root will always show
(03:34):
up in some form.
I don't care what anybody says,you can't run from your root,
baby.
That's why, when you know, yougrow.
And every moment I spent inconnections that made me feel
like I had to prove that I wasworthy of receiving love were
not only reflections of the verything I thought I was running
from, but actually was runningtoward my fear of being alone,
(03:57):
but it was also a directreflection of the love I was
used to receiving.
My bar was set extremely low.
Just attention in my directionwas enough.
That's why that math don't makesense to me.
That math requires you todiminish your value, so I'd
compromise and conform until Ihad become a version of myself
(04:22):
that was unrecognizable.
And then we get out of thoseconnections and we say we got to
do the work and we have to heal, not realizing that there's not
a goddamn thing to fix.
You didn't go in broken, youjust went in lost, searching for
the wrong fucking things andoftentimes with the wrong
fucking people.
Let's all just quit shit.
(04:44):
Throw in the towel.
If it's something that happenedwhen we were children and we're
still talking about shit wedidn't receive and we're grown
now, there's nothing we could doabout it, so we just might as
well give up.
Come on, y'all, the fuck youthought you was.
This is love frequency, wherewe turn pain into power and,
(05:07):
just like they say, when lifegives you damn lemons, fuck that
.
When life gives you trauma, allyou got to do is change your
phone's wallpaper.
Have you ever had one of thosemoments where you zone out and
you find yourself scrollingmindlessly on social media, only
(05:27):
to look at the clock andseveral hours have just flown
the fuck by?
Then what happens immediatelyafterwards?
It's that deep feeling of guilt, like, oh, all this shit I
could have got done, but I guessI'll do it tomorrow, and then
tomorrow never comes.
No, just me, fuck y'all.
I know it's you too.
(05:47):
So I was having one of thosemoments.
I'm scrolling on Facebook and Icome across a reel entitled
change your wallpaper, changeyour life.
Immediately.
I was fucking annoyed because Ican't stand clickbait.
I don't know about y'all, but Ifeel like it's lazy, albeit
(06:08):
effective journalism If the goalis to see how many views you
can get and then not how manypeople actually resonate with
the information you're providing, because that's just good
journalism.
But I digress, it's not whatwe're talking about.
So I see the video.
That's not what we're talkingabout.
(06:28):
So I see the video immediatelyunbothered and I scroll two
videos past and then somethingstopped and prompted me to go
back.
As I'm watching this video, thecreator recommends that you look
back at your childhood and thefeelings you had.
Were there, times when youneeded someone and no one was
there.
It stressed the point that it'soften our inner child's wounds
(06:49):
that are holding us back.
But what can we do?
A solution they offered was tofind a picture from your
childhood where you remembergoing through a difficult time.
Take a picture of that imageand save it as your phone's
wallpaper and over the next 21days, every time you look at
(07:09):
your phone, you will not onlysee the image of yourself, but
there are four things that theyencourage you to repeat.
Now you're going to have towatch the video to find out.
The link is in the show notes.
You thought I was going to giveit all away, honey.
No, I'm going to make you workfor it, but did your mind race
back to a time when you wereyounger and needed someone?
(07:31):
For most of us it did instantly.
How old were you?
Why did you select the imagethat you did, even if you
thought about it in your mindand if you chose not to
participate?
Do you wonder why your paindoesn't want you to face this?
I say you should challenge that.
For me, the picture and memorythat immediately came to my
(07:55):
heart was my senior picture fromhigh school.
The reason this image standsout so much to me is it captured
the last essence of childhoodhope and possibility.
Everything that happened afterthis photograph was taken
changed the course andtrajectory of my life forever.
So, in the interest of time,let me spare you all the damn
(08:17):
details and just give you thehighlights.
I also want to preface bysaying it's been a very long
time since I've gone down memorylane, so some of this shit is
going to be a struggle for me totalk about, but we're going to
get through it together becausethere's power at the other end
of this story.
So during my senior year, I wasliving with my father, his wife,
her kids and my brother.
Midway through the year myfather decided to move to a new
(08:40):
city within Colorado.
I decided to stay to finishhigh school, while staying with
my grandparents.
My grandmother had beenbecoming more and more ill and
my grandfather was her primarycaregiver, in addition to them
having to run a local restaurant.
My grandmother passes away thatyear.
I find myself homeless thatyear because I tell my
grandfather after my grandmotherpassed that I didn't want to
(09:02):
live with him anymore.
I'd rather live with my mother.
Her house was raided.
My baby brother lived with her.
Her house was raided.
My baby brother lived with herthe day that she was raided.
Thankfully, I had just moved inthe day before and decided to
take my brother to go hang outwith me and a few of my friends
and just be kids.
We get home and there's yellowtape on the door.
So now I'm not even yet fullygraduated, but I have
(09:24):
responsibility of mynine-year-old brother.
My father's moved out of townand my grandmother is gone, and
when I go to my grandpa he saidyou made your choice, so I had
to figure out what I was goingto do next.
During my time of homelessness Iexperienced people who said
they were friends of the familywho came to my grandmother's
services and who later tried tobarter a place to sleep for sex.
(09:45):
I was very naive, veryimpressionable and scared.
These are the moments of yourlife where you should be
celebrating, hanging out withfriends, planning your senior
trip, packing for college,getting ready to leave for the
military or heading off to yourjob.
When I was approaching mysenior year, I was very excited
and if you told me I would havebeen homeless, looking for food
(10:06):
in garbage cans and sleepingoutside, I would have laughed.
But my start into adulthoodstarted with survival.
I just had to figure it out.
That was my introduction towomanhood.
It would take me almost 20years to get back my grounding,
to get back to a place where Ifelt like I was not surviving,
where I felt like I was thriving.
(10:27):
I have lived in a balancebetween disappointment because
of what life has shown me anddetermination to make the best
of everything.
What I really needed wassomeone to tell me that I wasn't
alone.
But I was.
(10:49):
You know, friends, looking atthat photo, I realized, when all
of the turmoil and chaos wastaking place, I was only 18.
Now I'm here before you withthree amazing daughters all
around the age I was back then21, 19, and 17.
And it breaks my heart to thinkof any of them left to the
(11:14):
world just to figure that shitout.
I can't imagine that they wouldgo through life unscathed,
unharmed, without pain.
There was so much I didn't knowback then and it made me first
realize, god, how hard on myselfI've been.
I look at my phone now and I'mimmediately met with.
(11:37):
It's a mixed bag.
It feels a little bit likedisappointment, but in the same
breath that I felt thedisappointment, there was a new
sense of protection.
I don't know if this hasanything to do with me being a
mother, but I instantly justwanted to hug her and to take
(11:58):
care of her and to let her knowthat it's going to be okay.
When I look at that beautiful,capable, amazing, brilliant,
driven, creative, funny littlegirl, I realized I walked away
from her.
I changed my first, middle andlast name legally so I didn't
have to face her.
(12:19):
See, all the extremely painfulshit in my life happened to her.
Not Naya Keisha Janelle Thomasgrew up believing she didn't
have the same value as everyoneelse, and growing up without
that foundation y'all it made ita lot easier to walk the fuck
away, but you can't walk awayfrom yourself.
How ironic that the very thingI was afraid of ended up being
(12:44):
the very thing I did to myself.
Y'all, home has always beeninside of me, and looking at
that picture it's even crazy.
I find myself referring to thephotograph as her.
I've been so disconnected fromme that there is a separation
between who I was and who I am.
(13:04):
But being home now feels sodamn good.
As I said before, I'm not sureif this exercise hit me harder
because I have kids, but y'all,it struck a chord.
It serves now as a constantreminder that I not only get to
truly be who I needed when I wasyounger, it also has allowed me
to see why I couldn't be therefor me or my daughters in the
(13:27):
ways that they needed.
It is crazy how life kind ofperpetuates the same cycles, and
so what I learned was to givethat same very little to that
little girl, and then thatmanifested into the type of
mother I became, where I thoughtvery little was good enough.
You know the basics Maslow'shierarchy of needs yeah, food,
(13:51):
shelter, clothing.
I got you on that baby All day.
You're going to be taken careof.
But the emotional needs, thatpsychological safety, building
trust, I ain't have it, so howcould I give it?
And this exercise really had mesit with that Y'all.
I am more protective of thatlittle girl than I've ever been.
(14:12):
I am mindful of how I speak toher, I am intentional about how
I take care of her and I love meso much.
So now taking care of me is apriority.
It is my number one priority,and it's so fucking beautiful to
finally be home, love.
(14:39):
You know, we often talk aboutdoing the work, and for many
people they're not very clear onwhat that looks like.
The words sound good, but whatam I supposed to do next?
Right, allow this activity tobe a tool that you can use for
that very purpose.
This is shadow work, baby.
As we said before, it is oftenour inner child's wounds that
are holding us back, and this isyour opportunity to explore
(15:00):
that.
Don't you think your youngerself deserves the opportunity to
be cared for, looked after,loved on?
You might even find that thethings you once needed as a
child are the things you'restill yearning for as an adult,
in your relationships, no matterwhere you are in your journey,
even if you choose not to dothis exercise, you're still
(15:22):
thinking about it, love, and forthat I say welcome home.
You're already doing the work,whether you realize it or not.
Thank you, thank you, thank youfor hanging with me today.
(15:48):
If this episode has fed yourspirit and increased your love
frequency, don't forget to rateand review us on Apple Podcasts,
spotify or wherever you listento podcasts, and be sure to come
back in two weeks where we'retalking about how your skincare
routine can help you improveyour relationships.
Until next time, this is yourhost, nya, encouraging you
(16:11):
change your wallpaper, babe, andfinally face yourself, because
when you know, you grow.
Until next time time, I loveyou.