When I say “start to spiral”, I am referring to finding myself descending down this literal emotional spiral depicted below:

If you can recall a typical day at the playground, you remember the slide and its slippery slope. It is an easier journey sliding down than it is climbing up. Our inner lives aren’t much different.

Granted, in this current version of global reality, there are no shortages of events that could push one waywardly down this spiral. A few months ago, someone asked me “what’s stressing you these days?” and, with pure hubris, I replied “Nothing” which was technically true at that current moment. I added that I had a pretty good handle on the typical stressors in my life and how to subdue them if they dare to emerge. I wasn’t wrong. I had just forgotten what spiraling feels like. Oh, but life has a way of always evoking memory.

It was a spiral, like any other spiral. It happened “slowly and then all at once”. Love and light gets real fear and darkness real quick.

The hair is always the first to go. Then, the diet. Movement becomes the walk to and from the train station. The skin dulls, then breaks. The scattered mess turns to complete disarray. No one is helpful. Everyone is annoying. If only you could get just one fucking moment! But, time is moving faster than you can organize your thoughts and life doesn’t stop just because you can’t catch your breath. Decisions have to be made and there is a bill due that you remember only after its late and “I know I haven’t texted you back in three days which is ironically the amount of days its been since I’ve cooked myself a decent meal”. Not really sure what I would do without my corner deli. I promise no one deserves to see me like this anyway. Please just give me a moment to exhale and to get my head straight and to feel human again. I hope you’ll still be here when I’m done. I just need a moment to light this and put on some music. I promise I will be fine…

1. Because I Feel Like I Should Be Somewhere I’m Not:

Comparison is the ultimate thief of joy. Stop comparing yourself to people whose parents graduated from college. People whose parents stayed together. People whose parents knew how to love them. People whose parents never hit them or berated them. People who grew up with stable housing in nice neighborhoods. People who didn’t have to work through college. People who have never experienced trauma. People who had “normal” childhoods. Just stop. How could you ever experience life in the same way that they did? How could you have known how to do things that no one ever taught you? That no one even knew how to do themselves? Your starting point is not the same as their starting point. Your ending point won’t be the same either. It’s not fair to compare yourself.

2. Because I Feel Alone and Misunderstood:

Remember when you were younger and wanted to be an actress so you would watch television with the subtitles and act out the scenes? Remember when you first found out you were selectively mute for years? Remember when your teachers would let you sit with them after school and give you snacks because your mom was always working late? Remember whenever you cried on the couch your dog Princeton would come to cuddle with you? Remember when your nephew saved your life? Remember when your ex held you after he told you that you had Trichotillomania and that he had it too? Remember when you were scared at your neurology appointment and the nurse prayed for you until you sobbed? Remember when someone wanted to meet you because they loved your book so much? Remember when you found out you and your best friend were born in the same hospital two days apart? Remember when you decided to adopt Maggi? The feeling is real, but it isn’t permanent. It isn’t unique. It isn’t exceptional. And it isn’t avoidable. You will be alone sometimes. You will be misunderstood sometimes. You won’t be alone all the time. You won’t be misunderstood all the time.

3. Because I Don’t Understand the Point of It All:

You’ve met three of your great-grandmothers. THREE great-grandmothers who you have distinct memories of. Most people don’t even meet one. One of them lived to be over a century and one of them has currently lived for over a century. Two real life centenarians in your bloodline. They witnessed multiple generations of humans who came from their lineage. They saw this country, THIS WORLD, go through so much. Generations upon generations of southern women. This is the point of it all. Maybe not for anyone else, but it is the point for you. You are meant to bear generations. You are meant to witness the fruits of your loins. You are meant to experience what this world has to offer. Slavery lasted 400 years, ya know. You are from a surviving people. You are meant TO LIVE and LIVE WELL. You are meant to thrive. By the grace of God and the will of many, you are here! Find someone who understands this and can help you carry out your purpose.

4. Because I Feel Crazy and Ugly and Want to Perish:

When is your period coming? I promise its not too far away. No, seriously. Look at the dates RIGHT NOW. Okay, I get it. I remember very vividly the other times this has happened. It’s almost dysmorphic how your perception of self changes so often. Some days you don’t even recognize the person looking back at you. I get it. I know you don’t want to hear how it is a perpetual loop you are tormenting yourself with. I know you don’t want to hear how your outer world reflects your inner world. I get it. I know you just want to cry and scream until you burst out of your skin and watch the pieces of yourself shatter to the ground. I get it. I wish I could tell you that you won’t ever feel like this again. I wish there was a simple and quick fix. I wish there was something better to do than feel all of these things but feeling all of these things is the best thing you can do because it reminds you how alive and how human you are. I know you don’t want to hear that shit. Trust me, I get it. So instead of all that, I’ll just tell you to book a hair appointment, order Thai food and take a nap.

I love a metaphor. LOVE a metaphor. When I think of depression, I think of the visual depiction of the downward spiral on the emotional scale spiraling so much so that it gets stuck in the ground. It literally becomes depressed into the earth, the soil.

Furthermore, this creates restriction and settlement within the earth. Fixed, constricted energy. Instead of groundedness and stability, it becomes immobility and compression. Think of a stubborn earth sign👀 Spiritually, “earthly/worldly” things are materialistic, temporary and self-serving in nature. It includes money and other material possessions, sensual (relating to the senses) pleasures, and human-centric concerns, like status and ambition. It also includes the overconsumption of entertainment and other things that can distract us from actually feeling these positionally low emotions.

Instead, we cling to the earthly things because it is what we can see, taste, touch, smell and hear in the moment with little effort. It is what is most easy to process. It is also what can deepen the spiral. By choosing distraction over actually feeling your feels, conscious awareness wanes coinciding with suppression which leads to stagnant energy continuously circulating throughout your body. Weighing you down even further.

Now, I will never say don’t indulge in a little hedonistic relief. Times are what they are and everyone needs a lil bit of something. Just don’t use it as a numbing agent. Face the shadow!

Below ground is associated with the underworld and many times these depressive episodes can feel deep and dark, like the depths of “hell”. However, sometimes it can feel familiar and communal. Our personal hells can feel a bit like Sin City. Sure, its dark and full of unhealthy vices but all our friends are there so its cool. We suddenly start to get comfortable in the very place that stunts our growth.

In Tarot, The Devil card is associated with unhealthy attachments and addiction to material things. It also represents temptations and obsessions that cause us to spiral and lose control. The visual of the card shows loosely chained victims in front of a devilish creature symbolizing that the choices we make are what keep us stuck in bondage. Do you see the connection?

Yes! But only when we are consciously aware of the spiral. Only when we understand that darkness is a balancing act and not damnation. Only when we understand that death (spiritual, or otherwise) is a part of a necessary cycle and not a final destination or liminal space to hang out.

My world doesn’t end when the spiraling starts but I am prepared for life as I know it to expire. I brace myself for the journey into darkness. I embrace the death of my current reality. I trust the versions of myself who have spiraled time and time again to guide me back to my inner knowing. I know the descent isn’t dangerous. I will always ascend again.

The danger lies in descending without being consciously aware.

Your Cosmic Advisor,

Monique 💫

Fractals have been a concept that I’ve become obsessed with in recent years. There is a theory, The Unified Theory of Everything, that states that the universe operates through interconnected repeating patterns that evolve, becoming more and more complex. This pattern is through which energy flows and cycles throughout all of eternity. After all, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Only transferred, transformed and converted.

These patterns occur throughout everything. In our galaxy. In nature. In our bodies. In our behaviors. In our creations. Clouds. Broccoli. Veins. Humans. Within this theory, the human species can be considered fractals of God. Little creators created in the image of our big Creator. And now for my next act? The ultimate creation of life itself. But first, I must create, fractally. I must create on a smaller scale by transmuting the blocks keeping me from that version of myself. I am creating the things that scare me the most by alchemizing the parts of myself that scare me the most.

Creation is a laborious task and becomes even more so when you fight the requirement to relinquish control. Must perfection have a hand in everything? This relinquishment of control lets the creation take on a life of its own. (This must be mastered before we embark on parenthood. We all have witnessed what happens when parents don’t let their creations have their own lives.) This surrender is an act of bravery.

The concepts of fearlessness and freedom are deeply intertwined for me. Last year, I sat in to observe one of my 4th grade students during an ELA lesson. The lesson started with an essential question posed to the students: What does freedom mean to you?

As this video played for the class of Black and Brown students, my eyes began to water. How beautiful that they get to watch a legendary Black woman’s perspective on what freedom means to her. This may be the first time they have ever even pondered on the concept.

I also got emotional because I had been on a search for freedom that had felt like a lifelong journey, or at least a journey that began around their age. Though I had seen this video clip several times, it was only until that moment the simplicity of the message delivered such a resounding imprint.

To truly meet the level of freedom I am promised, I must reckon with what frightens me the most. But, how? You guessed it.

More recently, faith has become a more prominent pillar in my life. If surrender is an act of bravery, trust is an act of faith. It completes the holy trinity. My relationship with faith in the past year has been noteworthy. The evolution of my understanding of faith and spirituality has unveiled a power that I don’t feel should be kept secret. It is not magical but mystical. And much like the words of Nina Simone: it is simple.

A year ago, I was manifesting/praying for (these terms are interchangeable to me) my own Brooklyn apartment. Fast forward, I am typing this from my own Brooklyn apartment. Too easy, right? At the time, I didn’t know the particulars of how this apartment would come into fruition but I trusted that it would and lived my life with deep-seeded faith. Why? Because, I knew that more times than not, I could have anything I wanted if I really put my mind to it. The main things that always stood in my way? Lack of discipline, commitment and fearlessness.

Over the next 6 months, I deepened my practice of gratitude and naming my desires, BOLDLY. With the help of lectures and readings, I learned more about what it meant to take control of creating the life I wanted and felt that I deserved. (However, our own subconscious mind has a lot more say in what we think we deserve than what we realize.) At times, I find myself saying “it doesn’t make sense that I am able to live in this apartment” but I am able and I deserve it. I have said this about many things in my life since being here in New York. And so, my faith continues to strengthen and grow.

Fearlessness. Faith. Freedom.

These are the pillars that are at the center of my life— the pillars of my life as a creator. I am creating all of the things I am afraid to birth, fearlessly and fractally. I am faithful to the divine embodiment of who I am to be (thank you to my cat Maggi for helping me with this). I am freeing myself from all the things that keep me tethered to my old self.

Fearlessness. Faith. Freedom.

This is the practice. This is the formula for any spells I cast or magic I brew. This is how I am preparing to ascend to the ultimate form of creator available to me in this earthly realm.

The Cosmic Creation is the latest creation on my list of things I have been fearful of. I have been afraid of creating a business geared towards subjects that aren’t popular or taken seriously in mainstream. I have been afraid of publicly sharing some of my spiritual practices and beliefs. I have been afraid of the responsibility of creating and guiding a community. But, I have desires to receive.

Creation is as creation does. So, here we are.

Your Cosmic Advisor,

Monique💫