Don’t let people own your stories. They belong to you. They are your experiences and your perceptions and no one has the right or the authority to deprive you of your own perception.
There will always be people who aim to keep you small and want nothing more than for you to shut up and be silenced. Make no mistake that these people are not looking out for your best interests – they simply do not want to look bad or be judged or feel guilty or be shamed. They are afraid of what it would look like if they owned their own experiences.
People who love and support you will always stand beside you when you speak your truth.
I have spent my lifetime working through all of the trauma and drama that I was dealt. It took me a great deal of healing and courage and perseverance to write my memoir and I had to come to terms with the fact that there may be some people who don’t like that.
You see, ever since I was a little girl people have been trying to silence me. I’ve been told that I was too much, too sensitive, too dramatic, too hurt – I learned that these feelings made people very uncomfortable. It was much easier for everyone else when I kept my feelings to myself. I was easy to be around when I didn’t speak up about my abuse or mental health or the fact that I was severely traumatized and missed my mother more than I could express.
I was left to feel these things by myself and I learned to shut down the parts of me that made others uncomfortable. This internalization only made me hate myself and my life. I felt trapped in my own body. This was no way to live because it felt like dying.
There came a time when it became painfully clear that no one was ever coming to rescue me. No one was coming to tell me that it was okay to feel or okay to process or okay to embrace everything that I was filled with.
It wasn’t until I decided to save myself and sought professional help and actually did the work to heal my wounds that I started to fall in love with the woman I had become and in doing so I learned to honour the places that I came from.
And you know what happened? I became the most powerful person in my life. Suddenly, I was filled with a fire that I knew had always been there but I was coming to realize that it could never be extinguished.
The biggest and most badass revolutionary thing you can do is stay true to yourself and never ever let anyone silence you.
I don’t care if my truth makes you uncomfortable. I don’t care if my pain isn’t convenient and I sure as hell don’t care if you like me, support me or rebel against everything I do.
I do not exist for you. I do not share my art so that you can approve of me. The only approval I need is from myself and I share my stories and my hurt and my healing and my love so that someone else out there in this big bad world doesn’t feel alone. I will always be standing here with my hand out in case someone needs help up.
Don’t shrink. Don’t retreat. Stand up and look everyone in the eye and speak whatever it is that your heart begs of you. Even when your knees shake. Especially then.
Here is one of my favourite quotes that I use in my author’s note in the beginning of my book:
XO
Iman
