"Working hard doesn't matter."

Remember when I told y’all I was feeling resistance about putting this out there, & that I'd come back to it?

This is that email (buckle up 😅)

I had to do some reflecting on where the resistance was coming from, & what it led me to was pretty incredible. It's a pattern I've developed over time & it shows up in different ways.

Especially when it comes to:

And a lot of that is tied to the fact that I don't have a degree.

Even though I was very capable in school.

I was doing extremely well in that last year that I was there, but I couldn't afford to finish. And outside of not being able to afford it, it was also becoming clear to me that I didn't want to actually pursue the career I was in school for.

So a lot of things were going on that I was trying to fight my way through. I ultimately did not win that battle of finishing & graduating & getting my degree in that.

Whew, that was a traumatic moment for me.

And I’ve been grieving for a long time. I just didn't realize I was still grieving it, that it was still showing up, or that the biggest thing I needed was some type of closure. I needed to close that chapter. And I didn't get it with the graduation.

So those feelings never left. They still came up. I would get pangs of it whenever I would see certain things, hear certain things. Certain things would trigger it.

And it seems like this year is extremely important for me to address it. To finally shift that pattern, break that pattern, & close the loop. Because I'm seeing that it is a really big block for what I'm doing now & where I'm going.

So it is a little scary. But not because of what is possible.

Because of how much I want it.

How much I want this to shift things & change things. And I've had moments like this before that felt like grand revelations, & then it didn't really lead to much.

Or I still got stuck anyway. Which was frustrating, bc it felt like it was just reinforcing the belief that got established when I wasn't able to finish school:

And in some ways, I still feel like that.

But addressing those feelings, recognizing that it's still grief, not judging it, just validating it & being the person that hears myself, & then affirming myself in what the truth is... that's what's helping me remember something.

School didn't work out because it wasn't in alignment.

Regardless of how it happened, not finishing was a blessing. What I would have ultimately gotten my degree in was not what I wanted. It didn't align with the path I wanted to take for myself, because I first needed to accept what I wanted for myself instead of judging it.

At that time in my life, it getting my degree was a survival tactic.

I just needed to graduate.

I just needed to get through school.

I just needed to pass this. Because no matter what the degree was in, I had one, & that was what was important.

It was more out of a place of trying to survive. Just doing what I felt like I needed to do to get to that next level, that next phase.

Like, I just didn't wanna be broke.

I didn't wanna not graduate & then can't get a job. And the path that I was supposed to be on basically autocorrected my life.

And I'm back to that same place of: I always knew that whatever I was gonna do with my life was going to be something that I made up.

Acknowledging that. Knowing that. Then having the courage to do it.

That has made me feel so much more secure in pursuing it.

In the next email & final email in this story: Where I landed, & what I'm actually asking you.

love y’all, real bad 🫶🏾

-Jada