Avoidance often disguises itself as peace.

As boundaries.
As being unbothered.
As protecting your energy.

But in this episode, I gently name the truth we don’t talk about enough: avoidance comes with a cost, and it always sends the bill later.

Join me as we unpack the difference between healthy boundaries and emotional withdrawal, between peace and suppression, and between self-protection and self-abandonment.

This conversation explores:• Why avoidance is often a learned survival strategy.
• The hidden emotional, relational, and spiritual cost of avoiding hard truths.
• How avoidance erodes intimacy, confidence, and self-trust.
• The difference between boundaries and fear-based disengagement.
• How avoidance shows up in relationships, trauma responses, and faith spaces.
• Why spirituality without emotional honesty can become a form of bypassing.
• What healing actually requires: courage, truth, and self-presence

If you’ve ever said I’m fine when you weren’t, avoided difficult conversations, stayed busy to avoid feeling, or confused silence with peace, this episode is for you.

You’ll also be invited to reflect on questions like:
What conversation am I avoiding?
What emotion do I numb instead of feel?
Where have I chosen silence over self-respect?

Avoidance may keep you safe in survival, but honesty is what sets you free in healing.

Some conversations don’t start because they’re new; they start because they’re familiar.

In this episode, I sit with a truth that stopped me in my tracks after hearing it spoken by Iyanla Vanzant: “The masks we wear become our baggage.” Not poetic. Diagnostic.

This episode was sparked by watching how quickly people respond when someone dares to remove a mask, especially when that someone is a Black woman. What’s often labeled as discernment is, in reality, control. What is often called holiness is actually legalism. And what’s framed as concern can be judgment wrapped in religious language.

As a woman of faith who has served in ministry, lived inside religious systems, and later began the work of deconstruction, I share what it looks like to move from performance to healing, from conformity to conviction, and from survival to autonomy.

Within this episode, we explore:• How masks form as survival strategies.
• When faith becomes surveillance instead of transformation.
• The difference between legalism and healing.
• Why Black women feel this weight so deeply.
• The emotional cost of being the strong one, the good one, or the spiritual one.
• And what it means to unmask without shame.

This is a conversation about reclaiming your body, your voice, your choices, and your relationship with God, without fear, policing, or performance.

I’ll leave you with this question:
What mask are you still wearing… and what has it cost you?

Because when the mask is no longer serving your healing, it becomes baggage, and you deserve to travel lighter.

🎧 Press play if you’re ready to breathe again.

If you've ever felt uneasy when things are finally calm, or if peace makes you suspicious instead of settled, this conversation is for you.

Today, we're talking about the paranoia trauma leaves behind; the quiet hypervigilance that lingers even after the danger has passed.

We're unpacking why so many of us are healed enough to function, but not healed enough to rest, and how survival patterns like over-functioning, emotional guarding, and anticipating harm can follow us into new seasons if we don't pause and address them.

I'll help you understand how trauma-based paranoia shows up in real life, how it differs from intuition, and why your nervous system may still be operating as if something bad is always around the corner.

Together, we'll slow down, name what's happening (without judgment, of course), and begin creating safety from the inside out.

This conversation is an invitation to start the year softer, not guarded, not hardened, but grounded. You don't have to carry every survival skill into your next chapter.

Some things may have protected you once, but they don't have to lead you anymore.