Bienvenidos! Welcome! Kalos Irthes!
As my first blog post, I feel it is necessary to make sure you understand what you’re getting yourself into.
This section of my website may not be for everyone. — I’ll say it again. This section of my website, may. Not. Be. For. Everyone.
Most have stumbled onto this site because they know me as an athlete, which is fair. I am. But, I am also a sister. I am a singer. A dancer. A nomad. A drama queen.
I am a lover. A woman. A black one at that. A cusser, meaning I speak French pretty fluently. I will not filter my words nor my thoughts. I’m a fucking artist.
Don’t get me wrong, a track blog may make its way here once or twice, but I have a full life with an even fuller mind. I feel that to live life wholeheartedly it is imperative that I speak as freely and openly as humanly possible. Ranging from sex and racism to the big ass beetles that keep making their way through my back door.
I’ve been told, indirectly through YouTube videos or books, that the best way to live a wholehearted life is to allow yourself to be vulnerable, like you’re standing in front a stadium of 60 thousand people and millions more watching from their T.V screens, barefoot and naked. The best way to find true happiness is to learn yourself and allow yourself to be exactly who that is; whoever that is, even if you’re different from who you thought you’d be, or who you WANT to be. This person that you’re learning about, slowly molding into, can be the complete opposite of who your family and friends recognize you as.
I came upon this term, “whole-hearted” maybe two years ago. In my own interpretation, I would describe it as a life in which a person has come to know themselves to the best of their ability at this moment (considering we are always growing and changing as individuals); a life in which one has some sort of faith on which they can rely to bring them back upright when times have turned them wayside; a life in which one recognizes their insecurities and understands their behavior; a life in which a person faces fear instead of running from it and feeds themselves with nutrients that aid their body.
Living wholeheartedly means to allow yourself to BE. To be who you are without fear of being reprimanded. To be loved. To be GREAT. To be a person who takes chances. To be a person who loves without conditions. To be wild! To be a homebody. To be a wanderer. A traveler. A nomad. To be a citizen of the WORLD. To be an empathetic businessman. An artist or an honest politician. To be wholehearted is be free. To make love. To be vulnerable. It’s to run in the rain in your bare feet, to roll down a grassy hill. To love who you want. To climb trees. To be naked. To meditate. To wear your “fro”. To loc it up or cut it off. To be tatted or clean bodied. Conventional or liberal.
Yes. YES! It is all these things, none of these things, and everything in between. To begin a life where you can feel free enough to do it all, to be all of you without care of who is watching. Where you can pursue a dream, and be fearless in the act.
Even in my own fear, of starting this blog, of competing in my underpants (which I low-key enjoy), I continuously challenge myself, asking: am I living wholeheartedly? Am I living my life, barefoot and naked?
“To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.” ~ E.E Cummings