Ep 23: What Happens When Your Safety Rules Become Your Cage?
Asha Wilkerson discusses the journey of healing and self-discovery, particularly for Black women. She reflects on the impact of childhood expectations and societal rules that often confine individuals, emphasizing the importance of reconnecting with oneself and one's ancestry.
Asha shares practical steps for self-discovery, including journaling and questioning societal norms, and highlights her personal transformation through intuitive practices.
Takeaways
Healing begins with breaking free from societal expectations.
Childhood rules can become cages in adulthood.
Reconnecting with oneself is essential for true freedom.
Journaling can unlock creativity and self-awareness.
Questioning societal norms is a step towards self-discovery.
Ancestral practices can guide personal healing.
Intuitive readings can enhance self-trust and decision-making.
Personal transformation is a gradual and internal process.
Empowerment comes from understanding one's own needs.
The journey of healing is worth the effort.
Resources
To learn more about starting your healing journey, head to ashawilkerson.com!
Interested in working with Asha? Click here to get on her calendar for a discovery call.
Join Asha's email list here.
Follow Asha on Instagram @AshaWilkersonEsq
Join the WhatsApp group for the African Diaspora
-
Asha Wilkerson (00:01.25)
Hey there, I'm happy to be back for this episode of Because I've Healed. I've taken a few weeks off because I was doing some traveling. And not just traveling, actually, I hosted a retreat, the Homecoming Retreat in Ghana, specifically for Black women who are ready to reconnect with themselves and their ancestors on sacred land in Ghana. And we had a really good time. I'm actually going to record a separate podcast episode about that, but I wanted to get this one out of the way.
first. There are some thoughts that I have about healing and reconnecting to ourselves, which of course fits after the retreat that I did, that I hosted, and just the things that I've been talking about. But the other day, we just get right into it, the other day I was listening to the audiobook, What It Takes to Heal, by Prentice Hemphill, who is a Black, queer, non-binary woman author.
And I know I said non-binary and woman, and that's how she describes herself. And I believe she uses the pronouns she, her, but one of the things that stood out in the chapter that, that I have known and haven't necessarily been able to articulate, but it keeps coming up is that as children, there's so many decisions that are made for us before we can even form opinions for ourselves. So she was speaking about her experience of being a
a young black girl growing up in New York and what that meant. And we all have our experiences of being young black, young Latina, young brown, young people of color growing up in the United States or growing up in other parts of the world and then migrating or moving to where we are now. And in every situation and every family and every community,
you are taught how to be, how to act, what to do, what to say. That is just a part of growing up in a community. You learn the scripts that you're supposed to adhere to for whatever reason or another, whether that's because that's how things are done. Maybe it's to keep you safe. Maybe it's that's the path to being successful, but you learn so many things before you can even form your own opinion
Asha Wilkerson (02:27.542)
about what feels true to you, what feels accurate to you, what you like or what you dislike. You don't really have a choice until you get older. So as I'm listening to this section of the book and also just recalling things in my own experience and thinking about the work that I'm doing to help black women and women of color in particular get free and the freedom comes by reconnecting to yourself,
I'm thinking about all the things that we have learned along the way that become rules in our head that are so hard to disengage with or depart from as we become adults. And those rules that we learned as children are the cages that we keep ourselves in as adults. So one of the examples that I will give is just dynamics in a family, particularly
for little girls, if you are the oldest daughter or if you are the only daughter or if you are a daughter, there is often an expectation that is placed on you that is not placed on the other siblings in your family. I see often how little boys and little girls are treated differently. I see often how oldest daughters are treated differently
than younger children. And then I grew up as an only child and had a whole different set of expectations placed on me, not in a sibling context, obviously, but all of the hope and expectation of my parents was placed on me because I was the only one, only child representing the family, right? So maybe as an oldest daughter,
you were taught to care for your younger siblings and nobody asked you if you wanted to do that. Maybe as the daughter or as a daughter in the family, you were given tasks of cooking and cleaning or doing things in the house or had a curfew while your brother didn't have the same expectations. I remember, and I'm so grateful for this, I had a conversation with my mom and my dad actually years ago and I just remember
Asha Wilkerson (04:46.476)
because I didn't understand gender roles until I got to college. And one of my dear friends, I needed some help putting steering fluid in my car. I had an older car, was manual transmission, and I knew what, it was getting hard to steer, so I knew I needed steering fluid, and I couldn't get the cap off. And so I drove over to my friend's house, and he looked at me, he couldn't get it off, and so he was frustrated. He looked at me and said, why are you doing man things? And I was like, what? What are these man things that you're,
talking about and my parents had taught me just to take care of myself. If you're going to have a car, you need to learn how to do the basic things so you don't get stuck. You need to learn how to change a tire. You need to learn how to put more oil into it. If there's a problem with the oil and you need to learn where the antifreeze goes, all of that stuff. And I remember mentioning that to my mom and to my dad because I had the little dolls as a kid, but I also had the tool set and I was outside with my dad building stuff and I was inside with my mom while she was cooking stuff and
I think that was a very unique experience growing up as an only child. But one of the expectations that got placed on me through actual statements and then also through experience was that I would learn how to take care of myself and that I would always take care of myself, which is a good thing to teach somebody. But what it developed into is being harder and challenging to ask people for help. And also,
dare I say not recognizing exactly when I need help right away because I'm thinking I should figure this out. I've had enough experience or who's going to help me? There's no one that I can ask because my parents aren't here and whatever, right? The situation may be different for you as an only, as an oldest daughter, maybe you are used to caring for people and you're used to making sure that everybody else is okay and nobody turns around and asks you if you're okay.
Maybe if you had a brother when you grew up, you could see the difference in the expectations and how he was allowed to get away with things that you weren't allowed to get away with. And these were just the rules. Maybe you were the smart one in your family. And so your parents would tell you how proud they are of you because you always get such good grades and how they never have to worry about you and you're never a problem. And while this sounds like great praise, there's something that happened where
Asha Wilkerson (07:11.946)
you believed that you had to keep getting good grades or keep showing up in this particular way in order to get that love and affection from your parents. All of us learn rules about how to be, right? I learned very early on that I needed to show up at school in a certain way. I learned that I couldn't have an emotional outburst like my white friends because I was the tall black girl
and often the only black kid in the school and that they didn't look at me the same way. And so I learned how to be really aware of the space that I took up both physically and also emotionally in situations. And these rules that we learn as younger children about how to move and groove in a world are often
not our choice to take on, but we have either been told that this is how we're supposed to act or maintain ourselves, or we learn that this is the way that we get the love and attention that we are seeking. But what happens when those rules that we learned as young people no longer keep us safe? What happens when those rules that we learned as young people
feel like a cage instead of like freedom and liberty. What happens when the beliefs that you have about what you are able to do and capable of doing are standing in the way of you actually changing your life to live the way that you want to live or changing your relationships to show up and feel
seen and heard and loved and protected in the way that you want to feel seen, heard, loved and protected. We learn how to keep ourselves safe, but what happens when those rules that we are adhering to no longer keep us safe, but they just keep us stuck and disconnected? Now, one of the things that happens too, when we put on these roles as children and when people reinforce them,
Asha Wilkerson (09:26.624)
is that we lose or maybe we don't ever get the chance to actually develop our internal connection with ourselves. I know and we talk about this with parents of younger kids. Now there's a trend away from teaching kids to speak when they're spoken to. There's a move away from requiring small children to hug an adult when they greet them. We're saying if you don't feel comfortable, right, then you're not, you don't have to do that anymore.
But when we were younger, we had to speak. We had to be polite. We had to give the hug. We had to do all of the things that were seen as necessary to be polite in our communities and in our societies. And oftentimes those rules and those pleasantries and the regulations contradicted what we knew was right for us inside. Like maybe we knew that it wasn't
fair that I should have to watch what I wear as a, I was going to say a young woman, but as a woman in general at any age, but my male friends never grew up being taught how to respect women independent of what she has on. Those kinds of things, those kinds of frictions in what the rules are versus what we know
begin to create a distrust within ourselves. If I have always learned that I am supposed to show up this way because this is what is expected of me, I'm supposed to be the one that gets the good grades, the one that has the good job, the one that is the hope and the joy of the family. But the things that I was doing no longer align when I have lost my connection with myself. It is really hard
to say that these rules don't fit me anymore and to pivot and to create some new parameters for how I want to live. Now, you can go out into the world and for the most part, show up however you want to, right? You can't. And if you were listening to this podcast, you probably have some...
Asha Wilkerson (11:44.962)
desire to make a change, to heal a little bit more, to show up a little bit differently, to work in a different way, to change the relationship that you have. And there's a fear that you have that a discomfort that you have because you're not sure if it will work. And the reason why you're not sure if it will work is because you're not sure if it's okay to choose yourself over the rules that you have learned. You're not sure if
the way that you want to do things is going to work for you better than the rules that you learned. You're not sure if you can actually trust yourself to make this decision. And so right now you're stuck resting in what you know, instead of in the possibility of what you don't know. And that my friends is a challenging place to be, but it is also a great
place to be because if you're experiencing that tension and that agitation, that means that you are getting ready to make a change or you are working your way up to making a change. And the way that you need to do this or the way at least that I have been able to do this recently in particular, but over the last few years of letting go of the rules that felt like a cage and stepping into my own
has been by making my way back to myself. It has been a homecoming experience into myself. It has been a journey of learning what I wanted, testing my self-trust and my intuition, and stepping out on faith, really believing that I am just as capable of creating a new reality as I was of creating the existing reality.
So how do you even begin to do this? Like, Aasha, that sounds cute and all. Yes, we all have rules. We all have things that, you know, from our childhood, they're just, they're not cool anymore. But how can I do this? I'm the oldest of five children. I have aging parents. I have young kids, whatever. I'm like me, I was an attorney, still am an attorney, don't practice anymore. And felt like what else could I do in this world? All I know is law, right? All these things that we,
Asha Wilkerson (14:11.352)
Think are the chains or the cage, the walls to the cage that are keeping us in, but it's not the rules. It's our lack of connection to self and lack of confidence about creating a new reality. So how do you come back into connection with yourself to even begin to dream of a new reality? I want you to do three different things.
I want you to start journaling in the morning, not for a particular purpose. I just want you to start writing, just write, maybe do it for two weeks straight. Maybe you set a timer and just see, just free writing. Just see what comes up. You don't have a goal. You're just putting words onto a page and don't look at it. Don't reread it. Don't let anybody else read it. You can keep it in a notebook or write it on a tablet and then erase it, whatever it is, just write.
two weeks straight in the mornings, at least 10 minutes. And what is going to happen, I believe, that the complaints that you have, the frustrations that you have, the desires that you have that have not come true yet, are going to be what fills the page. The frustration with your parents, the disappointment that you have about this career that you worked so hard for not being as fulfilling as you wanted to be. The frustration with your spouse or with dating.
The idea that everything that we learned as children doesn't apply anymore as adults, that this promised land is like, it sucks. But it's not what we were promised it would be. All of those complaints are going to begin to offload. And that's exactly what you want to happen. Because when you lift the cover, then your creativity can begin to flow.
When you get out of you, all of the frustrations and the challenges and the things that you've been holding in, the comments that you cannot say to your parents because you're still a respectful daughter, all of those things, the frustrations that you hold in because it's better to maintain the relationship than it is to really say how you feel, write all of those out because they are in you. They are sitting on your chest right now. And when you get them out, you will begin to experience a level of
Asha Wilkerson (16:35.342)
freedom that you didn't even know you could experience because now you're giving voice or pen to some of those feelings and that lifting will begin to unlock your imagination and your creativity. And the second thing I want you to do is to just start questioning the boxes that you find yourself in. The boxes that you think are keeping you safe.
the boxes that are the rules about how you show up, how you present yourself, how you interact with your family, where you live, what you do, all of those boxes that when you think about, maybe I want to make a change and you go, yeah, but... I could never, because... What about... All of those boxes, those beliefs, those rules, those regulations? I just want you to start questioning them and just ask yourself, is it true? Are these true?
Do I really need to do this? Is it true that if I don't do this, the world will fall apart? Is it true that if I move farther away from my family, I'll destroy the relationship? Is it true? And you will figure out whether it's true or not. But the first step is to begin to just question some of those beliefs that you have. Okay, and the third thing that I want you to do is to start connecting
and exploring some of the practices that your ancestors engaged in prior to showing up on this land. And I'm saying that very specifically because everybody is in a different journey and in a different location and everybody's ancestors arrived to where you are now at a different point in time.
So that could mean for you before your ancestors arrived in America and that could mean you're in Latin America somewhere. That could mean also if you're like me, before my ancestors arrived in America, which had to be sometime within the last 400 years in the, as far as I know, there was no pit stop in the Americas. And so that's looking at what are some of the West African cultural practices for connecting to ancestors and just opening up that.
Asha Wilkerson (18:57.164)
channel of just spiritual connection. And it's not to connect to anything in particular. I'm not telling you to call on a particular God or to do a particular thing. But when you begin to develop your own spiritual practice and your connection, you are developing the connection within yourself. You are going to be forced to listen to your body. You're going to be forced to see what you feel. You're going to be
opened up to just different ways of thinking that will open your mind and allow you to see what it is that you feel, what it is that you want and what it is or how it is that you want to be. Now, I know many of us believe in church group in the church, but the more I keep traveling and talking and this is, this is
I almost don't even want to say this because this is not a podcast about church and that's supposed to be bashing the church, but religion, particularly Christianity has been used historically to control groups of people. don't know any other organization that has more rules in the Catholic church. And when you are disconnected from your mind, when your mind, body and spirit,
are treated as three separate entities. Like in Western medicine, there's a doctor for your physical body. There's a doctor for your brain. And then there's a doctor for, you know, like you're like the neurologist about the brain function. And there's a doctor for your emotions, which is a psychiatrist or a psychologist, right? We don't see ourselves as whole people anymore. And a part of that has happened because of religion. But I want you to think about how
your ancestral practices mirror some of the practices in the church, but they're just called bad or taboo or dark because they're not done in the church. For example, connecting to your ancestors. Some people see that as dark and unhealthy. Do you know how many dead people they have on the walls of the church? They're called saints, y'all. Those are...
Asha Wilkerson (21:17.87)
And those aren't even your ancestors. But if you've ever prayed to the Virgin Mary or worn a Saint Christopher around your neck or right, any of these other entities that you prayed to or talked about, that isn't that different from you connecting to the ancestors in your lineage. It's just the ancestors in your lineage. Okay. You developing that self-trust and your connection with the spirit
is not that different from connecting with the Holy Spirit. It's just that the church has told us it is this entity outside of ourselves. But what if this entity is already a part of you and runs in you, but we have been taught to disconnect from it because if we are divided as people, our physical, our mental and our emotional body is divided, then we're easier to control.
This was not the tangent that I had planned to go off on, but I just want to say this because if you're feeling like, my gosh, I don't know if I can do this for myself because this is dark, what is she talking about? I just want to submit to you that there are, the church has spiritual practices and they got them from us, from our ancestors and they just made them look a little bit different. you know, Reiki, how is that different from going to the altar and having someone put their hands on you to pray?
Not that different. Still touch, still energy transmission just looks a little different because of the context. So what am I saying? I want you to reconnect to yourself in the mornings by journaling. Do two weeks of journaling, just write stream of consciousness and see what happens. And I want you to start questioning the boxes that you have yourself in that keep you safe. And then lastly, I want you to begin to reconnect to yourself.
by looking up some of the spiritual or ancestral practices that you are curious about. Start learning about the practices of your ancestors before they were brought to this land, however you define that time period.
Asha Wilkerson (23:33.038)
So now let me tell you a little bit about my journey of reconnecting with myself. I was that kid who, my parents didn't go to church, but I was always taking myself to church until, when did I stop going to church? When I went to business school, I just didn't have time anymore to go to church and I fell out of the habit of going to church. But I remember I signed up for a Bible study session from the black woman's perspective that my friend who's a black woman who's running.
who was in seminary school at the time, so in school to become a pastor. And the things that we looked up, again, time for another podcast, but the things that we looked up really had me questioning the rules and regulations that had been placed on me as a woman and as a black woman under this religious...
Asha Wilkerson (24:24.792)
What is the word? Institution. So the things that I learned really had me questioning what were the rules and regulations that had been placed on me as a black woman and a woman under this religious institution. And I did not like what I found. And so there was a period of time where I couldn't even pray anymore because everything that I uttered
I've just reminded me of the church and I didn't want to be associated with the church anymore because of how oppressive that I had learned that I always kind of knew, but like it really hit home during these series of Bible studies and also my travels to Haiti and to Africa and to different places where I just like, I just couldn't do it anymore. And my mom has always had a psychic gift that she did not use in terms of
like charging people money or anything like that. And oftentimes she wouldn't talk about it, but when I was little, she would bring it up, you know, a few times here and there. And so I decided to take a class to understand what the clair senses are. The senses, the clair senses when they're talking about that are kind of like your psychic gifts, but really it's tuning into energy and learning how it shows up. So there's clairaudience, that's when people hear, clairesentience, when you feel things in your body.
Claircognizance, that's when you know things. Clairvoyance, you've probably heard of that one. That's when you see things. clair, there's another clair one that I can't remember the name, but it's when you might smell things. Maybe you smell your grandmother's perfume or your grandfather's cologne or like a cigarette. When you think about somebody who's passed on, they used to smoke. And I became really interested in opening up these channels and really tuning into my gifts because at that point in time, I felt like my...
body was completely dead. I couldn't feel anything. And of course I had years of conditioning of following the rules and not following my gut or my intuition. I had years of doing the right thing, but not necessarily doing the right thing for Asha. And at this point was when it really started to diverge because I started to feel a little bit burnt out and like I maybe wanted to go a different way than the path that I had been on, but I didn't know what that...
Asha Wilkerson (26:43.864)
looked like and I had zero self-trust that I could figure it out or even make a change. So I started to develop these gifts and this curiosity and really this started in 2020 and so it's been four years now this kind of deep dive into this realm and the best thing that I have gotten out of it is this deeper connection to myself. My body feels things, I get messages now in my body where when I first started
my body was completely dead and devoid of feeling sensation. Maybe I would get a pit in my stomach or get a little bit of nervousness, but I couldn't feel things. I remember my mom and I were doing this exercise and we were supposed to be looking at each other and she was like, I just feel this heart connection and feel all this love going back and forth. And I was like, I don't feel a thing. I love you mom, but I don't feel a thing. She was like, what?
And that's just because my body just hadn't turned on yet at that point. Anyway, I have been able to reconnect to myself and have been able to decide for myself what it is that I want. What is it that I need in this moment? What is it that I need in the next year and the next couple of years? How do I feel? Where do I want to go? How do I want to be? And I have gotten to a point where I am now comfortable letting that feeling lead for me.
But I had to undo and let go a lot of the rules that I had subscribed to, a lot of the things that had kept me safe, a lot of the things that had brought me success to this point. And I had to realize that the rules that I had followed that got me to this point had now become a cage and kept me enclosed and kind of kept me from spreading my wings in the way that I wanted to. And so...
I began to explore and just be curious about different ancestral practices. I went to Ghana, learned more about the history of black people prior to being trafficked to the United States, learned, you know, new things that my history and my story doesn't have to start with this tragic birthing in America, being second class citizens. It started way before that, my self identity really started to change. And the more that I got,
Asha Wilkerson (29:06.966)
touch with myself than the stronger I feel like I became and the less honestly the less bothered and worried about worried about the world I became as well and so I want the same thing for you over the years I have realized how important this ancestral work is it's connecting to our ancestors leaving behind the things that our ancestors gave us that we
do not need anymore, but also connecting to the joy and into the love that our ancestors have for us and understanding what they want for us so that we can make decisions that are in our best interest and not the decisions that just go along with the status quo because that's how things have always been done. One of the things that really helped me along the way were three things, astrology readings, intuitive readings.
and tarot card readings. I would go to different people that I trusted and also breathwork. I would go to different people that I trusted and ask for a reading, particularly when I was feeling unsure of myself. When I wasn't, I had an idea, but I wasn't quite sure what to do. And it ended up being confirmation and affirmation and a little bit of inspiration so that I could get in better touch with myself and begin to make my own decisions.
Now the part of me, getting ready to tell you something, the part of me that has been an attorney, that has been a business coach, that has been in this online business world for a while is like, Aasha, don't say it. But I am in this place of exploring a new way of...
Asha Wilkerson (30:54.978)
Because I received so much from these intuitive readings and tarot card readings and all of the readings, I want to use this to help guide you in your journey of maintaining, reestablishing contact with yourself and then strengthening the contact that you have with yourself so that you can be led by your own intuition, your own guidance, and by your own connection to your ancestors and your guides.
Gosh, if you had spoken to me a year ago, this sounds so like woo off the charts. And sometimes I'm like, who are you now? But this transformation that I have gone through is, has been absolutely incredible. It hasn't been loud. It hasn't been in anybody's face. It's been a really good internal transformation where I think I look a little bit younger, less stressed out. I feel better. My mom is like, I guess doing all of this stuff was
great for you, where she used to worry, of course, that I was giving up this career. Now she's like, okay, all right, I see it. And I really want the same for you. So I recently became certified as an intuitive reader, AKA a psychic reader. And what does the certification mean? It means that I learned from somebody who has a school, who has studied different philosophies, and really who has helped me connect to myself.
And I've had hours of practice readings at this point and developed my own trust in my gift. And I guess now I'm a reader. And I think that I've always been a reader. I just have more tools now. I was that kid who could look at somebody and understand what they were feeling and why they were feeling insecure and like hazard a guess at where it came from. And it would be pretty accurate. And so what I am
trying to get to is that now I am offering four weeks of intuitive reading, almost like a coaching session, but, it will involve some coaching, but it is for you if you are trying to get back to your self. So what happens is, this is the practice I've developed, is that before we jump on Zoom together, I will sit and meditate on you, on your name, and I
Asha Wilkerson (33:17.786)
my guides and ancestors and your guides and ancestors to show up and to give me the information that you or I or that we need to know about the present moment
and I will feel it somewhere in my body. It might be a tingling in my chest and then a meaning will come because of that. And I will open the session with you, letting you know what energy is around you and what the message is for that moment. And then we will get into how that resonates with you, what is on your mind and what practices I can give you or do with you
to either let go of the things that need to be let go of or to deepen your practice. So for some people that might mean emotion mapping. Emotion mapping is working backwards to understand where the emotion that you're feeling right now comes from. Typically from childhood, typically from an experience that you need to go back and sort of reconcile. It could mean a tarot card reading. You have a question about the future. It could mean
20 or 30 minutes of breath work to help you get connected and to drop into where you are right now. I, With my teacher, I have signed up repeatedly for packages of intuitive readings because it helps me, particularly when I'm in a growth stage, to meet with somebody who has this gift, who can help me read the energy and give me some suggestions for how to move forward. It has been profound in my own development and healing. And I want to offer that to you
as well. So I'm excited to offer these four weeks of intuitive readings. It will work best if you do four consecutive weeks, but if you need to skip a week, not a problem. And we will focus on whatever is coming back or coming up for you that week. There isn't an agenda other than to understand what is going on and to help you reconnect with yourself and to learn how to trust yourself
Asha Wilkerson (35:24.448)
and your decision making so that you can let go of some of the rules and regulations that make you feel like you're in a cage that keeps you from living the life that you want to live. If you have any questions about that and are curious about that, please go to ashawilkerson.com/register and you will see my Acuity page and you will see information about the intuitive readings
for four weeks on the page. And of course, if you have questions, please send me a message on Instagram. My handle is @AshaWilkersonESQ. I'm curious to learn what you think about it. If you've ever had a psychic or intuitive reading before, what your questions are about it, definitely let me know.
Asha Wilkerson (36:46.478)
All right, y'all, thank you for listening to me for this long podcast episode. I will be back soon with an update about Ghana and all the other things that I've got going on here in Portugal. I'm setting up at a studio with live in-person breath work and Reiki and new moon sessions, and also we'll be streaming them online as well. You can also go to ashawilkerson.com/register to get the information about that. I want you to remember that this journey
is not necessarily easy, but it is so worth it. And it's because I've healed that I've been able to repair old relationships and start new ones. It's because I've healed that I've been able to leave expectations behind that no longer serve me. And it's because I've healed that I'm able to live my dream life out loud with no regrets. See you next week.