From Survival to Sovereignty | Part I

Bree
Jan 21
6 min read

This series has been on my heart for some time, but with my family settling into life here in Bali, I hadn’t yet found the time or space to share it. Now feels like the right moment.

Through this series, I want to take you on an important journey—one from survival to sovereignty during which I’ll be sharing the key moments, choices, and acts of accountability that allowed me to move beyond the circumstances I once felt trapped in and into a life where I could bloom fully, fearlessly, and with intention.

Especially given that the collective continues to integrate the lessons of the Wood Snake year and prepares to enter the Year of the Fire Horse on February 17th, much has been surfacing—both individually and collectively. These revelations can either catalyze growth and expansion - ahead of the Spring Equinox in March - or keep us cycling through the very patterns we’ve been praying to outgrow.

This series is an invitation to choose the former.

You ready to get into it? Okay, excellent, here we go...

I’m sure many of you have been seeing the 2016 vs. 2026 trend circulating on social media, which for many of us has stirred up memories from the past decade. Looking back at old photos and videos from 2016 can surface feelings of nostalgia, fondness, and joy—memories of what felt like simpler times, fewer responsibilities, and a season of life that, in hindsight, seemed lighter and more carefree. Hell, I know it felt that way for me.

Some of my closest friends and I were even joking in our group chat recently about how simple life felt back then—being in D.C. in our late twenties, not having a real care in the world, navigating career transitions, deepening passions, dating, and truly enjoying ourselves before marriage, parenthood, and the weight of chosen responsibilities took precedent.

If you had told me in January of 2016 that I would be living the life I’m living now—married to that man I'd prayed for, raising the most precious sons (thinking I'd of course have my daughter - Josephine), and already three months into this immaculate life in Bali—I wouldn’t have believed you. Not because I lacked imagination at the time, but because at the time, my reality was unrecognizable from the life I live today.

At that point in my life, I was in the throes of the most horrific relationship I had ever experienced, mirrored by the relationship I had with both my mother and mySelf. I was fifty pounds overweight and avoided mirrors entirely because truthfully, I hated what I saw. I despised what those relationships were doing to friendships that had long preceded it. I was also only two years into what is now a twelve-year business that was growing quickly, yet my lack of confidence led to self-sabotage—being underpaid, overbooking clients, and leaving myself with no space to breathe, let alone heal. My days were consumed by abuse, neglect, emotional turmoil, and the quiet erosion of my self-worth and so, though many look back on 2016 as a year of carefree and joy-filled days, I look back at the beginning of the year as one of the darkest seasons of my life.

So no—I wouldn’t have believed you - that 10 years later to the day, life would look how it does now. But I likely would have cried in disbelief and awe that, despite my circumstances at the time, life could eventually look so different. That it could get better. And the million-dollar question I would have asked would have been:

But how? How, on God’s green earth, could any of this possibly change? And the short answer would have come in just two words: take accountability.

The irony is that accountability was the very thing that allowed me to begin shaking—and eventually shattering—the toxic environment within which I was living. What I couldn’t see then, but understand clearly now, was that there was a common denominator in every unhealthy dynamic surrounding me.

It was me.

Not because I necessarily caused the harm inflicted upon me, but because I stayed, I willfully participated and I tolerated it despite every single sign being thrown my way that I was spiraling in a cycle of total toxicity + misalignment.

And until I was willing to examine why I continued participating in my own demise, nothing around me could truly change.

I knew my mother was never going to be the mother I needed. By that point, I'd had decades of evidence that proved that while she was my mother biologically, she was not capable of mothering me emotionally or spiritually. Despite my repeated attempts to cultivate a gentle, nourishing relationship, I was met with hostility, emotional volatility, and language that I am still actively healing from. That had been true since I was a child and unfortunately, the hard truth was that it would never change. So I had to...but I didn't know how.

I stayed because I believed that that was what a “good child” did. Having left the church only a few years prior, I had been deeply conditioned to believe that honoring my parents meant enduring harm without boundaries. Leaving, or even acknowledging who she was unable to be, felt like a moral failure so I stayed, learned silence, internalized the pain, and preserved her peace at the expense of my own.

Simultaneously, I also knew my ex was never going to be the man I wanted/needed and truthfully, I wasn't in a place to properly identify what I wanted because I hadn’t yet discovered who I was. I had no sense of purpose because it certainly wasn't being reflected in how I marketed my growing business and most of the time, my energy was spent trying to earn my mother’s approval + my ex's loyalty.

Without confidence or clarity, I sought comfort wherever I could find it. Food. Weed. Cigarettes. Alcohol. These became my coping mechanisms—my way of self-soothing when no one, including myself, knew how to choose me.

I distanced myself from my closest friends, convincing myself that their concern was judgment. They didn’t support the relationship—and for good reason—but because misery craves validation, and they weren’t willing to cosign my suffering, I chose distance instead. Relationships frayed, and I blamed everyone but myself.

With my business, my goal wasn’t authentic growth—it was proof; proof that I was successful, proof that my mother could be proud of me and proof that my education - Spelman for undergrad and USC for my Master's hadn’t been wasted. That desperation led me to overload my calendar, eliminate rest, and price myself far below my worth. I realize now that I was building something externally while collapsing internally.

Between January and April of 2016, everything began to unravel. After catching my ex cheating—again—something shifted. I still can’t fully articulate why that moment was different, but it was. Something in me finally cracked open. I knew it was time for something else, even if I had no idea what “else” looked like.

I didn’t know how leaving would affect me emotionally, spiritually, or socially but I did know that I had reached a crossroads: stay and continue suffering, or leave, face who I was on the other side and subsequently, journey into the unknown. One night, sitting alone in my apartment, I found myself scrolling through photos from a recent night out with friends—one of the rare moments I genuinely felt happy. I felt a deep longing and a quiet yearning to experience that kind of joy more consistently, not as a wounded daughter or a traumatized partner or a broken friend, but simply as a woman in her late twenties figuring life out...just like my friends had been doing. I thought about all the invitations I had declined so I could remain in the bubble of toxicity I had mistaken for love. In considering my departure from both of my relationships with my mother and x, I wondered:

Who would I be on the other side of walking away?

Would I even recognize her? Like her? Want to get to know her?

After everything that'd transpired, would my friends welcome me back?

Would they be able to see me beyond the version of myself shaped by those harmful relationships?

And I sat with whether or not I could survive the aftermath of leaving something I had, in many ways, become addicted to.

And the moment I finally sat with these questions, in quiet but necessary reflection in that transformative apartment on 14th St., the answer surfaced—clear and unwavering:

Staying was a choice...one that I'd made time and time again.

But leaving was a choice too and one that I hadn't yet tried.

So now, given that I was ready for something different, I had to do something different.

Nervous, anxious and deeply afraid, I sent the text.

"We need to talk."

What unfolded afterward irrevocably changed the direction of my life, positioning me to live in alignment with the life I had always envisioned but didn’t yet believe was possible.