Treat Yo'Self Girl: Reading & Journaling
"...if you educate a woman, you educate a whole nation." - James Emman Kwegyir Aggrey
Expanding your mind is one of the many underrated treasures in life, when it comes to being good to yourself. Education doesn’t always require a classroom. Feeding yourself all kinds of different types of knowledge and documenting your life as a whole, is a healthy, and fabulous outlet in treating yo’ self!
READING
There’s nothing like getting lost in good book ladies! I remember when I was growing up, that I was quite the bookworm. I was reading at least three to five books a week. Visiting a new world, that someone else imagined and created was my favorite past times. As soon as I graduated high school and went off to college, the only books I was reading were textbooks and homework assignments.
Anyone could ask me what my favorite novel at the time was, and I’d name a book that I read years ago. I didn’t realize that I hadn’t been reading like I used to until I was in my last year of grad school. Of course, life gets busier the older we become, which is why we must take the initiative to make time for activities such as reading at least a chapter every night, or even during a lunch break of any book of our choosing. Self help books are a good genre aside from fiction that are good to read as well, whether it be for relationship advice, loving yourself, financial help, or even “How To’s”.
Don’t know what book(s) to start out with? Below are the 15 Books Every Young Black Woman Should Read, by MadameNoire.com Find the list here.
JOURNAL/GOAL LOGGING
Writing your inner thoughts, your deepest, darkest secrets, your goals, and future plans, whether it be expressed in a stanza or two or in a composition notebook, is very ideal and necessary to treatin’ yo’ self girl. As a black woman, and just being a woman in general, we put up with a lot bullsh*t on a daily basis and put our opinions and feelings to the side, for the sake of not trying to be seen as an ABW: an Angry Black Woman, or a female that doesn’t know when to speak when spoken to.Often times we keep these feelings bottled up until the littlest thing can send us exploding. Write it all out girl. Let your journal know that your coworker upset you on a current project on Monday, bae was acting funny on Tuesday, your mother blowing up your phone annoyed you on Thursday, your friends’ indecisiveness to the weekend plans was making you reconsider staying in with Netflix on Friday. Just writing anything you feel, down on paper, is a form of release that we sometimes don’t think we need until we actually do it.
Goal logging is very efficient as well. You can write your long-term goals, your weekly goals and even your daily goals. Writing down what you want to do to succeed in any area of life, helps you actually take the actual steps in accomplishing that goal. Read and write brown beauties! Treat yo’ self girl and stay beautiful.