Finding New Beginnings Through Therapy

All right, y'all. You know like I know, life be life. Here's the thing, when you're a person in my position, a lot of times what goes on in your life, even your personal life, is made very, very public, right? Most of the times we have to paint the happy face and everything is great and wonderful and just pay attention to my art over here and what I'm choosing to allow you to see. But what you guys don't get to see is the village. The village that keeps us lifted in prayer, the village that keeps us going, the village that is helping raise the babies, the village that's, you know, keeping you motivated and encouraged. And I have to say, I got one of the best villages around. Two of the most very important people in my life, my homie, my friend, my sis, Aquila Maddox, and my therapist, the queen of the couch, Tori Dixon. This is their first time actually meeting in person. So good to meet you. Listen, we've been doing the work, right? Y'all been doing the work. Yes, you've been doing the work. When I tell you, my village includes a lot of heavy hitters, a lot of prayer warriors, best friends, cousins. I mean, I'm telling you, God got me over here fully loved. These are the two I can put my hands on. So we gonna talk to y'all. Leave it to LaToya. We keep it real, real, real, real. So let's get real. I'll tell you guys how I first met Aquila. I was at Camp Elevate. I'd been going there for so many years. I would make the point to go every birthday, which y'all know I'm a Pisces, marculating. And so I would make my way up the mountains in Phoenix. I felt like I just wanted God to lead me into a space. Well, he led me into Aquila's room. And she was working with some students and she had talked a little bit about her journey. I just love the way she was teaching and how the kids were just loving her. And I was like, okay, I picked the right room. This is the vibe. So she was in there literally like low-key spying on me. I think they sent her in there. I did not. The Lord sent me in there. And so afterwards I came up to her and I was like, yo, that was dope. I even learned so much about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we just clicked. We clicked. She is an amazing friend. And one of those people, I don't care what she's doing, where she might be in the world, she's like, I'm here. You show up. You talk about somebody that will drop everything and show up ready. She became our night nurse. And both Tyson and Gianna, they were being loved and cared for by Q, of course my mom, but she was my therapist before I met Tori. We met when I first moved to Dallas. I had gone to my girlfriend, Jessica. She was having a birthday party and she decided to do it at a yoga class. I just had Gianna and I wasn't familiar with Dallas at all. And I just remember Tori came up to me afterwards and she was like, I would love to talk to you. And I was like, okay, all right. About what? But okay. And I ended up putting, I don't think you know this, but in my contacts, you know how you label people? It's like Tori Dixon, the lady I met at yoga class, counselor. All that's in there. And I think it took a minute. It took a minute. It took about a year. Yeah, it was about a year. Actually, it was about a year. It took about a year. Before we actually connected. And I found myself going through some things and I was like, okay, I need to talk to a therapist. And I gave her a call or I shot you a text or something like that. And I was like, hi, don't know if this is still your number, but what's your soonest availability? Yeah, yeah. Cause I need to talk to you. It's probably been about two years now. Wow, it's been two years now. It's been two years. Funny thing, this is our first in-person session. First in-person session. We did everything over Zoom. This is gonna be fun. Because I think what happens is so many times people say, if I go to a therapist, life either has to be going all the way down the drain and nothing can be going well instead of actually seeing this as preventative care. And we're gonna put it all out on the table so that we can see what's going on with our life and how do we move forward. Oh boy, hold on. So y'all saying it's about to get serious. You know when she started talking to certified therapists and I'm talking like, wait a minute, hold on. Am I sweating? It's getting hot. Oh, my lip is. One of my biggest challenges is the new beginning part of it. It's the best part of it, but it's also like learning to let go of yesterday. Also, I'm noticing in my sessions, there'll be moments where I'm realizing my triggers because I'll get stuck on something and she's like, Toya, dah, dah, dah. And then I'm like, oh my God, now I'm remembering a moment in my childhood when this happened and this happened. And she's like, bingo. New beginnings really is one word, right? So we never use this word except if someone actually dies. It's grieving. The word grief actually masquerades itself in words like new beginning, starting over, retirement, new family, a new baby, getting married. All of those things are actually under the umbrella of grief. Every time we gain something, it means that we have to lose something. And anytime you have a loss, you grieve. And the intensity of your grief and the longevity of that grief will depend upon how significant the loss was. And because we don't name it as grief, we don't know how to emotionally process it and we don't know how to move through it. So how do I be happy and sad at the same time? How do I give myself permission to do both those very intense emotions at the same time to come up with the most healthy result? And all of us do it. I think grief is the emotion commonality between all of humanity. Some of us will never have the life where someone is admiring our gift all the time because we don't like to work for everyone, right? Some of us will never have the six-figure income. Some of us will never have the house with the white picket fence or the love that takes over our lives, right? But all of us will experience loss. We have to learn how to move through the grieving process, both individually and collectively because grief can only be diminished when it's shared amongst the people. And I just feel like she shouldn't charge us for this. No, no, no, listen, listen. I don't know if a bill come with this moment right here. If you look right at the bottom, there's a ticker and there's gonna be a cash app. Oh, no, hold on, hold on, cash app, here it is. Going from having that single life, not being married, not having kids, and then you become a new mom. Sometimes you can grieve your old life that you had before and it's like, it's not that you're not grateful that you have these beautiful, wonderful kids or this new husband or all these different things that people wish for when they're single, right? But then you're like, wait a minute, I'm used to being able to go, come and go with a bunch of flexibility, the time to myself, the quiet, that goes out the window. That's one of the things that they grieve and then they have guilt because they're grieving that and then go, I'm not a good mom. I think that's like the first stage of grief. I call denial the cushion phase, right? It's that moment when your emotional self is trying to catch up with the reality of the change. And so you're in denial because denial actually keeps you protected. It protects your emotional self and your emotional space. So it's not like you're saying, oh, this isn't happening. You're saying, I have to wait until my emotional self is able to catch up with the reality that there's going to be a change or a loss. In my situation, things happen so fast. I went from being single to being married, to having kids, to then, boom. A lot goes on and it's hard for your mind to process. We have those wake-up call moments where you go, was it me? Was I going through this at the time? Then we go through a self-blaming issue, right? You were single for 30-some-odd years and then became a mom. Nobody will ever have to understand how much work and transition that was for you. I was a mom at 20 and I agreed having it a single life. So I thought your life of being a mom later in life was beautiful, but understand the challenge and the adjustment. And I think the community, the village, helps you say, it's totally okay to feel that way, unjudged. We filmed a few episodes on the show, right? And one of my favorites, but as I was reading the comments, I found that so many moms totally, you know, were on the same page with me. They had the same mom guilt to feel responsible for it all going wrong. Please talk to these people, because you always talking me off the ledge. Listen, listen, there is a societal responsibility for women to be everyone. I think I posted a couple months ago. I was like, no, I'm not everyone. It's not all of me. If anything you want, baby, I got it. Because I am giving myself permission to have limitations on my ability to be. Moms sometimes are required to go the extra step, to go the extra mile, and they're not allowed to be human. Motherhood doesn't transform you into a superhero. It allows you to see the fragility of your own humanity in your process of raising another person. Everybody needs grace. Everybody needs a moment where they can look at themselves and say, this is who I am, and this is where I am. Give yourself permission to choose another emotion outside of guilt, even if it's being afraid. It's better to deal with your fear than to deal with guilt, because guilt always says, I'm doing something wrong, right? And fear says, I'm human, and this is new to me. It allows you to embrace that uncertainty. Now what happens when there's blame, you know what I mean? When someone else is blaming you, and then you're forced to feel guilt, or you find yourself blaming everybody else for all the things that went wrong in your life? When we play that blame game, we're probably resentful. We probably feel as though we should have gotten something that we did not get. And I want to say, give yourself permission to feel whatever emotion you need to feel. If you're feeling resentful, name it. Sometimes we blame because we feel shame, right? And so because I feel shameful about the resentment, or because I feel shameful about the fact that I wasn't nurtured properly, and I don't know how to nurture properly as a mother, I feel ashamed, so name it. It's okay to say, I love my parents, but I also did not get what I needed from them. Two things can be true at the same time, and I think we can relieve ourselves of guilt, shame, and blame when we allow two things to be true at the same time. When other people are blaming you, it's because we oftentimes have limited the perspective that we have around our family. So if, in fact, I have created this ideology around what I think a mother should look like, then I'm gonna blame you for not being a good mother, or a wife, or a wife, or a husband, or whatever title or position you hold. So I think it's imperative that we begin to broaden our perspectives, and allow the village even to come in, and like you said, give yourself permission. I have a 14-year-old daughter and an almost 21-year-old son, and you know today, it was a very pivotal moment for me. I don't want to go stay with her dad for a school year. And people are like, how are you feeling? And I told him, I said, my primary emotion is excitement. Now somebody might blame me for that, and be like, oh my gosh, she's not a good mama. That's your job to deal with that, amen? Because I'm excited that I get to be a person. That's literally what I wrote in my notebook as I've been jumping, because I've been a title since I was 20, and then another title since I was 18. I got married at 18. And that responsibility that we have of always having our mind on and our emotion, you know, you know the journey. So tweet. Thank you for everybody else. Oh Lord. I will not allow anybody to make me feel guilty for enjoying the time that I'm gonna set my mother responsibility to the side and be a person. Do men do that? I'm just gonna ask the hard question. Oh my God, that's a good question. I'm sorry, I'll leave it to LaToya, we keep it real. Honestly, I had this conversation with a father after doing the episode of Mom Killer. I really wanted to get their stance on it. You know what I'm saying? I wanted to see how they felt. Do they have those same guilt feelings that they're away? That's a good question. I actually got an answer. If they have that. I went on, I went to a wedding in Puerto Rico and a dad was there and I was like, oh, and he was like, yeah, I'm a single dad. I'm full time with the kids. And I said, oh, that's what's up. He said, yeah, I had to do a trip for the kids first. And he had a name for it. And I was like, oh, I don't know what that is. He was like, oh, well you take the kids on a trip before you get a trip on your own. And I was like, oh no, no, I just take my trip and they just can't have one. But no, seriously, he said he didn't wanna feel bad for going somewhere. So for the record, dads do have dad guilt. It's that very guilt sometimes that may even keep them away from the family structure. Right? Wow. So because I feel guilty about not being able to fully be a part of that role in the way that I perceive that I should, I'll just stay away because then they're better off without me. Can we talk about the pivot? And that's one of my favorite subjects to talk about because I feel like my life, I'm always pivoting. I'm always having to adjust. Own that. When you've mastered a part of your life and you're living, when you've created a healthy coping skill, because we hear about coping. But is that healthy? Because sometimes it still feels heavy when you're always having to cope. When we see coping as being a burden as opposed to a blessing, right? Because the one thing about pivoting is that it allows you to see life from different perspectives. Some people are disappointed because they feel like their lives pushed them into decisions where they're backed into a corner and I can't make a decision. And I always say that if you made a decision to get into it, you just make another decision to get out of it. That's how you pivot. I feel like there's some people that are gonna watch this that need to hear about the pivot, but dealing with the disappointment. The level from your reality and your expectation is always going to be the level of your disappointment. The more you allow expectation and reality to meet each other, the less disappointed you'll be. Amen. The heaviest burden of disappointment comes in trying to have an expectation far greater than the capacity of the person. Absolutely. I'm gonna tell you, I love my daughter's father and we've been very honest, but I remember that while I chose to, however choosing works for y'all, you know what I'm saying? It kind of happened, whatever you want to go with. So we chose to have a baby that did not mean we were at equal capacity for parenting. So I had a different capacity of parenting considering and he didn't have the same. So I brought my expectation down to reality to match his capacity. It wasn't about saying he was a deadbeat or saying he wasn't a good dad. It was about meeting him where he was at instead of this ideology, because y'all know how we are. We want a man that changed the diapers. He out here juggling, you know, holding the baby, putting the milk in the bottle and cooking dinner and then running bath water for us. You know what I mean? So the idea that I wanted in a dad wasn't what I got and that was okay. So we're taught sometimes or all the time in church to see it, believe it, think big, think outside the box, have great expectations. But then let's be real. Have realistic expectations. Okay, we got to find balance. I think sometimes we see God more as a genie. You better come on, because I was waiting for this. So if I wish upon a star and I turn around three times. That's right. And I click my heels. He's then gonna do what I want him to do, right? Instead of me submitting what I want to what his decision may be. But we have to grieve that. Here we go, we're grieving again. Because sometimes we want what we want and it may not be what's best for us. So God is just as powerful in his no as he is in his yes. The hand that's working that you see is just as strong as the hand working what you can't see. And if you give it a minute, he's gonna Romans 828 you and make sure that it all works together for your good. Come on. Sometimes we be trying to manipulate God. We be trying to manipulate God. And we will psych ourselves up to think that God is not in our favor. Because we're trying to manipulate an outcome. We wanna see something happen. So we go and try to position and piece things. We tell ourselves things and that's why we have great expectations. Absolutely. Because my great expectation is really to yield an outcome that's suitable to me. Because the outcome you have for me isn't necessarily suitable. We wanna do everything except process, right? Process is the bridge between your problem and your promise. Amen. What if you can't see your promise? There are a lot of people out there that do not see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's that thing that keeps tugging at your soul. It's that thing that tells you that life has to be better than what it is today. When we think of the promise, we think that it's something really big and sometimes it's just a hope that where we are today is not where we'll stay but it is a step to where we're going for tomorrow. Our world skips process all the time, right? How many times have, you know, they see you and they're like, you know, you're LaToya but they didn't see 12 year old LaToya that had to go through process. Or just that morning. Or just that morning, right? Social media, I think sometimes, and the outlet that we have to portray a life that we want, right? It also skips process. Can you say that again? Yeah. Social media can sometimes portray the life that we want. And can I say something to that real quick? I do not mean to cut you off but I feel like somebody needs to hear this. A lot of times we find ourselves scrolling and sometimes, unfortunately, we will scroll in the morning before we will even get up and just read. Oh yeah. And then we'll start comparing ourselves and our lives to the other lives that people are posting that they want. Oh yeah. That they ain't even really got themselves. Right. And so now we're all finding ourselves in a place of a desire of something that really doesn't exist for any of us. If you're ever finding yourself in that space, scrolling and feeling like you are not enough, these are just beautiful clips. The parts that they want you to see. Rarely do you get somebody going through their process. That's why I created, honestly, this platform because I want y'all to see me going through my process. Our stories are so powerful. I was reading a book and the author said that whenever we don't fully embrace the truth of our story, we stand outside of that story hustling for worthiness. Think about how many times we hustle to be worthy because we're hiding some of what we think is the ugly parts of a story that we don't want anybody to know. And what you don't know is the very thing that you're trying to hide is the very thing that God wants to use to put you exactly where he wants you to be. Your story is important. Every chapter of your story is important. It may not be important for you to write it on social media, but it's important so that you can fully embrace and accept who you are in your own personhood. Okay, so yes, we went in and we could go further. Trust me, if there was more time. Gratefully, I have two wonderful, wonderful women by my side. And I pray that you guys have the same. When I tell you I'm so appreciative of not just this moment with y'all, but that I got y'all in my life. And then y'all have been in plenty of seasons. They've changed in my life, baby. That's what we're doing here on Leave It To A Toy. You make sure you get in those comments. We wanna hear about your friend circles. We wanna hear about your tribe. Tell me about it, okay? And I love you guys so much. Oh, we love you. We love you, we love you. This was a cute little meeting. I'm so excited for Nina. So can we be friends? You can be friends. Yes. I love it. Yes, I love it.