But let’s be clear—I was so ready to get up outta there and be grown.
I was itching to turn 17 and head to college, because I just knew adulthood meant FREEDOM.

 

Chile... I was wrong. 🥴

 

See, what my imagination didn’t tell me was that stepping into adulthood as a high-achieving, over-functioning Black woman came with bills, burnout, and breakdowns. My nervous system? Shredded.

By my late 20's I was out here catching panic attacks and calling it heartburn—chewing TUMS like Skittles—not knowing my body was screaming:

“Girl… we are not okay!”

 

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It wasn’t until I started studying to become a therapist—and digging into the Superwoman Schema while working with Black women—that I had the real aha moment.

My story? Girl...  it’s our story.
Give or take a few details, we’ve all been out here carrying too much, too early, for too long—
and looking for relief with none in sight.

But when I got into the science of holistic therapy, the answers started rolling in. That’s when I realized:

Oh snap... you can actually rebuild and reset your nervous system.

And you’ll never guess how I learned that for real, for real.

Through play. Yep—play.

 

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So boom… a few years ago, I jumped at the chance to put theory into practice. I wasn’t just preaching it—I was building my own life around it.

 And then by pure happenstance (okay, and because it offered low business overhead and I wanted to actually see theory come alive in real time for other Black women), I started offering walk-and-talk therapy sessions at Reedy Creek Park in Charlotte, NC.

 

At first, I thought we’d just stroll and chat. Real calm. Real simple.

 

But baby, next thing I know we’re skipping, hula hooping, screaming into the woods, laying in the grass watching clouds like kids on recess. And whew—it worked (wanna dig deeper into why play matters? 👉🏾 Click here to read more).  

 

 

We’d go in heavy, processing all that stuck fear and stress…
and leave like, “Wait—maybe life not tryna kill me after all.”

 

We learned—right there in the woods, sweating and laughing—that sometimes the problem doesn’t change.

But we can.

We can reset, regroup, and return to ourselves—just by being human and giving ourselves permission to play.

 

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💡 Why Play Matters:

Play literally helps shift your body out of stress mode. It teaches your nervous system how to come back to regulation—how to come back to you.

And the best part?

It’s not deep. It’s not complicated.

You just have to be childish enough to believe it’s possible—
that maybe, just maybe, we were designed to reset.