It's an interesting thing to find ourselves in a generation where healing can feel trendy. Across social media, #healing is one of the most popular hashtags to date, with over 41 million posts associated and 3.5K posts daily related to the subject. When I first began my healing journey, healing was not trendy.
My first therapy session was when I was a pre-teen. My family was in a transitional period, and I was acting out, so my mother took me to therapy once a week. We went a few times. I don't think we ever told anyone, and we never really discussed therapy again until I was in college. In my early twenties, a few months before graduation, I was experiencing a great deal of depression and social anxiety.
I started going to therapy, and it changed the entire trajectory of my life, but there was still a lot of shame.
Therapy in Black households and communities was taboo, and if you needed therapy, you were met with comments like, "That's for white people" or "You're not crazy. You don't need therapy." So, it didn't necessarily create an environment where I wanted to shout about therapy from the rooftops. Additionally, my then-therapist was on my college campus, so I literally went to therapy in secret.
Once a week, I walked to the other side of campus and went to therapy, and it was there that I found parts of myself that I thought I lost and discovered that therapy is a tool needed for a happy, healthy life, not a resource of the rich or something to be embarrassed about. Almost a decade later, it still amazes me that scrolling social media content from celebrities to influencers, it's nothing to see now reflections post-therapy, discussions on healing, and even in pop culture with music and television.
As someone who finds themselves within the wellness industry, I initially thought this is amazing, especially because the pandemic showed us how important mental health awareness is. I found comfort in knowing that this work has become mainstream and that, as a culture, we can begin to have discussions about wellness and well-being. But somewhere along the way, healing became entirely too trendy.
It became this thing that you purchase, and not a journey that's authentic to your needs. Healing is now seen as an aesthetic, where if you purchase a shadow work journal, burn sage, drink water out of a Stanley cup, own a matching workout set, and understand the concept of boundaries, then your healing journey is legitimized.
I'm not here to debate if daily writing, increasing your water intake, purchasing workout clothes, and establishing boundaries aren't healing, but what I am saying is - healing is not one size fits all and doesn't have to overtake your entire personality.
Healing is now being packaged as this season of life where you do nothing but focus on self-improvement, and after you're done, your life is better. True healing is layered and ongoing, and it's not just found in books, physical exercise, or even therapy.
It's looking at the parts of yourself that you don't like, and learning to find the love and gratitude in them. It's finding joy during the darkest moments in your life. It's allowing yourself to be a person worthy of love, support, and a life filled with balance, even while healing, because, contrary to social media, healing never ends.
For our entire lives, we'll be growing, learning, and unlearning, and as long as you exist on this earth and are committed to growth, you're healing in your own way.
Your journey doesn't have to have an aesthetic, and you don't have to announce to social media that you're healing in order for your journey to be authentic. If you want to heal, ask yourself what are the areas of your life that require self-reflection, and with a therapist explore a path to wellness that fits your needs and lifestyle.
And even once you find that path, don’t wrap your identity up into healing because even at the lowest point in your life, you are so much more than self-work, your life isn’t a project that constantly needs repair, it’s meant to be lived, don’t forget that.
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While speaking to xoNecole, Eva shares that she’s a lot like the beloved 1994 character in many ways. “Lyric is so me. She's the odd flower. A flower nonetheless, but definitely not a peony,” she tells us.
“She's not the average flower you see presented, and so she reminds me of myself. I'm a sunflower, beautiful, but different. And what I loved about her character then, and even more so now, is that she was very sure of herself.
"Sure of what she wanted in life and okay to sacrifice her moments right now, to get what she knew she deserved later. And that is me. I'm not an instant gratification kind of a person. I am a long game. I'm not a sprinter, I'm a marathon.
America first fell in love with Eva when she graced our screens on cycle 3 of America’s Next Top Model in 2004, which she emerged as the winner. Since then, she's ventured into different avenues, from acting on various TV series like House of Payne to starring on Real Housewives of Atlanta.
Je-Caryous Johnson Entertainment
Eva praises her castmates and the play’s producer, Je’Caryous for her positive experience. “You know what? Je’Caryous fuels my audacity car daily, ‘cause I consider myself an extremely audacious woman, and I believe in what I know, even if no one else knows it, because God gave it to me. So I know what I know. That is who Je’Caryous is.”
But the mom of three isn’t the only one in the family who enjoys acting. Eva reveals her daughter Marley has also caught the acting bug.
“It is the most adorable thing you can ever see. She’s got a part in her school play. She's in her chorus, and she loves it,” she says. “I don't know if she loves it, because it's like, mommy does it, so maybe I should do it, but there is something about her.”
Overall, Eva hopes that her contribution to the role and the play as a whole serves as motivation for others to reach for the stars.
“I want them to walk out with hope. I want them to re-vision their dreams. Whatever they were. Whatever they are. To re-see them and then have that thing inside of them say, ‘You know what? I'm going to do that. Whatever dream you put on the back burner, go pick it up.
"Whatever dream you've accomplished, make a new dream, but continue to reach for the stars. Continue to reach for what is beyond what people say we can do, especially as [a] Black collective but especially as Black women. When it comes to us and who we are and what we accept and what we're worth, it's not about having seen it before. It's about knowing that I deserve it.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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Fortunately, five simple words have simplified my dating process and ushered in clarity faster: “Would my husband do this?”
A couple of years ago, I met an entertainment lawyer who was tonguing down a twenty-something-year-old woman for breakfast while I slurped my green smoothie and chomped on a flatbread sandwich. Okay, Black love, I grinned and thought as I sauntered out of the Joe & The Juice. As soon as I stepped down from the front door, a torrential downpour of Miami summer rain cascaded and throttled me back inside to wait out the storm.
I grabbed a hot green tea and vacillated between peering out the wet door and anxiously checking my watch. My lengthy agenda started with attending the Tabitha Brown and Chance Brown’s “Black Love” panel, and I was already late. That’s when the lawyer introduced himself to me, after he made a joke about neither one of us wanting to get soaked by the rain. His female companion had braved the storm, leaving us to find our commonalities.
We both lived in L.A. and had traveled to the American Black Film Festival to expand our network. He represented various artists, including entertainment writers, while I was working as a writer/creative producer in Hollywood.
While there is no shortage of internet advice on how to strategically meet a prominent man at conferences, if I spend my hard-earned funds on career growth, I have tunnel vision, and that doesn’t include finding Mr. Right. So, I stowed his contact details away as strictly professional.
Keep It Cute Love And Hip Hop GIFGiphyAs the humidity and mosquitoes were rising around L.A., two months later, another suitor-turned-terrible match cooled off after three unimpressive dates and a bevy of red flags. I posted what some of my friends called a thirst trap, but it was really me wearing a black freakum jumpsuit with a plunging neckline to my friend’s 35th birthday soiree despite feeling oh, so unsexy and bloated on my cycle.
I’d been waiting to post a sassy caption and finally had the perfect picture to match: “You not asking for too much, you just asking the wrong MF.”
That’s when the entertainment lawyer swooped into my DMs and asked me to dinner. I was quite confused. Is he asking me on a date? Or is this professional? Common sense would’ve picked the former. Once it clicked that this would in fact be a date, I told my mentor, who’s been happily married for over twenty years and has often been a guiding light and has steered me away from the wrong men.
Upon telling him about how we met, he emphatically stated, “He ain’t it.” He followed up with a simple question, "You have to ask yourself: Would my husband do this? Would you tell others that you met your husband, tonguing down another woman, and later married him?"
Aint It No Way GIF by UFCGiphyOuch. The thought-provoking question cleared any haze. Prior to going out with the lawyer, the first thing I inquired about was the woman.
“You saw that?” He said, taken aback that I’d witnessed his steamy PDA. Surely, anyone with two open eyes peeped him caressing her backside as he kissed her in the middle of the coffee shop.
He brushed her off as a casual someone he’d gone on a couple of dates with but had since stopped talking to. He said he hadn’t been in a serious relationship in over three years. Though I was still doubtful, dating in L.A. is treacherous and ephemeral. Making it past three months is considered a rarity.
With my antennae alert, I dined with him at a cozy beachside steakhouse restaurant where we were serenaded by a live jazz band. I’d emphasized forming a platonic friendship first.
Break Up Friendship GIF by TLCGiphy“I’ll come to you,” he obliged. I liked that he had made me a priority by driving over 50 miles to see me. I also liked the effort he made to check in with me daily. But I still couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that he initiated on a professional pretense and then alley hooped through the back door on a romantic venture, which bombarded me with confusion.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my dating life, God is not the author of confusion; any man who brings confusion, rather than clarity, is simply not The One. It doesn’t matter how many boxes he checks–eventually, that confusion will manifest itself into bigger problems, in time.
After diving into deeper conversations on the phone, post our first dinner date, I quickly realized this man was indeed not The One for me. But I’m grateful for the valuable lesson I learned.
I don’t expect some unattainable fairytale of a husband; we all have our own flaws and conflict is inevitable, but after dating for two decades, through failure and success, I’ve realized that the person I ultimately marry must mirror the values I exert into the world. He must reciprocate kindness, patience, and respect. He must be quick to listen and slow to respond. He needs to be forgiving and trustworthy, practice healthy communication, and be a man of his word at the bare minimum.
If I’d had “Would my husband do this?” in my toolbox when I was dating and floundering in stagnant relationships, in my twenties, it would’ve saved me a lot of precious time. But now that I’m equipped with the reminder, it’s allowed me to ground myself in my non-negotiables and set/maintain the standard for the special person, I’ll one day say, “I do,” to.
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