nat-a-lia

[nat-a-lia]

Drinking is bad, feelings are worse.

[nat-a-lia]

if you not tryna be my fiancé then u not my type

[nat-a-lia]

*Sigh

“Any partner we choose will hurt us at one time or another. No relationship, even the most ideal, has unwaveringly smooth sailing … There will always be differences between lovers.”

— Sue Johnson

[nat-a-lia]

This, I implore 👌🏾

if we’re dating and you see me lying down on my bed, you’re 100% allowed to just lay down on top of me

[nat-a-lia]

Ohhh these stages in my life where I have no idea what the hell im actually doing, but I gotta keep it together and act like I do. I love it.

[nat-a-lia]

It took me a while to understand this.

Viola Davis PORTER Magazine

[nat-a-lia]

Angela Bassett for W Magazine. Directed by Spike Lee; Photograph by LaToya Ruby Frazier; Styled by Costume designer Ruth E. Carter.

[nat-a-lia]

I hear that the rode to get to this isnt easy, is it bad that I still want it anyway? Is it a crime that I want a man who wants to spend the rest of his life fighting for me everyday? Is it too much to ask to want to grow and evolve and watch you reach your highest potential? Is it bad? Is it a crime? Is it too much? Will it ever reach me? God, I pray it so.

[nat-a-lia]

“He got me fucked up.” energy ALL 2019 and beyond.

“You pretend to be “enjoying his energy” when really all you’re doing is collecting data, scanning his face for signs that he likes you or signs that he doesn’t. Sooner or later, collecting data becomes your full-time job. You become a scientist of his desires. Everything else falls away but your one crucial job. Everything else dims compared to his bright colors. You become dull. Your feelings become irrelevant. Only his feelings matter.

When you pretend your feelings don’t matter, you slowly erase yourself.

You think you’re studying his face and biding your time and making yourself available for the moment he stops being “confused,” but what you’re really doing is making yourself look like the cheapest, easiest resource around, one he can always come back to if other things don’t work out. So why would he settle for you? He can go out and do whatever he wants, and he knows that you’ll still be around, waiting to see if he changes his mind. His energy is that potent. Your time is that worthless.”

ask polly

[nat-a-lia]

There is so much depth to raising children. It’s scary sometimes.

“If you give children a vocabulary that’s large enough and complex enough to express their emotions and their ideas, you give them access to complex feelings and emotions in themselves. So that if you talk to a teenager and all they can say about how they feel is BAD, and they haven’t got, you know, a larger vocabulary for lonely, abused, insecure, frightened…I mean there’s this huge panoply which…I remember when my daughter was just telling me that she just felt bad, I bought her a thesaurus. I said, “Look up, is it sort of over lonely, or is it insecure…and look up under lonely, you’ll find two hundred words for lonely. Which one?” But what that does is that it makes you feel that there’s this huge complexity of emotions and there are words for all of them. If you want children to feel less frustrated and less disenfranchised and less unable to even feel comfortable with their own emotions, you’ll have to give them a vocabulary that’s as complicated as their inner lives. And one of the things we see in children is this incredibly reduced capacity for reporting their inner lives to the exterior world. One of the things is just teaching them poems, just teaching them to memorize poems in school, they don’t have to interpret them, if they just internalize the language of the poem, the complexity of the emotion in the poems…” -Jorie Graham, in a conversation

[nat-a-lia]

I’ve been practising generosity with myself, with my time to self + ideas + love, etc. It’s incredibly energising and empowering.

[ image description: Nigerian artist, Stephanie Nnamani sits in the backyard of her home in Enugu. from self-portrait project, A.T.L.A.S (2017-), dressed in an original design by her father (1980s). ]

[nat-a-lia]

[nat-a-lia]

i am so gentle and kind hearted

[nat-a-lia]

[nat-a-lia]

Both her and me 🙏🏾🤞🏾

“may my daughter make new mistakes with those who treat her with care. may she never weep over ghosts with coarse hands and mouthfuls of disrespect. may she be fierce in her demeanor, never nodding her head when her heart urges her to say no. may she wander on paths that turn her into a woman who can stand on her own with pride and the knowledge that she can always come home. may she find someone who helps her grow her spirit without tying her down to a life of control and glaring limitations. may she be everything that i could not.”

— Noor Shirazie, a prayer for my future daughter.

[nat-a-lia]

Bruh !

you drop a toxic friend, then everybody thinks you’re the bad person.

[nat-a-lia]

I am about to walk into a new season of my life filled with

abundance. financial security. new career. + benefits + salary increase joy. love. peace. confidence. purpose. spiritual growth. change. new opportunities. traveling. knowledge. reciprocity. creativity. passion.

Claiming it as if it’s already mine.