Are you overstaying?
There’s A LOT happening.
Every time I’m preparing to share something with you I feel like I’m trying to capture the breadth of the hellscape that is living in another world ending. Even in my own world, I’ve had so many endings that I’m trying to hold all at once. Some by force, some by choice, and a few I’ve been avoiding until they came anyway.
In the fog of all these endings, I realized last week I needed to ask to extend my visa in Brasil. Politely, I learned from the Immigration Officer that I had overstayed my visa by 30 days! I would be fined and could be facing either additional fines, being deported, or being restricted from returning. Dramatic right?
My time there was far more than a vacation. I’d envisioned a whole new way of life that would last for more than just one season. It’s been a dramatic ride trying to find consistency in my practice, getting back to a stable home space, fortifying relationships across borders and timezones. But I wanted to make it work. I was going to until the dream I was dreaming got interrupted.
After quietly crashing out in the parking lot of the immigration airport, I realized something. I (again) stayed in something longer than I was supposed to and now I’m feeling the aftermath.
Less capacity.
Less presence.
Less progress.
Less stability.
Trying to hold it all together was not going to work. I needed to let something go.
“Terreiro, Odé, Terreiro” - Ludimila Lima, 2024
Brasil has been beautiful but the reason I came here has fallen out of alignment with so many other areas of my life. I was feeling farther and farther away from friends, stability in my work and resources, limits on my creative expression, and ultimately experiencing a more limited version of myself. I was quietly enduring things that didn’t quite fit in the hopes that it would all turn out well in the end. Thinking that the sacrifice and shrinking would balance out with the joy and adventure and magic.
When I first came to Brasil, I went to a Candomblé celebration and was blessed by Oxossi—an Orisha, or deity of Afro-diasporic spiritual traditions, represented by a skillful, solitary Black hunter. He is known to provide guidance, sustenance, protection, and prosperity to those who seek him out. I spent so much time wondering why I was blessed, why Oxossi made himself known to me when I wasn’t looking. I felt like it meant I was in the right place. And I was, until I wasn’t.
As I prepare to leave, I have even more questions than I came with but I do have more certainty that I am being guided and aligned for what’s to come. I leave a little behind so that I can be propelled forward with a little more strategy and protection.
I think back to the many jobs, relationships, conversations, and spaces where I’ve stayed long past when my gut told me to go. Noticing the misalignment, taking on the cost, shrinking down just to keep the peace, or the pay, or the title, or meet someone else’s need.
Something about overstaying my visa and seeing the consequences listed clicked something into place. When you stay in situations that are not aligned, the universe will force your path. You will repeat and repeat until there’s no other option but to change.
While I’m not getting deported or banned from Brasil, I did get the wake up I needed. Spirit has a funny way of forcing me to hear what I’ve been ignoring. As I left the immigration office trying to figure out what to do, I made a new friend. Another Black woman, entrepreneur-creative who’s been coming back and forth to Brasil for 10+ years. She helped me translate and clarify with the immigration officer. She called a friend to help me pay the fines. And she also shared that she’s been struggling with burnout and learning to choose herself first amidst all her responsibilities. She too was forced to create an ending in order sustain herself and her business. It was the message I most needed to hear: that I am cared for even by strangers when things are falling apart and that I am not alone.
Abrupt endings suck. And with every ending, there is a new beginning, a new path, a new lesson that brings us a little closer to the future we want for ourselves.
We each are moving along a life path that was uniquely designed for us. Without adding judgement or shame, we simply can notice where we are making the choices that align us to where we want to go, how we want to feel, and who we are called to be.
In our becoming, we foster new selves that are delicate and require protection and devotion to continue to grow.
Boundaries come in to offer us protection in the moments that our new self confronts our old self. In that liminal space between what was and what will be, we get to see the choice between what feeds and supports us and costs too much to sustain.
If you’re navigating sudden endings or struggling to hold the tension between what was and what you’re calling in, here’s something to consider:
What is one feeling, area of impact, or discomfort you have intellectualized but not honored?
If no one was watching/expecting/needing anything from you, what would you do? What would you stop doing?
What new version of you is trying to emerge right now and what dynamic, habit, place, or relationship can't hold that version anymore?
In a season of needing to revisit my own relationship with boundaries, I created this offering to help us reframe and reimagine our definition and relationship to boundaries, not as punitive, forced, or rigid but as forms of devotion to our highest and most divine selves and our ideal visions for the future.
For the version of you that is ready to stop overstaying.
This workbook was born out of an urgent season of transformation. Not from having it figured out, but from being in the middle of it and refusing to do the work alone.
Boundaries as Self-Devotion is a self-guided experience for those ready to reimagine boundaries, not as walls or punishment, but as acts of devotion to the version of yourself that is trying to emerge.
Inside you'll find:
A grounding in ancestral wisdom through Grandma Baby's Lenormand
3 steps to reimagining boundaries
A ritual for naming what you're releasing and what you're protecting
A three-part questionnaire inspired by Audre Lorde, Doechii, and Jill Scott's To Whom This May Concern
This is not a productivity tool. It's a becoming tool.
