Copyright 2021 by Samukele Ncube.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.
For the past versions of me who needed to hear this.
Acknowledgments
For a long time, I felt community meant a sea of people together. Now, I am coming to realize that community can be found in a few people or even one person.
It is a shared intimacy with someone that allows you to be seen, heard, and accepted. It is the people who make you feel at home, and free to be yourself, wholly.
Where you are not playing a role to suit who others need you to be, but where your true self is celebrated - flaws and all - with no judgement.
Where you can laugh and cry in the same breath; where you can share the parts of yourself that you have cast to the shadows and find unconditional love; where hours pass and it feels like you have just gotten started.
There arent enough words to describe this feeling; it is home.
My community is the reason this book exists today, and it is because of these special humans that I had the strength and courage to keep going, thank you for being my home.
To my mom, thank you for teaching me resilience, and dad, thank you for encouraging me along my journey of self-exploration. To my sister Tanya, thank you for always reminding me to be the light I want to see in the world; to my friends, Christie and Rita, thank you for believing in this book, even when I did not; to my soul sister, Debbie, thank you for always being a phone call away; to my teachers, Komal Minhas and Nigel Walker, thank you for guiding me to discover the strength I possessed within and providing the tools I needed to step into my truth; to Alexandra Elle, thank you for guiding me back towards my gift of writing.
A special thanks goes to my partner in life and love, Chisom, for your unwavering love and support, for your joyous spirit that you share, and for challenging me to lean into my most uncomfortable emotions to meet the parts of myself that lay buried within; and to my dear friends, Lara, Logine and Adil, for being a consistent source of joy in my life, for loving and accepting me as I am and for always rooting for me no matter what.
Thank you to countless others without whom this book would not exist; and thank you to you, the reader, for picking up this book and joining me on this part of my journey.
I appreciate you,
Samukele
Foreword
By Nigel Walker
As an avid reader and creator of poetry and inspirational writing myself, this book was a welcome exploration of the self-love journey through Sams eyes. And yet, I felt completely seen and heard as I found myself lost in the world that her words created for me.
Its the kind of book you can read all in one sitting or flip to a random page and read just the thing you need to hear in that moment but couldnt find the words to express.
My own self-love journey started when I realized that the things about myself that I thought needed to be changed or fixed were also the things that made me unique. By sharing those parts of myself I was most afraid of, I learned to be brave with my life so other people could be brave with theirs.
And this book is such a perfect example of that.
So brew yourself a fresh pot of coffee or tea, tuck yourself in, and give yourself the gift of letting these words wash over you.
I promise you wont regret it.
- Nigel Walker
Preface
This collection of poetry and notes is a product of my growth and healing. For a long time, I felt lost and was trying so hard to find myself. I longed for someone to tell me exactly who I was and spent a lot of time talking to people, asking them for advice, and searching externally for what I should do with my life.
A dear friend took notice and said to me, You know, no one can tell you who you are, right? I said yes, but deep down, I don't feel I knew that at the time.
Over the following years, I entered a spiral where I got lost in defining my worth and who I was through the things that I did. I was trying so hard to prove that I was worthy because I did stuff, but at the end of the day, all the things that I was doing weren't filling me up. They were draining me until my body said no more.
It was only when my body stepped in that I was forced to be still - to slow down and just be. How scary it was! I thought, If I'm not doing anything, then what worth or value do I bring?
This stillness forced me to shift my focus from the external and look deeper within myself to find what really mattered to me. I had spent a lot of time living my life the way I thought I should, doing what I thought I should be doing, saying what I thought I should be saying; while losing sight of my internal guiding voice.
The metamorphosis that accompanied the stillness was uncomfortable and unfamiliar. It felt as though everything I had known myself to be, up until that point, was false, and in order to uncover who I truly was, I had to shed all of the things and beliefs about who I thought myself to be.
As confusing as this period of my life was, over time, I found the forced stillness started to bring me peace. For the first time in a long time, I was still enough to sit with myself and just be, and, at last, that was when my internal guiding voice was able to peek through.
Now I see that I just needed to tune into myself to get all the answers I was seeking; to meet the person I was all along.
Its been a long journey of unlearning and relearning, peeling off all the masks and roles I play to reveal the real me that lives within - daily work that is painful at times but is so liberating on the best of days.
And now I know without a shadow of a doubt that all the things I spent so long looking for were already within me.
My Intention
I created this collection through reflections after asking myself, What do I need to hear most right now?