Reflections by Nano

Popular culture brainwashes us into living unauthentic lives for the sake of being cool or being accepted by people who couldn’t care less about you. I’d like to offer a different narrative. Where the world encourages destructive behaviours and attitudes such as “be cool, or act cool”, “pretend you don’t care” or “tone down your excitement”; I’d like to propose that this kind of thinking is what destroys authenticity. We trade in honesty for likes. We give up our truth to gain a false sense of respect and affirmation from people who don’t even know the real you. The world or popular culture will have you sacrificing your soul for fake validation and meaningless attention. We’ve become so accustomed to portraying a cool or “acceptable” version of ourselves that many of us don’t know or appreciate our true selves. We’ve become casualties of destructive societal norms. After coincidently having a few conversations relating to authenticity and pretentiousness, I reflected on the belo...

 I’m turning 32 tomorrow! And I’m soooo excited for this next chapter of my life. In my blog description I write that, “I’m a woman who’s hoping to find love and stability as I enter my thirties…” Well, I’m proud to say that I’ve found it. 😊 I’ve found love and stability within myself. At the beginning of this journey, and for most of my life, I was looking outwardly for these things. While looking in all the wrong places, I found a lot of wrong things, wrong people, wrong habits. I found a lot that didn’t serve me. As soon as I started looking within, the answers started coming, the healing started coming, courage and hope filled my heart and life. As soon as I began to celebrate the good in me and the good around me, more blessings and joy came my way. Now, there’s a lot that I still want out of life, there’s so much I still want to do and accomplish; I feel like I’ve hardly begun living, yet I’ve lived such a full life already. And I’m really excited for the future! But ...