I Thought I Was Just Going Back to School

When I started this Ph.D journey, I thought I was signing up to write papers, conduct research or complete a project, and eventually earn a title.

What I didn’t realize was that I was also signing up for:

• identity crises
• emotional support coffee
• twenty open tabs I swear I still need
• and a completely unhealthy relationship with Microsoft Word

No one really talks about how a doctoral program will humble you and heal you at the same time.  One minute you feel brilliant.  The next minute you’re rereading the same sentence wondering if you’ve ever actually known how to read.

“Somewhere between burnout and becoming, I kept going.”

The Doctoral Delusion Phase

I truly believed I would be “organized.” I bought color-coded notebooks. Loaded my Remarkable. Downloaded planning apps. Created timelines with hope and confidence. That lasted about fourteen business days.

After that, my life became a blur of:

• revisions
• committee feedback
• APA formatting
• existential reflection
• and whispering “I’m almost done” every three months

At some point, the write up stopped feeling like a document and started feeling like a personality trait.

The Unexpected Mirror

What surprised me most wasn’t the workload. It was the way this process forced me to confront myself. A doctorate has a way of exposing every insecurity you thought you buried under professionalism and achievement. Suddenly, all the perfectionism, self-doubt, imposter syndrome, and fear of failure show up uninvited… usually around 1:17am.  And somehow, in the middle of researching body image, intimacy, identity, and healing, I found myself doing that work personally too.

I started this journey thinking I was writing a workbook.  Turns out, it was writing me too.

“There’s something deeply personal about researching healing while actively trying to survive your own stress.”

Becoming Looks Messy Sometimes

I used to think growth would feel graceful.  Instead, it looked like:

• crashing out over formatting and grammar issues
• celebrating tiny victories
• forgetting what day it was
• and convincing myself that deleting one paragraph was “productive”

But becoming isn’t always beautiful while it’s happening.  Sometimes it looks like exhaustion with purpose.  Sometimes it looks like showing up imperfectly anyway.

Closer Than I Was Before

And maybe that’s the thing I keep coming back to:
I am closer than I was when I started.  Closer to finishing. Closer to myself. Closer to the woman I’m becoming outside of the degrees and titles.

This process stretched me intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.  And while I’m still tired, still revising, and still questioning why APA has so many rules… I’m also proud.  Because despite every moment I wanted to quit, I stayed.

“Maybe the goal was never perfection. Maybe it was resistance.”

 A Reflection Forward

This doctoral journey has taught me that healing and becoming often happen simultaneously.

You can be exhausted and evolving. Overwhelmed and growing.
Burned out and still becoming. And maybe that’s what this season really is:
not a breakdown, but a transformation in progress.

According to LaShonda, Your Finer Sex Therapist.

What the Mirror Taught Me

Somewhere down the line, the mirror ceased to be only a mirror. It became a measuring tool. A critic.  A place I went to test everything I thought was wrong with me. I didn’t know I’d been taught how to see in a different person’s eyes — eyes forged in the crucible of beauty standards built with me out of sight. And the more I gazed, the less I knew myself.

“I wasn’t looking at my body — I was looking through what I was learning about it.”

The Inheritance of Distortion: We don’t learn body image in isolation.
We inherit it. Through unmeaningful comments. Through silence on “what was ‘acceptable.’” Through media that seldom reflected us, except when it was sensationalized or edited.

For Black women, the mirror is often more than mirror — it holds history. Colorism. Comparison. Survival. It helps us to adapt before we even comprehend who we are. “For many of us, the mirror holds other people’s opinions for a very long time.”

Unlearning What Was Never Ours

Unlearning isn’t loud.
Maybe that doesn’t always look like confidence or self-love.

Sometimes it means catching yourself in your own criticism about something and just not moving on further. Sometimes it is simply standing in the mirror for at last too long — not to help yourself but just to take note. It is the deliberate choice to question the voice that says, “not enough.” And instead asking, Who instructed me on to that?

Reclaiming the Reflection: Reclaiming your reflection is not forcing yourself to love what you see. It’s letting yourself see without injury. Without shrinking.
Without punishment.

”Without having to perform.

It is selecting to encounter yourself with curiosity rather than critique.

And gradually, over time, your reflection softens — not because your body changed, but because your relationship with it did.

“Healing doesn’t always involve learning something new — often it is releasing what was never yours to bear.”

A Gentle Truth

I’m still unlearning.
Still catching the old thoughts before they settle in.
Still practicing what it means to see myself without distortion.

But I know this much: the mirror was never the concern.

It was the meaning I was taught to be attached to what I saw.

🌿 A Reflection Forward

This is the essence of Sex for Every Body. Not just seeing ourselves in a new light — but understanding how we came to begin with when teaching ourselves to see ourselves.

Because when we begin to unlearn the mirror, we begin to recover the power over our own image of beauty, closeness and value.

On our terms.

For a long time, I’ve shared pieces of my journey… but I haven’t fully introduced the heart of it—my doctoral work.

My project, Sex for Every Body: Intimacy, Identity, and Body Dysmorphia in Black Women, centers on a reality that is often overlooked:

How we see our bodies deeply shapes how we experience intimacy.

This work explores the intersection of body image, identity, and relational closeness—specifically for Black women, whose experiences are often missing or misunderstood in both research and clinical spaces.

A therapeutic Workbook for Black Women Navigating Body Dysmorphia, identity, and intimacy .

It’s designed to help individuals:
• Understand how body image distress shows up in their lives
• Explore how it impacts emotional, physical, and sexual intimacy
• Gently challenge internalized narratives about their bodies
• Reconnect with themselves in a more compassionate, embodied way

Grounded in frameworks like intersectionality, attachment, and objectification theory, this project honors both the clinical and lived experience.

It includes reflective exercises, body-based awareness practices, and guided prompts that can be used individually or alongside a clinician.

Because the goal isn’t perfection, it is awareness, connection, and healing.

This work is deeply personal. It’s professional. And it’s purposeful.

And now, as I prepare to defend it later this year…

I’m proud to finally say:

This is what I’ve been building.

#SexForEveryBody #DoctoralJourney #BlackWomenAndHealing #BodyImageAndIntimacy #TraumaInformedCare #PhDLoading #AlmostDoctor

According to LaShonda, Your Finer  Certified Sex Therapist.

There’s something sacred about booking a flight for one. No group chat planning chaos. No waiting for someone else to have the money, the time, or the boldness. No negotiating where to eat, shop, or stay. Just you — deciding to go, because you deserve to go. Traveling alone is not just a vacation as a Black woman. It’s resistance. It’s healing. It is taking space in a world that so often requires us to shrink, sacrifice, settle. It’s saying I deserve joy and ease and exploration and safety — right now, not when conditions are perfect. Travel becomes a Mirror. Few journeys are measured in miles but in moments: Breakfast alone without feeling lonely. Treat yourself to dessert because no one is there to judge your sweet tooth. Getting lost and realizing you’re actually capable of finding your way. Laughing with strangers in broken languages. Crying over a sunset because life just feels larger than your routine.

Travel holds up a mirror. It reveals who you are when you’re not performing. When no one knows your title, your sorority, your responsibilities, your “strong Black woman” armor … who are you? Sometimes, you learn: I’m softer than I pretend. I’m bolder than I thought. I am wiser than I ever give myself credit for.

Single Does Not Mean Still.There’s a myth out there that joy is something we wait to share with a partner in the future — the “right person” to travel with, to explore with, to live with. But when we are constantly saving life until some distant time, we are missing ourselves. Traveling solo says:  I don’t have to postpone sunsets. I don’t have to wait to eat good food. I don’t have to shrink my life until someone else is ready to join me. Single is not a break from it; it is a passport.

Being a Black Woman Abroad. Let’s be honest: There are layers to traveling as a Black woman. There are stares, questions, curiosity, often ignorance — and yet there’s something charged about entering into a place where you are rare and radiant. Where your skin is admired, your presence remarkable, and people want to know your story. In many nations, Black women are not simply stereotypes first — they are considered travelers, thinkers, customers, explorers. Once again you get to be outside of the narrative America wrote for you. You become the narrator. You become the adventure.

The Healing Is in the Unplanned. The gift of traveling solo is the gradual liberation to follow your intuition:  Perhaps you linger a little longer at the café. Perhaps you follow a hidden beach a stranger suggested. Perhaps you go elsewhere and discover something life-changing. Solo travel shows you ways to trust the voice you’ve been stifling to the background the whole time: the voice that knows what you need, what you like, what you’re curious about. In regular life, we mute ourselves in order to fit into roles… but when we’re travelling, curiosity becomes your North Star.

The World’s One and Last True Lesson. The world is trying to speak a very simple truth: You are allowed to take up space. Not just in love. Not just at work. Not only when you are serving other people. But in joy. In rest. In wonder. Solo travel makes you fall in love with your own company. You know you aren’t waiting to live. You are living. Fully. Fearlessly. Finer.

A Passport Is Not an Exercise in Document — There Is Promise involved here. It’s a promise not to reduce your life to whatever anyone else’s timing is. It’s a vow: Curiosity itself is part of your calling. It’s a promise that joy is nonnegotiable. You deserve oceans. You are worthy of stamps. It’s your life worth celebrating in color. And whenever you find yourself thinking that traveling alone may have become a big problem, remember: the world isn’t waiting for you to be less single — it’s waiting for you to be more alive.

According to LaShonda

Loving Myself Through Holiday Grief

Singleness forces you to look at yourself — not in judgment, but in truth.
Grief forces you to feel things you’d rather outrun.

But together.
They also reveal strength you didn’t know you had.

What this season has taught me:

1. My heart is resilient.
2. My loneliness deserves compassion, not shame.
3. I can hold both longing and gratitude without losing myself.
4. Self-love is not a backup plan — it’s a foundation.
5. I deserve a holiday that honors me, not expectations.

“I am learning that the softer I am with myself, the stronger I become.”

According to LaShonda

There’s a special kind of loneliness that hits during December:

The drive home after a gathering.
The quiet house when the laughter fades.
The untouched side of the bed.
The empty chair at the table.
The moment you realize no one texted to say “did you get home safe?”

People don’t talk about that loneliness.
They talk about “holiday cheer,” parties, family, and festivities — but not the ache that sneaks in with the cold.

You can be surrounded by people
and still feel alone.
You can be grateful
and still feel emptiness.
You can be healing
and still have nights that break you open.

“The world sees the holiday smile. Only you feel the weight behind it.”

-According to LaShonda

When the Holiday Doesn’t Look Like You Imagined

We all had a picture in our minds at some point —
a partner, a family, a certain kind of holiday magic.

And when life doesn’t look like that picture, the holidays can sting.

But here’s the truth:

Your life is not late.
Your love story is not canceled.
Your joy is not behind schedule.
Your future is not slipping away.

Sometimes the holiday that looks “different” is the one that grows you the most.

Sometimes the unexpected space becomes room for healing.
Or transformation.
Or new traditions.
Or new connections.
Or quiet miracles you didn’t see coming.

“Sometimes the holiday we didn’t imagine becomes the one that heals us the most.”

According to LaShonda

 Singleness used to feel like something I had to “get through” during the holidays — like once January hit, I could breathe again.

But over the last couple of years, something shifted.
I stopped trying to survive the holidays and started designing them.

Not for a partner.
Not for tradition.
But for me — the woman I am now, the woman I’m becoming.

1. I Give Myself Gifts Now

Not out of loneliness —
out of love.

A book I want to read.
A piece of jewelry.
A trip.
A new robe.
Something that says, “You matter too.”

2. I Create a Ritual That Honors My Loved Ones

Sometimes I:

• Light a candle
• Play one of their favorite songs
• Cook something they loved
• Say their name aloud

I don’t hide my grief anymore.
I weave it into the season with intention.

3. I Simplify Everything

I used to overextend myself because I didn’t want anyone to notice how lonely or sad I felt.

Now?
If my spirit says no, the answer is no.

4. I Travel or Take a Personal Day

One year I stayed home and watched Christmas movies.
Another year I left the country.
Both were healing in different ways.

Tradition doesn’t always have to look the same to hold meaning.

5. I Make Room for Joy — Even Small Joy

A laugh.
A good meal.
A beautiful sunrise.
A cozy blanket.
A call from someone who loves me.

Joy doesn’t erase grief —
but grief doesn’t cancel joy either.

Closing Thought

I used to think the holidays required a certain kind of family, a certain kind of relationship, or a certain kind of happiness.

Now I know the holidays just require a heart that shows up — however it can.

According to LaShonda