I Decide What I Mean

Welcome to Sacred Musings, a space where I share reflections from the heart on love, life, caregiving, and the lessons that shape us into who we are. My hope is that these words bring comfort, perspective, and inspiration to anyone walking their own path of healing and growth.

Years ago, I was romantically involved with someone with whom the chemistry was undeniable.

It was one of those connections that didn’t need much assistance. There was attraction. There was passion. There was something alive between us, and whatever it was, it happened entirely on its own.

Years later, when we found our way back into conversation, he admitted that he had never quite been able to get me out of his mind.

But instead of accepting the possibility that perhaps some people simply leave an impression, he had another explanation.

He wondered if I had done something to him.

A love spell.

Some kind of spiritual work.

Now, he knew enough about me to know that I come from an Afro-Caribbean cultural background. He knew I had knowledge of traditions such as Lukumí and Santería. And yes, I know that such things as love work exist. I know people have rituals and prayers and spiritual practices surrounding attraction, reconciliation, desire, and relationships.

But knowing something exists and doing it are two entirely different things.

I had never done anything to him.

Nothing.

No candles.

No petitions.

No mysterious powders.

No trips to the ocean or the river.

No moonlight ceremonies.

No strategically chosen planetary hour, special day, new moon, full moon, waxing moon, waning moon, Mercury doing whatever Mercury is apparently doing this week.

Nothing.

When he asked me about it, I looked at him almost incredulously.

“Of course not. What are you talking about?”

What happened between us was much simpler than magic.

It was passion.

Organic, unmanufactured passion.

And perhaps that is precisely why I would never have touched it.

When something feels genuine to me, I don’t want to manipulate it. I don’t want to spiritually engineer someone’s desire for me. I don’t want someone because I compelled them, persuaded the universe on my behalf, or performed some elaborate ritual designed to keep them attached.

If you love me, I want your love.

If you desire me, I want your desire.

If you cannot get me out of your head, well…

perhaps I was simply memorable.

That possibility apparently seemed less believable.

And there is an irony here that still makes me laugh.

Years passed. He eventually became engaged to another woman, a woman he had known for more than a decade. Their engagement itself has stretched on for years.

And at one point, their wedding was scheduled for a new moon.

A new moon!

One of the oldest symbols of beginnings, intention, renewal, planting seeds for what one hopes will grow.

Maybe she knew the symbolism. Maybe she didn’t. Maybe he knew. Maybe nobody knew and the venue simply had an opening.

I have absolutely no idea.

But I couldn’t help appreciating the comedy of it.

Because somehow I was the witch.

Apparently, somewhere in the imagination of this man, I had been standing barefoot beside a river under the moonlight, orchestrating his inability to forget me.

Meanwhile, I hadn’t so much as lit a tea candle in his direction.

And as funny as that story is, there is something about it that genuinely bothers me, because it touches one of my deepest pet peeves:

People deciding what I am experiencing instead of believing me when I tell them.

It happened again recently in a Breema bodywork class.

During the class, I kept crying.

Not sobbing. Not falling apart. But tears kept coming.

One of the instructors apparently decided this meant I was unhappy.

She said it more than once. She insinuated that I wasn’t enjoying myself, that something about the class wasn’t sitting well with me.

And I kept trying to explain:

I wasn’t unhappy.

I was moved.

There is a difference.

I was also concentrating.

Breema is not something where you simply put your hands on somebody and improvise. There are sequences. There are movements and strokes to remember. There is rhythm and placement and attention. My brain was working hard to learn something that felt less like ordinary bodywork and more like choreography.

It reminded me of ballet.

There is an order to it.

A language.

And while I was trying to learn that language, something else was happening to me.

I began thinking about grief.

I began thinking about people whose bodies have carried unbearable things.

I began imagining what this kind of deliberate, gentle attention might feel like for someone whose body had spent years bracing against life.

Because Breema, as I was experiencing it, felt almost like the opposite of violence.

There was no conquering the body.

No forcing it.

No treating it like an object that needed to be corrected, manipulated, or subdued.

You listened to it.

You supported it.

You paid attention.

You placed your hands on another human being with care and moved through these beautiful sequences almost as though you were saying:

I acknowledge that you are here.

I will not hurt you.

Your body deserves gentleness.

And that realization broke something open in me.

So I cried.

Not because I hated the class.

Because I understood something in it.

I was thinking about what this kind of touch might offer someone grieving. Someone traumatized. Someone who had forgotten what it felt like to inhabit their own body without fighting it.

I was paying homage, in a strange way, to the magnificence of the human body.

And apparently my face said:

THIS WOMAN WOULD LIKE A REFUND.

That is the part that drives me crazy.

Tell someone what you’re feeling and sometimes they will still choose the story they created about you.

“You’re unhappy.”

No, I’m moved.

“You’re upset.”

No, I’m concentrating.

“You did something to make me feel this way.”

No, you felt something.

“But look at you.”

Yes.

Look at me.

But then listen to me.

Maybe that’s the distinction I’ve been trying to articulate.

I don’t mind being misunderstood initially. Human beings misunderstand one another constantly. We read expressions incorrectly. We project our histories onto people. We make assumptions. That’s ordinary.

What bothers me is when I correct the misunderstanding and the other person remains more loyal to their interpretation of me than to my testimony about myself.

There is something strangely invasive about that.

Because underneath it is the assumption:

I understand your interior world better than you do.

And no.

You don’t.

My tears do not automatically mean sadness.

My silence does not automatically mean anger.

My intensity does not automatically mean danger.

My cultural knowledge does not make me a witch secretly manipulating people from the shadows.

Sometimes passion is simply passion.

Sometimes tears are reverence.

Sometimes concentration looks serious.

Sometimes a woman knows exactly what she is feeling and means exactly what she says.

There doesn’t always have to be something darker underneath.

And perhaps that is what I wish people understood about me most:

Please don’t assume the worst explanation for something you don’t understand.

Ask me.

And when I answer you, believe that I am the authority on my own interior life.

Because sometimes there isn’t a spell.

Sometimes there isn’t unhappiness.

Sometimes nothing sinister is happening at all.

Sometimes you simply couldn’t forget me.

And sometimes I was simply moved to tears by the beauty of being gentle with another human body.

Those things are already extraordinary enough.

They don’t need another story placed on top of them.

By Kimberly!