Reading Time: 5 minutes

Depression, insecurities, and adversities can shackle you from living your truth, recognizing your resiliency, and moving forward. But peace, happiness, and having love for ourselves, other and receiving love are possible. Untether your mind from your anchor and free yourself to live the purposeful life you choose with Hailima’s touching story-telling, inspiring poems, and striking artwork.

After a suicide attempt, Luv Mrk Founder Hailima Yates wanted to stop feeling numb, sad, and angry at the world. When life’s challenges anchored her down, emotional distress kidnapped her spirit. She needed to rediscover her power.

To change her life, Hailima faced the sources that birthed her fears, shattered her self-esteem, and created her self-sabotaging behaviour. Part memoir and part self-help guide, Dissolving the Anchor, illustrates a journey from self-critical thoughts and suicidal ideation to an elevated mindset.

In this book you’ll discover:

• skills to replace a destructive mindset with new authentic, positive internal dialogue.
• how to stop the judgement of others from influencing your self-esteem, identity, and inner peace.
• self-care methods to fight vacant-spirit feelings that weigh you down.
• daily confidence-building affirmations and boundary settings to show others how to respect you.
• true, lasting joy that doesn’t depend on the temporary highs of relationships or material items.

Release the heavy links of the anchor holding you back from happiness. Get Dissolving the Anchor now and transform those links into wings that will empower you to be free to fly and embrace your truth.

Using Their Eyes For Our Reflection

If only we could travel back in time to form a shield
That would block all of the
Fabricated recycled ideas
Of what beauty is
In order to define our worth

This shield would block any teachings
That would groom us into
Seeing a reflection that we couldn’t love
As if loving ourselves should be measured
By the number of perceived outer flaws we possess
The fewer the imperfections
The more deserving we are
Of a better life
Of receiving affection

Or how about we travel even further
To stop the beginning concepts of attractiveness
That leads to mental
And physical destruction
In order to construct ourselves
Into enhanced products

But here we are
In reality
Where being bombarded with definitions of beauty
Since the beginning of social conditioning
Traveling its message into
Cartoons
Commercials
Videos
Movies
Magazines
And from those in our environment
Our friends
Family
Or peers
Who thought they were justified
In pointing out

What they didn’t like about us

We have to make the choice
To not allow anything or anyone
Decide for us if we are beautiful

Whenever I looked at myself all I saw were flaws
And these flaws guided
The words I spoke
And the actions I took
These flaws
Had me accept words spoken to me
That furthered my dislike for myself
And the actions taken toward me
That furthered my need to be invisible
Until I became invisible

My hands have been wrinkled since birth
No reason for it
They just are
When I was in elementary school
I remember a kid asked me once if I was in a fire
I don’t think he was being rude
Just curious
I spent most my days
Hiding my hands with gloves
In my long sleeve shirts
Putting them in my pockets
Or behind my back
I didn’t even like to meet people
Because then I would have to
Expose my unsightly hands
To abide by
The common courtesy rules when meeting someone new
The culturally agreed-upon social norm of handshakes
I didn’t want anyone’s soft and normal hands
To touch my rough, small, and wrinkled hands
Yet I couldn’t avoid their reach
To partake in the civilized ritual
As that would unfortunately come off as rude
So I did shake hands

And I always got that look
Their eyes and smiling face
Went from looking at my face
Down to my hands
As their smiling face
Transformed into shock, confusion, and sometimes disgust
The funny thing is
I didn’t know anything was wrong with my hands
Until I received the questions and repulsed reactions

Then there’s my skin
It wasn’t about digesting dehumanizing toxins
To have me loathe my color
I didn’t like my skin because of its blemishes
My skin from head to toe is not perfect
Again in elementary school
I was wearing shorts
And a friend of mine
Pointed out the imperfections
In front of others
They laughed and made jokes
I allowed that to affect me
So in addition to covering my hands
And arms with long sleeve shirts
I then wore pants no matter how hot the summers were

All that time I spent hiding

Then I didn’t like my eyes
My nose
My height
My hair
My voice
Me

As I accepted the poisonous
Opinions others had of me
I then began to create my own
Toxic assessments
And the result
Was believing I didn’t matter

I know now that we are more than our looks
Yet when I was younger
That seemed so valuable
I noticed the pretty girls getting asked out
I noticed the pretty girls invited to school dances
I noticed the pretty girls getting treated better
Enjoying life
I equated pretty with worthy of love
Worthy of having what you want in life
Being allowed to believe your dreams can come true

For a while I thought
If just some prince could save me
I didn’t know that I had all I needed within me
To save myself
No, I thought if some man could love me
Then everyone else would see I was deserving of it
Then I would realize I was deserving of it
But I didn’t and couldn’t mold myself into what
The ideal beauty was in relation to the environment I was in
So I was not seen as pretty
And I just wanted to not be seen
If I wasn’t seen then I wouldn’t be reminded
That I wasn’t enough

There comes a point in your life
Where you can continue
Settling in the pain
Or realize your part in adding the chains
Holding you back
From living a life
Worth living

You have a right to process
Your emotions
From disapproval and dismissal
Yet I hope you get to a place
You realize it’s more painful to stay the same
Then it is to change

Stop allowing the ill-intentioned views and remarks

From being louder than the truth
We owe no one beauty subjective to their vision
And they also don’t owe us their affection
Yes, it is a human need to be loved
And you may want to be desired
However, if you have been rejected
You were actually being protected
Because we should not accept
Those in our lives
Who don’t accept us for who we are

And if we’re transfixed on chasing acceptance
From those who can’t or won’t give it
We won’t see
Those who already surround us
Loving all of us
I myself couldn’t recognize or trust the judgment
Of those who were attracted to me
Because all I could see is what was missing
And wishing I had what others wanted

There are so many ways we can look at ourselves
Rather it is through someone else’s eyes
Or our own
Yet the conclusion must be to love ourselves

We are not validating our existence
To be what others expect us to be

We have to decide for ourselves
Who we are
How we want to present ourselves
And to love how we were created

We don’t need some prince
To wake us into his vision
Some prince to find us past midnight
To fit us into his glass world
Breaking paths for us to turn into our own hero or shero
We are not princesses or princes who need saving
We can save ourselves

Since we didn’t have that shield to block lies
We can rid ourselves of the thoughts
Residing within us
That blinded us from loving ourselves inside and out

Restore our sight
As we replace the outsider’s echoes
And all the damaging statements we spoke to ourselves
With empowering declarations
That will unravel the chains and heal internal scars
To secure an unbreakable confidence
Now we don’t need a shield

In so many ways people will try to defeat us
But they can’t touch us
Once we have decided to no longer be told
Who we are
Or how to look

Once we have become aware
Of how amazing we are
We won’t let anyone take that away from us

And we won’t take that away from ourselves

Only speak words
That nurture your spirit
Only make choices
That lift you up
And always look in the mirror
To love what you see

CONNECT WITH HAILIMA YATES

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Thanks for listening,

Tiff