it is something i have been guilty of but have been vehemently working on.  it is something that i hear my friends and family do often.  it is something i hear my clients do daily.

i hear people regularly dismiss the work that they have done to get to where they are now.  it is almost as if we have convinced ourselves that we are not worthy of praise if we have not accomplished the biggest goal on the checklist.  but here’s a thought?  what about the 20 smaller goals you had to accomplish in order to even be able to stand tall or strong enough to reach the biggest goal on the list?  have you given yourself credit for accomplishing any of those?

as we approach finals week at the school i work at, i was searching for the right quote for the whiteboard on my office (that i update weekly).  i logged into pinterest today and without doing any kind of exploring, this was literally the very first quote i saw.  sometimes, the internet gods really do pull through.

“may you never forget how far you have come and the miles it took just to get to this place.” –morgan harper nichols 

i really love this quote.  one of the reasons it is great is because it is not telling you to stop where you are or to settle, it is simply reminding you to bask in the goodness of where you are in this very moment.  you did not get to where you are overnight.  and while there still might be a ways to go to reach your final destination, you are not where you started and that alone is something to be celebrated.

i want you to take a minute and think of where you are in this very moment – think of every action you have done to put yourself in the place you are in now.  have you celebrated that?  if not, there is no time like the present.  i am cheering for you from afar.

xoxo,

k. tap

women’s month might be in march but as a woman of color working at a college prep high school full of young ladies, i find that i am more often than not thinking about topics that directly impact women.

many of our girls are applying to colleges, jobs and internships for the very first time.  and i have noticed this hesitation, even amongst some of the most confident girls in the senior class.  it is as if they shut down if they do not check off every single box that a college or job is saying they are looking for.  the fear of facing rejection (some for the first time ever) seems to trump all else.  as someone that used to work in college admissions, i encourage them to apply anyway, especially if they are applying to a private school that will look at applicants holistically.  then, i started to think about how this could evolve as these young ladies become grown women.

twitter never disappoints.

“apply for the job.  ‘but i’m not qualified for it.’ neither is the person who is going to get the job…” –sahil lavingia

“a cornell university study found that men overestimate their abilities and performance, while women underestimate both.  a hewlett packard report also suggests men apply for jobs when they meet 60% of the qualifications but women apply if they meet 100%.  APPLY FOR THE JOBS LADIES.” – toni tone

like, woah.

in sharing this information with some of my seniors, they were blown away.  in sharing this information with some of my female friends ranging from ages 28 to 35, they were floored.  then, there was this question: how many opportunities had we as women missed out on because we were selling ourselves short?

so ladies, don’t just apply for the job – do whatever it is you have been hesitating on doing because chances are, you are more ready than you think you are and more qualified than you realize.

xoxo,

k. tap

i have shared before that i am not in love with the holiday season.  working as a therapist, i am reminded regularly of how triggering of a time this can be for many people.  there is often this expectation of being forced to “happily” interact with more relatives than one might care to count.  while the holidays are not all bad, they certainly are not all good.  no one has the perfect family dynamic.

something i have been working with my clients on (especially as we approach thanksgiving and christmas) is the concept of setting boundaries.  for some (i have noticed this at a higher rate with minority women), this is a brand new concept.  sometimes, when they try to implement this within their own families, they receive a ton of pushback or are guilted into thinking they have done something wrong by simply setting a boundary.

a couple of weeks ago, i came across this quote on instagram and thought to myself, “wow.  what a much needed reminder for both my clients and myself as we approach the holiday season.”

“conditional love and boundaries are not the same thing.” -sara kuburic, ccc aka the millennial therapist

how brilliantly worded was that?

do not allow your family to convince you that you setting boundaries is you loving them conditionally.  you can love someone unconditionally while loving and respecting yourself enough to create boundaries that feel good for you.

xoxo,

k. tap

this past weekend, i flew to the bay area to surprise my best friend jason for his 30th birthday.  his girlfriend vana was thoughtful enough to hit me up a couple of months ahead of time (far before she even knew what the plans were for the weekend) in an effort to be sure jason could have all of his people there.  as i sat next to jason at this amazing japanese bbq restaurant (if you are ever in san mateo, make a reservation at gyu kaku and thank me later – there are about 40 locations nationwide), he must have thanked me at least a dozen times for just showing up.  he was like, “i know how busy you are – it means to world to me that you made it!”  i assured him that there was no way i would miss it and that vana is the one to thank for thinking to hit me up ahead of time.  then i had this thought about a post i had seen on one of my favorite instagram accounts, therapy for black girls.

“we get what we ask for in relationships, not what we put out.” -dr. marisa g. franco

i started to think about why showing up for jason (in my mind) was not even negotiable.  some might say it is because quality time and acts of service are my top two love languages so perhaps i am loving jason in my preferred love languages.  some might say it is because i was having bay area withdrawals.  while both of those things are not inaccurate, one of the things that i thought about is that over the years, jason has made it incredibly clear to me that the thing that is most important to him in friendship is simply showing up.  that part of him has not wavered since we met in the residence halls back in 2008.  after a rough day, he was happy to just visit each other in our rooms and talk, listen to music or watch a movie.  as we have gotten older, maybe that quality time is now spent over a good meal or traveling somewhere together.  nonetheless, jason thanked me profusely but he had given me a road map because he did something simple – he asked.

much of my early/mid 20s was spent in what i like to call situationships.  you are definitely seeing this person and there are some feelings there however it is a bit murky and lacking clarity.  like, would you know how to introduce them (aside from their name) if you ran into a family member unexpectedly?  friend does not seem like the accurate label but neither does boyfriend/girlfriend/partner.  anyway, i often found myself frustrated because i felt like i was pouring into these situationship type of relationships and not getting what i wanted out of them.  after taking a step back to reflect and also, do some much needed work on myself, i realized i cannot penalize these men for not giving me something i never had the guts to ask for.  it is also not someone else’s job to be a mind reader or to just mimic my behavior, especially if i was doing things they were not even explicitly asking me to do.

the more i think about this quote, the more that i see how it applies to all relationships, work included.  i worked for years at car dealerships and was somewhat perplexed by the lack of feedback and training provided for new hires.  it turns out that some of management felt the same way but it just had not really been addressed.  when i started doing things like asking for reviews and expressing the importance of not being called into the head honcho’s office just because things were going wrong, things started being done differently.  we even came up with a new hire training checklist so it would not just feel like you were being thrown to the wolves.  once again, that is something i had to ask for.  just because it had not been done regularly before did not mean it was not something that would be useful for me and dozens of other associates.

with family, i think it can be harder than any other relationship to ask for what you want out of the relationship.  while i was in the bay over the weekend, i met this bright and beautiful two year old named luna.  my ovaries practically exploded with just under one hour of interactions.  when i was about to leave the apartment, she seemed sad.  her little bottom lip was puckered and pouty.  when i crouched down to her level and asked her if she wanted a hug, she said no.  part of me appreciated that she was not just trying to hug someone she had known for under one hour.  then this other part of me wanted to just squeeze her.  now, i probably stood at the door saying goodbye for a couple of minutes.  once the door shut behind me, i could hear the dialogue between luna, her mom, aunt and uncle.  they could tell she was sad and told her how she could have hugged me because i did in fact offer.   what i loved is that they respected her decision.  no one forced her to hug me.  in thinking about how children are often treated within their family units, it as though they do are not allowed to have their own thoughts or feelings.  it is an expectation that they hug people without any consideration of whether or not that makes them feel uncomfortable.  i think this then contributes to not necessarily feeling comfortable confidently stating what they might want or need from a relationship, even once older.  it is as though there is this behavior that has to be unlearned.  it took me going through a masters level counseling psychology program to be able to ask for what i need from my family in relationships.

how many times have i been disappointed in the way a relationship is going because my expectation is to get what i am putting out versus simply asking for what it is that i want?  that is definitely something i have been making an effort to work on and it is something i will continue to work on as i navigate all of the relationships in my life.

now, something to consider is that you can clearly ask for what you want in a relationship and the person on the other side may not give you what you requested.  when that happens, i think there is a greater decision to be made.  don’t you?

are you asking for what you want in your relationships?

xoxo,

k. tap