Welcome home. I'm Dr. Tama, a minister, licensed psychologist and sacred artist. And this

is Homecoming, a podcast to facilitate your journey home to yourself. While I will provide

weekly inspiration and mental health tips, this podcast is not the same as personalized therapy.

I'm so excited you're on the journey. If you want to request specific topics or to submit a

poem for me to read on the podcast, email me at homecomingpodcastsatgmail.com. Also to build our

community, don't forget to like, subscribe and share. Let's begin. Welcome home co-journers. I'm

glad you're here for another episode and I'm grateful we have a poem submission for this week

and this poem comes from Kainas Yakuubu and Kainas' poem is entitled Live. I have carried words

around for years, heavy weights that served as bait. They led me into a whole of insecurity.

These negative words that somehow stuck. I tried to push them away but somehow they lurk

around. They hover, they abound. They wait for any attempt to break free and they pounce on me

until I can barely breathe. Doubt has become a nation I live in. The anthem I'm singing

but I'm tired of repeating these lyrics. These words I cannot. I want them to be a far off. I want

to wake up in the morning and feel like I'm enough not to worry if my edges are rough.

Because what is life if we're not all living it imperfectly, holding up our flaws,

not worrying if they see it as ugly. If we can't all break free and live wildly,

me, I choose to live. Yes, indeed, Kainas, this is a wonderful reminder for us to embrace freedom

and to know that it can be effort, labor, work when you feel the weight and the burden of shame,

of guilt, of insecurity. All of those can keep us closed off and shut down. But at the end,

you call out for what it means to live wildly. And that's what we want to think about today.

The gift of living wildly. And I invite you to consider the ways in which

you have filtered, censored, edited your speech, your dress, your habits, your dreams,

...