Hey, hey, what's going on? You are listening to the Brown Girl Self Care podcast. My name is Brie Mitchell.

I am the host of the show as well as the founder of Brown Girl Self Care. I'm so glad that you are here. Thank you for pressing play on this episode as we continue in our journeys to getting to where the healing, love, abundance, all the good things reside that black women are worthy of.

So let's do a little housekeeping here. Number one, first and foremost, I'm praying that you, I'm praying that this audio comes over very clear. However, I am asking in advance for grace.

It is super hot here in California, Southern California today. Obviously, Hashtag summertime. I'm not having a hot girl summer unless you're saying hot flash girls.

It's hot y'all. And so I am trying to minimize noise, but I cannot close my windows up right now. And I have the fan on the AC is working, child, long story short, we're just not using it right now because it listen, then electricity bills ain't no joke. And I am not going to sit up here and pretend like electricity and everything else in California is not expensive.

So I am going to do my best to minimize the noise, but that's what it is. Okay. So thank you in advance for giving me grace.

The second thing is today, I want to talk about the Y word, the dreaded Y word that asked for me as a follower of Christ. I couldn't even imagine even thinking about doing this Y word for years. And this word is yoga.

I have to whisper it is yoga yoga. So I want to talk about that today. I know a lot of you that listen to the show you as well or follow followers, excuse me of Christ or your Christians or whatever. And I don't know about you, but that word is like the devil.

Okay. And I just wanted to kind of tell you how I've been processing them some things around yoga that I'm hoping that you can glean some insight into your self care journey as well.

So before I do that, before we get into that Y word yoga, I want to just shout out every single amazing queen. I'm assuming that most of us that are listening to the podcast are black, but I'm sure that's not 100%.

I'm just going to say shout out to every black woman, every how about this every woman, every person that listens to this show, I just want to thank you.

Okay. And for those of you that have taken the time to share the podcast, to leave a review and a rating on iTunes or wherever you're listening, I cannot tell you how much that means to me.

It really means a lot. And I just want to say thank you.

There was a review. There have been several amazing reviews that have been left in the last few months. I have not had a chance to do like a shout out.

I'm like, let me just go ahead and do a shout out because someone left a really great review. And I am sure that many of you that are listening that are going to hear what I'm about to say, which is her words.

I'm assuming it's a woman. Her words. I'm sure there's going to be parts of it that you can resonate with. So bear with me while I just take a couple of minutes to read and respond to this review. And then we're going to get into the why word yoga.

So I let me go ahead and get into it here. So this young woman says, breathe, I want you to know I truly enjoy your podcast. I was feeling like a lost soul. None of my friends were opening up and expressing emotions and thoughts of this world.

Where we're in and how it feels to be a black woman in America right now. I can relate to a great deal of your episodes. I'll tell you a little bit about me.

I'm an African American woman from Chicago. I've lived in Southern California for half my life, 65 years young, three grown human beans, but they're always my babies lost my oldest son last year.

A triple bypass heart surgery. I've worked 11 years after that. When I retired, I realized I had completely lost my identity. I was a black woman. I was certified certified surgical scrub tech. I was a single mom, a chauffeur, a praying mother that my children will be okay every time they went out the door.

I was just a single mother on a hamster will of life trying to live from paycheck to paycheck. Any quiet moments I had, it was sleeping, cleaning the house and getting ready for work the next day. I had to rediscover me. I knew I needed to find a therapist that took a year and a half.

One of the white therapists I had every time I would talk about my experiences as a black woman. She was always crying. Child, I cannot. She didn't say that part I did. So let me go back. So she was always crying. And then I spent half the session trying to console her. What? So that let me know I needed to get a black therapist.

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