Erykah Massey shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Erykah, we’re thrilled to have you with us today. Before we jump into your intro and the heart of the interview, let’s start with a bit of an ice breaker: What’s more important to you—intelligence, energy, or integrity?
In my opinion, energy is what’s most important to me because it never lies. Energy directs. It pushes, it pulls, and reveals. Its feeling cannot be ignored by its strong and intense presence. It expands. It contracts. Its chemistry in its purest form. Its strong enough to make the hair on your arms stand up and strong enough to elicit discomfort through the gut. Its the body communicating the underlying unknown and unaware. I like how it presents itself instantly in dynamics. The way you can move a room with it. The way it passes flowing from one person to another. Its undeniable. The mind knows intelligence, the heart knows integrity, but the soul knows energy.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Between the last time we checked in and now, so much life has happened. One of the best parts being – landing my first ever paid gig as a Poet. I deeply enjoyed creating the space for ElmStreetPoetry the blog, but after many requests to perform live; I finally took my talent back to the stage. I love the culture of Art regardless of the background and really appreciate the process and merging with the creative collective. However, retiring the blog hit me by surprise as the community was growing rapidly fast and I loved hearing about the impact it had on others. It was a step that required a lot of contemplation, but I knew that it was needed. So, I regrouped and freed up some of my time to focus on releasing my first poetry book; something thats been in the works for quite some time. I’m excited to share it with the community as it culminates the last five years of my life highlighting a lot of the challenges, wins, and growing that has stretched me far past just being a writer; I’m hoping the reader finds themself somewhere between the covers.
Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
A gentle soul with few boundaries, giving without expectation of reciprocation and a bit of a chatterbox. I genuinely thought at one point in my life that everyone I came in contact with had good intentions toward me because that’s how I felt about them. I was loyal and honest to a fault. I would even go as far as to say that I was probably a bit naive. At one point, I was an open book. I didn’t think that sharing my ambitions, goals, and secrets made me vulnerable because I really trusted the people I let into my world. But, I had not yet met betrayal. Suddenly there were gaps in my intimacy and holes in my conversations. I shared less and less and sometimes was reluctant to share at all. Intimacy felt like a death sentence. I didn’t know about opportunist, narcissist, or users yet and I didn’t have a keen eye for manipulation tactics. Crazy enough, the world taught me through the harsh consequences of not having my guard up to be closed off and vigilant. I learned through pain to watch what I shared and with who. I did my best not to project these experiences on my personal and professional relationships, and yet I still did. Distrust didn’t just affect sharing a lovers quarrel or friend drama, it sprinkled into my career life and dynamics turned sour. So, with my heart of gold I built up walls and kept the most important things in my life to myself. Reluctant to share my inner world with anyone, my circle stayed incredibly small. I refused to make friends at work and had no intention of expanding my community. That is, until I went off to college. It was only then, that I truly learned how to develop who I was after the world got its hands on me.
If you could say one kind thing to your younger self, what would it be?
Growing up, I didn’t feel like I could relate to my peers. I was a nerd. I had braces, wore glasses, and was extremely eccentric and artistic. I was everything that most people would not consider – cool.
Not only that, I grew up in a very religious household so the way I dressed made me stand out even more. It felt like the best way to protect myself through my youth was to hide who I was. I stood out wherever I went. Whether I was the girl who wore skirts or the skinny girl; I was always defined by a label that signified that I was different from everyone else and I despised that. Granite, I didn’t want to be like anyone else, but all those distinguishing things about me brought a culmination of good attention to my talents, but also attracted bullies, mistreatment, and exclusion.
“It’s okay to be different” is what I would have told my younger self because if someone had affirmed that for me; I would not have abandoned myself all those years. So now, I take pride in being different. I’ve learned that in a world where people imitate the personality, thoughts, and behaviors of others how rare it is to come by someone unique. Not to mention, how necessary it is to be yourself in order to find those who truly accept you.
So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. What would your closest friends say really matters to you?
There are quite a few things that they would probably say are significant to me including health & wellness both physical and spiritual, my ambitions, cultivating a village, and creativity, but the one thing that motivates my dedication to those things is acquiring a level of freedom.
I don’t like feeling limited so everything that I do is geared toward granting myself more levels of Freedom. Its access provides endless possibility. The ability to wake up every morning with the power to choose how I want to spend my day. The ability to shop as I please without having to check my bank account. The ability to rest as long as I need without obligations. Freedom provides room for spontaneity. A life free of anxiety, struggle, and urgency. A life built on calm. A life with more room for lounging and long nights. A life with more resources to share. I strongly believe that the collective would all lead healthier, happier lives if we had the ability to buy back our time.
Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. Have you ever gotten what you wanted, and found it did not satisfy you?
Yes, many times. There is something about synching your emotions to an outcome that onsets the opposite effect. What you think will satisfy you usually doesn’t for a variety of reasons. As humans, we have learned that setting goals and working hard in constant pursuit of something will yield a certain outcome accompanied by specific feelings, but this is misguided in the way that our body literally cannot foreshadow how something will make us feel. It can only mimic what it has experienced that has produced similar feelings. This is why dream jobs get boring and most desired relationships fail. Our brain can only consider the possibilities in retrospect to its experiences. Not only that, things have a shiny luster to them when they seem out of reach. Our desire for said thing is typically connected to how we think we will feel once we obtain it, but this only creates unrealistic expectations for its achievement. Thus, the dissatisfaction comes from those expectations not being met.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @Erykah.Lauryn
- Twitter: @Erykah_Lauryn
- Facebook: Erykah Massey
Image Credits
Photo Creds: Erykah Lauryn
