Life is hard. We all know that. Especially these days, life tends to be a headache. We’re all trying to navigate it the best way we can and sometimes it feels really personal.
For women we are always making our apologies for speaking out and following our dreams. Social media sometimes takes over and drags us down, leaving us scared to speak up. We’re always wondering how we can be better and do better.
Because out best is never really good enough.
When speaking to Night Court star, Lacretta, we had to ask her about something she said, “I don’t read reviews. I want to protect my mental health.” For her protecting herself is first and we found that to be inspiring.
For this writer, it made me feel as though I was reminded that there is no shame in putting myself first and protecting my sanity. With her being open about it, we did want to ask her how other women can do this and find no shame in doing just that.
She said, “Society puts so much pressure on us, society puts pressure on everybody. Then there are added pressures depending on what you look like, what your socioeconomic standing is. At the end of the day, and this goes with acting, too, there has to be a level of eff you. I don’t know if I can say the word, but there has to be at some point a level of eff you in your work because then you can just throw it all off your shoulders. Take the pressure off of yourself, you have to. I tell people to take 20 minutes a day. If you are, it’s just so hectic and life is lifing, you need to set aside 20 minutes in your day. I don’t care what you do with it, but you do what you want to with it.”
She continued, “If it’s just, let me just sit here and breathe, maybe drink some water. Let me sit here for 20 minutes and play a video game. Let me sit here for 20 minutes and listen to some music that I want to hear. Then you can go about your day, but you have to have that 20 minutes at least, because you have to do all this other stuff. You have to pay your bills, you have to go to work, you have to listen to people that you don’t really want to listen to. I need you to take 20 minutes because I’ve definitely been in a spot where I exploded because I didn’t deal. I was trying to please everybody, I was trying to be a great friend to people who weren’t great friends to me, I was listening to what people were saying about me. That was spilling over into everything. Then one day, I just lost it.”
She then finished off by saying, “I can’t do that because I have people that I want to take care of. I have to be protective of my energy, I have to say sometimes, “F you, I’m sorry, I can’t, because I need this for me,” and me being a Pisces and an empath, it gets overwhelming at times. If we don’t do this for ourselves, I’ll be that girl in high school blubbering and about to murder someone, because I just took everything on and I didn’t have 20 minutes. I didn’t say, “No,” and it’s so important for us because I can’t bail you out of jail. I can’t. [laughs] You have to be able to release that stuff for yourself so that you stay sane and stay safe.”
And that my friends is the best advice we’re heard in a long time.
