The Bare Minimum

Hey Sunnies,

I hope this finds each of you well. If you can’t tell I’ve been going through a lot. This season has been hard and heavy. But we all know that one thing the storm does is water the crop. So hopefully it’s good, cause baby, the storm is heavy.

Recently I feel like God has been reminding that me it’s okay to just keep swimming and let Him do the rest. At first I was calling this doing the “bare minimum,” but that language has a bad connotation and my therapist pointed that out to me. If I just keep swimming, doing what I can when I can, I’ll get there eventually. Some may call this the bare minimum, some call this the key to life; but right now, it’s my tactic to maintain my sanity.

As you may know, it is my last semester of law school and the burn out of 19 long years of being institutionalized is setting in hard. I am completely burned out from deadlines and the constant needing to do something for school. I know this has an end date, but I questioned, and sometimes question, if I would get there. On top of that real life has been extremely demanding.

My wonderful law review editor told me in our meeting, “Ya know, it’s okay to do the bare minimum.” The relief I felt to hear that was out of this world. As Black women, a very high achieving Black woman at that, it is so hard for me to breathe. We constantly find the need to prove ourselves. Well, this is the end of that era, it’s heavy and tired.

Welcome to my season of swimming, a doggy paddle if you will. Although it’s not sustainable for the long term, it’s the best I can do right now. I hope this helped someone. Love you all deep!

forever blooming,

Mikaela Amira