Wholly Khaliah, how i got here - part 1!

WELCOME TO MY BLOG (insert fireworks)!!!! I want to say HI to anyone reading this post whenever you happen upon reading it and thank you for clicking on my website and my blog! I have a lot to say so I plan on this blog being pretty packed with information. A little about me, I’m a 40 something women of color living in the Northeast U.S. My immediate family is me, my husband and our two children. That for the most part is something that hasn’t changed too much in many years. I’ve always lived on the East Coast, been married for like 16 years, and my oldest is 13.5.

What has changed is me!! And that’s so important to note, changes with things outside of you might not happen often but changes to ourselves especially inside are happening daily. My needs, wants, desires and opinions are ever evolving. Right now, I’m putting everything I have into Wholly Khaliah because life is fragile and fickle. The only thing we can do is to control the things we can control and one HUGE thing you can control is the direction of your health. Even if you can’t predict 100% of outcomes, you can give yourself a damn good chance at ensuring the healthiest future possible for yourself.

I have owned a professional children’s event planning company for about 12 years. It pretty much grew with my oldest and it meant a lot to me. I was content and successful most of those years and threw some pretty amazing events. What I didn't care enough about during that time was myself…in every area! My business seemed to thrive on me being stressed out! Whenever I was stressed and couldn’t sleep, that meant I was doing a good job and my party would be beautiful and successful, and my clients would be happy seeing how depleted I was for their event. These are actions that I believe are applauded in that industry. I operated like that for years, patting myself on the back for poor eating and sleeping habits for the sake of creating gorgeous events. I didn’t realize the downstream effects of stress and not treating myself with love, compassion and kindness. I didn’t know how out of control it could get or even that it mattered. I became a machine of pleasing others from family to party clients.

It wasn’t until I got the strength to leave the party planning industry, that I notice what it was doing to me. I was obese (I don’t say that lightly), exhausted and a pro at ignoring my needs for those of others. SLOWLY I started to see this and immediately wanted to change FASTER.

A little history - decades ago I attended college and majored in Nutritional Science - although not finishing my degree, I carried with me some knowledge of health and the passion for it. All these years, it laid dormant until sometime during 2019. That year my eyes opened a bit and I started cooking more. I had gotten a job at a law firm and began bringing my lunch to work daily - that was my step 1.

There’s so much more to this story but I’ll save it for now, this is Part 1 of HOW I GOT HERE! And for context, the photo below is where I was starting from. This was a photo from a professional photographer in January of 2018….bad angle, yes of course but you can’t photograph what’s not there!!

Where I started

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the story.

XO,

Khaliah