Josephe “Pop” Buchanan and I met online on Instagram. We started talking and discovered that we had common interests and even a similar life path. He is an American artist, author, activist and pod caster. He is all about positivity, sobriety, God and love. The instant connection was the foundation of an awesome conversation about love, life, God and racism.
Make sure to check his site: www.popbuchanan.net and listen to his awesome podcast Sober is Dope. Off course I started the interview, can’t really call it an interview because it felt more like a nice conversation about life, with the question: “What does love mean to you?” After a moment of silence he said “love is so many things, … difficult to define it in a few words!”. For me love is the driven force of humanity, almost in a certain poetic way. Love is basically everything. It is the scarifies we make, it is the family that surrounds us, a primary need that we all search for in life, the forgiveness we need to give ourselves and others in order to come to a deeper understanding. Love has the power to heal the world if we would use it as a collective good. But love is also fear, fear of losing that precious feeling, yourself and ending in pain disconnected from yourself. For me love is based on four pillars you need to work on, whether it is towards self love, family, relationships, etc… 1. Don’t give up. Nowadays we have the tendency to give up so fast. Things don’t really work out as we planned or hoped, and there we go, jumping to next. As if this quick fix will bring us what we need.
2. Forgiveness is key. Be insanely honest with yourself, admit your sins and flaws… and forgive yourself. Not only yourself, but also others. In the end we are all human. If you’re able to forgive yourself, why not someone else?
3. Acceptation. Try to accept things as they are; yourself, situations, people, society, … We can’t change others, but we can change the way we look at things.
4. Don’t be judgmental… maybe one of the most difficult ones to complete, but such a powerful one to master. We are so easy to judge other people without even knowing the how and why.
I think that when you apply these four pillars your look on life, love and everything in between will change to another perspective.
Love is a primary feeling that we are born with… and throughout life we are taught to hate. As a religious person I would say that love and God are connected, but as a Black Afro American living in the States I didn’t always understand. Religion doesn’t justify racism and yet it is all around. God loves unconditionally no matter race, religion, age or committed sins. Why can’t we? The desire of our mundane ego to conquer is definitely our lowest point as humans. It’s the cradle where corrupted politics are born and masked under the term ‘religion’ quoting ‘we’ll make America great again’! Despite the misuse of religion,… I remain a child of God. In my darkest hours I reached out to God looking for connection. At that moment in time I didn’t had enough self love or respect, but I didn’t wanted to die either. It was at that exact moment in time that God gave me his ultimate love; he forgave me and delivered me back without judging, without blaming… he gave me a second chance to do it differently. If God wasn’t judging me why would I? So I seized the opportunity and worked on getting sober. During the journey of recovery I learned to love myself. At that point I realized how important your environment is and how much you absorb. Luckily I have an amazing family who helped me restore. I am convinced that we don’t teach and preach enough on how we should love ourselves and that’s why we often feel so disconnected… Disconnection will make you accept and tolerate things like addiction and abuse. In my opinion addiction is the opposite of love. It is the lack of self love that makes you go through the suffering and pain. If you would have enough self love you would never accept it! So I dare to say that self love is the precursor of love. You need to practice it on a daily base. During my recovery I learned to become brutally honest with myself. Confronting myself where needed, being convinced that everything that is hiding in the dark will always find it’s way to the light. Meanwhile I am sober for already eight years. Helping other people to take the same steps as I did, … asking myself the question: “how can I become a proponent of love and contribute?”. Sober is Dope is my way to give back and break the stigma! 🖤
If you would want to be interviewed by me make sure to contact me. I am looking for couples who want to be interviewed as well. Spread the word if you know a couple that might be interested.
As always looking forward to hear your thoughts in the comments.
As always lots of love 💕 Selina
©️ Subtle Balance ⚠️ If you like the interview feel free to share it, but please mention the source.
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