Today, You Meet Yourself.

Tasha Nicolé Burton
Fall 2023 – Spring 2024

My biggest act of deviance was the moment I stopped trusting myself.
My biggest act of resilience was the moment I started forgiving myself.
Stay fluid.

Deviant behavior, as defined by society, is an immoral act that can cause harm to others. When looking at the history of the word deviant, we find the terms deviate and deviation. A deviation is simply an action that rejects or steers away from what we consider “normal” or baseline.

Rarely do we self-ascribe ourselves as deviant, as the term can carry serious consequences. What happens when we think or feel something that could cause harm to ourselves? Consider the conditions under which you would call yourself a deviant.

What does it mean each time we doubt ourselves?
What does it mean each time we invalidate or trivialize our feelings?

When a lack of confidence is present, so is the lack of trust. Learning to trust yourself is an ever-evolving journey and practice. Licensed counselors Linda and Charlie Bloom state that self-trust is not a natural skill and requires repetition to strengthen it. To illustrate this, the Ouroboros, a symbol depicted as a serpent eating itself, is present.

The Ouroboros represents life and death, time, cycles, and collective consciousness. Visualize the serpent consuming the negative thoughts and behaviors to birth a new form of thinking. Fluidity and forgiveness ask that we resiliently forge through the process to achieve grace, which produces a newfound sense of self-trust.