In the words of LL Cool J: "Don't call it a come back. I've been here for years."

This song is the soundtrack for my hiatus! As you know, I took a break. A break from writing, from social media and from everything Luwamé related. I did it to shift my focus full-time on my family and more importantly to work on my inner self. 

During the first couple of weeks of my hiatus, I split my time between teaching the kids, cooking/cleaning, and spending one on one time with my family. I worked out, took up running again, read both of Rachel Hollis best-selling books, prayed a great deal, journaled, prayed again, slept in, learned how to make injera, joined a masterclass called The Woman School, did a whole bunch of DIY face and hair masks with Bella and my sister Rahwi, took up TikTok, and finally sat in silence meditating and seriously reflecting on my life as a whole. 

For me meditating basically meant- my time to do NOTHING. I literally sat in my room or closet, closed my eyes and did/thought of nothing. It was very hard in the beginning- (you try sitting there and pushing out the thousands of thoughts that enter your brain. I felt like I was in a Star Wars movie and Jedi Master Yodi (my head) was fighting Darth Vader (all my thoughts). These two characters fought on opposite sides and had very different views for how the galaxy should be governed.)  Imagine having to sit there and fight all the thoughts away from your head. So again, it’s very hard, but somehow after weeks of trying, I’ve finally been able to time myself to 4 minutes of nothing. 

I’ve talked about meditation for years, but for me it was always mixed with something else, like prayer, reflection, journaling etc. I never really sat in silence doing nothing before in my life. In the process of learning how to mediate the right way, I began to sit with the idea that I- Luwam Tesfaye, created this out of nothing but a dream, a dream to help women everywhere live their best life possible, for them to see themselves in a new light. I did that, so while I’ve made thousands of mistakes along the way, I built something beautiful as well.

Something I am proud of, something my family is proud of and in that moment, I realized that for all my mess ups in life, there are so many “wow” moments that I have taken for granted! Have you ever done that before? Do you only concrete on the negative or bypass all the successful moments because you don’t feel a celebration is in order… like there is more that needs to be done so why celebrate? I did that for a long time, I kept saying, I’d celebrate when this or that happened and then it would happened but by the time that took place, I was already on the next project, on the next task, never giving myself time to breathe and just be, to celebrate all my wins.

Being able to stay still allowed me to absorb it all and during this break, you better believe I did a whole lot of celebrating! 

The biggest thing I want to share is that I started therapy, and for someone who feels like she had already worked through her baggage and gotten through it, let me tell you; I was wrong! There is so much I held on to, with my marriage issues, my father’s death, my mother moving, the fact that I had kids young, and my childhood. There is so much that I never really thought was an issue until we started peeling each layer of my life in pieces.

As each piece got pulled away, I could feel the weight on my shoulders get lighter and lighter. It’s funny actually, we never realize what we are going through when we are in it… you know why? Because, during our struggles we are in survival mode, our brain can only focus on surviving. So then once our struggles end, we can see them for what they truly were. This is where you get the victim and survivor mentality.

You can choose whether you will become a victim to your struggles or a survivor.

For me, I always chose being a survivor, but because of that mentality, I guess I suppressed a lot of my feelings for so long that I forgot why those feeling were there to begin with. The only thing I wanted to do was get away from my struggles, survive, & power through them. I never really sat with them and worked through each individual issue. Well, not until now at least. Now with therapy, each week I get to peel another layer off. At first, I was so skeptical about the whole idea, like how was some stranger going to help me. But now, months into it, I wish I had done it sooner. 

All this self-reflection and time apart from my work, taught me that taking a break is not only okay but NEEDED as well.

It gave me the time I needed to focus on everything I wanted for myself, my family, and my work. It was almost like the past three years with Luwamé, I was in my own little struggle, the kind where you are always creating and being everything for everyone but yourself, yet I talked about “ME TIME” like it was part of the Bible and don’t get me wrong, I did all the work that I preached about but somewhere in the midst of quitting my full time career and becoming a trainer, somewhere in the midst of sharing my story and responding to countless requests from women all over the world, I fell off the wagon of taking care of me.

I forgot to enjoy (really enjoy) my kids laugh, my husband’s gentle touch, and my girlfriend’s words of wisdom. I forgot how to have fun and instead only worked on building other women up. Taking this time for me, I was able to do all that and fall in love with the person I am becoming again. 

I’m a big believer in the fact that EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON.

My time away birthed so many amazing things that are now happening on Luwame.com. I’ve totally revamped the site, added new features, programs, freebies and much much more. Check it all out and tell me what you think. As you know, I’ve also started a new podcast (that was in the works pre-COVID)  but got paused along with the website. Inspired by Luwamé will have you laughing, saying “oh shit, this is so me”, nodding your head, and finally writing down all the take aways so that you too can practice everything we talk about. My goal with the podcast is to inspire you to want more for your life and to start doing the internal work that needs to be done so that you can become the woman you need to be to make your dreams happen for YOU. 

Last and most importantly, during my time away, I started writing my first ever fiction novel. It’s an empowering story based on my grandmother’s life and I can’t wait to share it with you. 

So, like I said in the beginning, I won’t call this a comeback, because I’ve been here for years, but you better believe “Mama said knock you out”.

The new version of Luwamé, the version I’m working on consistently is more fun, more focused and will definitely go easy on herself. 

Much Luv, 

Luwam T.