Category: Love

A Self Development Workshop – Live your Balance Part I

Posted on by Antoinette Njombua-Fombad

My name is Antoinette Njombua-Fombad, and I hosted a workshop on July 30th, 2022 – ‘Live Your Balance’. I am full of gratitude and thank all those who attended and supported this venture.

As a human being, I’ve always dreamt of creating spaces and environments for healing, loving, and growing. I figured if we can find a way to normalize vulnerability as an opportunity to build ourselves, we benefit from using our lessons to grow and create experiences in alignment with who we become. As a Coach, helping people understand the value of self-connection is one of my greatest passions and mission. Self-awareness is vital to the process.

My purpose for this workshop and future ones is to encourage us to grow just as our environments evolve and to be more intentional with authenticity as we connect with our humanity and our growth and becoming. When we become rigid with our perspectives or perceptions, there’s little room for inspiration, change, or growth. Living more consciously requires a flexible and open mind. That doesn’t mean you become these new perspectives overnight; it simply means you, without restrictions, allow yourself to reflect without conditioning, update your subconscious data, strengthen what you already value, or evolve it to create more balance.

These spaces are not for judgment, disrespect, disregard, shame, or blame. They are not meant for re-living what we already get out there. They are meant for release, reflection, and Growth. I am counting on us all to remember this purpose throughout these experiences so that we allow ourselves to learn from each other, from our reflections, leave intentionally ready to live more self-connected, and more equipped to build or enhance the habits that grow us, and keep us into a future we create for ourselves. I hope you choose to change an opportunity for growth and venture out to my next workshop or connect with me in person.

As always, keep Healing, Loving, and Growing!

24 hours around your world

Posted on by Antoinette Njombua-Fombad

We often hear motivational content say ‘the world is in your hands’. While meditating, I journeyed deeper into its meaning. In a space of gratitude, I remembered how much the world is in my hands. Every individual I connect with has experienced the world differently, So indirectly, I have shared their experiences through connection. I might not have been physically present, but our interaction and connection allow us to remember them as shared memories. 

There is also the abundance of technology, books, music, manuals, art, nature, media, movies, people who inspire and motivate us, home, family, cousins, aunties, uncles, friends, neighbors, colleagues, teachers, clients, pets, the tree in my front yard, my car… and I realise just how much I am inspired by, and connected to the world around me. 

I have experienced a vast array of people, places, food, personalities, tragedies, celebrations, cultures through all my relationships, and I am thankful for the gift of infinite connection through energy transfer. I am thankful for having the opportunity to travel the world personally, and indirectly through the world around me. To experience my social gatherings as an adventure, a place different from my comfort zone and an opportunity to relax and let my guard down.

 Open your eyes, your mind, and your heart, and speak your truth as you interact and you give yourself a free ticket to 90 days around YOUR universe. You will see, feel, and connect with people and your environment in ways you never thought were possible. Such connections might create countless opportunities to define and shape your life in all the ways you dream. 

We have crossed over from the fossil age to a civilization of energy. With this enormous dose of human interaction and connection, it is fair in that sense to agree that your world is in your hands, and providing priceless encounters and opportunities to grow. So wake up tomorrow, start all over, take another journey around your world, before your twenty four hours run out. 

Rest well Brother Chadwick! Wakanda Forever! 

Love & Connection

Posted on by Antoinette Njombua-Fombad

Every relationship is between two creatures even with yourself (body and spirit). Taking accountability for how and what you contribute, is an act that always has the white flag waving. It tells your intentions, with or without words, and determines the depth and nature of your relationships. 

Every relationship is as unique as every part of the body. But in order to exist, be alive, it needs to connect to the rest of the body. The individual abilities, and collective connectivity of our anatomy is what creates the capacity to form that unique human being. Even to the cellular level, there is power in numbers, possibly why even unintentionally, we crave environments that allow us to connect. 

The way you love others, is the way others love you. And the way others love you is the way you love others. 

Some connections build us, some break us. But even at that level, there is still a teaching moment. Connection is why we exist. It is how we are born to understand the world, OUR world. We are meant to connect, It is what builds us and our relationships, in the process of our growth journey. Just like our purposeful imperfectly perfect parts of the body build our physical form, our connections build and form us and our relationships. 

Every connection and relationship affords us experiences. Focus on the meaning in the lessons rather than the reason, even if it is unpleasant, even if you don’t find yourself the better human. In doing so, we maintain a growth mindset, a positive perception reality, and a contagious growth aura. Imagine such an aura from all your multitude of interconnectedness, that, can truly change your world. 

Make connections, build relationships as vast as your body, connect and experience as many souls in this world as possible. It is only a tiny-fraction of the experiences our universe has to offer. Use your connections to understand and love yourself, by doing that, you will have the capacity to love and understand your relationships. 

Choose love, choose a positive mindset, it will not only grow you, it will grow who you connect with. They receive the energy we teach indirectly, and grace with directly. That, is truly a gift to all of us. We are created to evolve, and Everything WITHIN us and around us, is meant to grow us. Keep Healing, Loving & Growing. 

It takes a village

Posted on by Antoinette Njombua-Fombad

I constantly work to understand why we tend to be biased with a mindset that seriously favors raising our children based on our childhood.

We fail to understand that this is their own childhood, that times are constantly changing, normalcy keeps evolving, and enlightenment is heightened. Parenting, mostly guided by modeling one’s childhood, can sometimes allow bias, and suppress our ability to empathize with the changing times.

By restricting our children, we are restricting ourselves too

As parents, our childhood is the favored contributing factor, and in most cases, the ultimatum, in our approaches. We fail to understand that by restricting our children, we are restricting ourselves too. We are meant to be parents, and they are meant to be children, but we are also created to spiritually connect with them, as people closest to our reality.

My rational judgement keeps guiding me to understand why raising my children cannot be discriminately dependent on my childhood.

For one, they are raised in a multitude of cultures and communities. The challenge of adapting to these different cultures and communities, is inevitable.They have to balance a fusion of their ethnic African, African-American, European-American and blended families’ cultural uniqueness, values and realities, all while facing an ever-growing technologically advanced society. And, undoubtedly, the frightening unknown of the world we live in.

As parents, we need to be understanding and accepting

In the middle of forming their identities, they have to maintain and forcefully integrate their true selves into this woven piece of different environmental influences. Given how times are ever changing, we as parents need to understand and accept that utilizing the best of our childhood to guide them is just as important as celebrating their successes, and guiding them through their challenges and struggles in adopting and adapting, as they journey through living their own childhood, making their own memories, and creating their own values in the process.

In a world growing in diversity by the minute, the African proverb ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ is one we will constantly learn, and collectively incorporate into our lives.

Human Connection

Posted on by Antoinette Njombua-Fombad

From a young age, human interaction and connection has been a very organic experience for me. I am what was labeled the very bold and daring girl child, if you go to an all girl’s boarding school, or happen to be raised in a biased African culture. As I got older, this affected my balance and living my purpose as a human, daughter, sister, wife, mother, aunt, and friend became challenging. I even punished myself with isolation but would feel the opposite of the effect I so desperately imagined would allow me to fit in, and it sucked for my spirit.

To many, I may be a people person, but I remain a citizen of humanity to all. Life experiences, emotional maturity, and spiritual growth over many years helped me understand why I was created this way. My life story has had its curves, but I mostly remember it being full of so many interconnected, teachable, favorable, and positive moments.

My nature has taught me that it is rare to walk up to someone in good faith, or with enthusiasm and not receive positive energy. That you can only understand someone better if you give them the opportunity, and that it is hard to hate someone up close. Energy has to move and flow, and one bad transfer can cause ripple effects so extensive it changes you.

The benefits of good energy and the abundance of love, guidance, and acceptance that one receives means more to give back. We are partly nurtured by the magnitude of energy we receive from our immediate environments, an external influence affecting our physiological, emotional, mental and spiritual growth.

The ability to understand and inspire human connection is a gift, and I embrace and own it. It has enriched me with an extensive library, and provided me with the appreciation of what it means to inspire. Remember the purpose of giving extends your blessings to enhance not only others, but yourself, even when it is not reciprocated. For when we open our heart, mind and spirit to truly touch another’s spirit, that by itself is a gift to our spirit.

I have understood that loving and giving consciously, is equally as important as doing so unconsciously. That every human interaction and connection is unique, and provide us with opportunities to grow. Take every human interaction as a lesson, connect and learn something different, feel something unexpected, add to your library of human connection, and reciprocate honestly and authentically as best as you can.

Open your heart when connecting with people, and you automatically live em-pathetically. Energy is the unspoken language that feeds the spirit, give and receive consciously.