I’m into my 5th soul now. That makes me three hundred and twenty.

-Prince

Love Symbol Album

Even my therapist told me on Saturday morning that she had a special relationship with Prince even if he didn’t know about it.

LOL!!!

I laughed and shook my head. “Yes, I think I understand what you mean.” I absolutely understand. Prince was by no means the focal part of my session this weekend but his passing has made me realize several things, the most important being that: I want to be happy. I don’t want to stay too sad about anything for longer than is necessary.

I gave myself a moment when I found out about his passing at work to go into the bathroom and cry as if I had lost someone I actually knew. I was in shock and literally could not believe it.  My Prince was gone. Then I forced myself to examine the root cause of my sadness.

Prince’s music played such a major role of a very formative time in my life and was the binding force of some very major relationships. My memories are bound to a catalog of music and Prince was the soundtrack to my preteens, teens and 20s in an inextricable way. But I have been so focused on being present in my life, staying consistent with self care and self love practices and doing things I’ve always wanted to do like the sewing class I started taking at Manhattanville Tailors in Harlem, that I have found it doesn’t serve me to submerge myself fully in mourning Prince’s return to a pure form of energy. For me, his passing is a cause for celebration of all he gave to us. Because he gave so much more than we are even aware of. To this day I listen to his music and hear things, realize things he was saying, ideas he was forming that I never realized before even after having listened to his albums for years!

So I feel more like I’m saying hello to Prince than goodbye. It’s just goodbye to his physical form, but to the energy of his spirit there are only infinite possibilities for hellos, re-introductions interpretations and endless inspiration.

That being said I fully understand the impact this sense of loss has on generations of Prince lovers. Inspired as he himself was by late greats like James Brown, Little Richard, Rick James, Miles Davis and more, he was a true original and there never was and won’t ever be another like him.

Still…

The same can be said of each and everyone of us if we were to truly live the lives we have always dreamed of. We were born to live. And as I discover more and more about the transference and transformation of energy, I realize that life is really all there is.