Meet thabile makue

We were lucky to catch up with Thabile Makue recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Thabile, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

Often, I hear people talk about resilience as the consequence of hardship. A burdensome reminder that they went through something they would rather have not. But for me, resilience is a spiritual response to life’s inevitable challenges. I say “spiritual” to mean the miraculous ability of our minds, hearts, and bodies to heal and adapt and regenerate. I draw my resilience from an innate belief that I am worthy of wellbeing and my own effort to heal. But mostly, I am resilient because it is nature to repair and grow.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am a poet and the author of ‘Mamaseko, a collection of lyric poems exploring familial relationships and blood identities.

I am a spiritual healer in the modality of African Traditional Healing Therapy. I am trained and initiated to support myself and others heal through teaching, divination, and energy healing.

I am also a nonprofit leader working to increase economic freedom, especially for women and femmes and our families and communities that have been impacted by poverty, violence, exploitation, and incarceration.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Self-knowledge is one of the most powerful tools for healing and creating a joyful and fulfilling life. To know yourself, you need to spend a lot of quality time in solitude. For me, this was, for a long time, an unwanted and feared experience. Now, after so many years of sometimes brutal isolation and loneliness, I can say I understand myself, and I know clearly what I do and don’t want. I know the whispers and longings of my own heart.

The second skill I find useful is courage. Courage does not require fearlessness; it is the ability to leap into the thing that is calling you, even when you’re terrified. You end up great distances ahead of what you thought was possible. Courage is also the fuel for our healing work. We need courage to try to be better, even when we’re unsure we can be. To be courageous, we need to take small steps to answer our hearts’ desires, no matter how scary. The more we do this, the more we’re able to take bigger and bigger leaps.

Empathy is my greatest reward. I always tell people that my psychic gifts are related to empathy, and both are related to a trauma response of believing I can keep myself safe if I understand people and can anticipate their actions. The more healing work I have done, the less useful this has been. But it has been bountiful as a source for poetry. As a healer, empathy also allows me to see my clients and feel their experiences in a way that helps me provide them meaningful support. As a communications strategist, I use empathy to communicate effectively with different audiences.
Empathy can be increased through curiosity about the people and the world around us. For those who struggle with this, I recommend short meditations where you ask questions about others… Who is this person? What do they need? What sadness are they feeling? What joy? What do they want from me?

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

Fierce Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff helped me start giving myself the love I craved from others. It inspired me to start writing daily love notes that have transformed my relationship with myself. As a result of reading this book and working to be more compassionate to myself, I became friends with myself.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @thabilemakue