Manifesting For Everyone: Candice Brathwaite On Unlocking The Life You Deserve
My father died suddenly in 2009, following a short bout of the flu. Less than a week later, I sat with a family member while they received a life-changing diagnosis and, soon after that, I finally ended a relationship that was no good for me. Looking back, it
was clear that the universe was trying to tell me something. Friendships fell apart. Communication with my loved ones became non-existent, and the only things that seemed to take the edge off were drugs and alcohol.
Late one evening, nursing a bad hangover, I came across a copy of The Secret on my nan’s bookshelf. It explained the basics of manifesting, very simply. All the manifestation practices in the world wouldn’t have stopped those events from happening, but they might have limited the emotional fallout that spilled over into the other columns of my life.
The word manifestation is everywhere, having powered countless self-help philosophies. But what does it actually mean? In the simplest terms, it is the practice of turning desires into reality through belief. How you do that can depend on who you ask.
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I have noticed, over the years, that the leaders, writers and educators in the self-help community who are the faces of manifestation usually have one thing in common: they tend to be white and middle-class. In other words, they had a head start, in bodies and lifestyles that automatically granted certain privileges. Manifestation is for everyone, but the truth is, if you are lucky enough to be born in a physical form that begets the world’s love, respect and attention, then there is a high likelihood that, more often than not, you are going to be just fine.
Traditional media has centred you. Social media offers you a fairer algorithm. As a consumer, you have seen positive reflections of yourself with every swipe. Everything says: ‘You belong here.’ And what you believe about the world changes the way you behave.
Having read the books and watched the videos by the same type of person over and over, I found myself thinking that, although they were helpful, the creators had been able to skip steps.
That thought provided the spark of inspiration for my book Manifesto. Finding people who looked and sounded like me talking about manifestation is still difficult. But now, being able to do so is my privilege. So, let’s blow the hinges off this space.
At the root of Manifesto, I wanted to explore how I could have a conversation about these practices from a different standpoint. It’s all well and good to rattle on about the universe having your back when you’re born into a culture that welcomes you, but what about manifestation for people who are bootstrapping it? What does it look like if you’re not white, thin, conventionally good-looking, well-to-do, able-bodied, supported by nepotism or don’t have English as your first language?
What does manifesting mean if you see police killing people who look like you while they struggle to communicate that they can’t breathe? How about if you have the talent but not the ‘look’? Or if, for whatever reason, you exist on the periphery of society – if you struggle with addiction, or if you’ve been abused? What does manifesting look like if you’re a Black woman? As for that last question, I’m living it.
Most of us who have found the call of manifestation too loud to ignore have come here because we have no more cards left to play. We’ve given life our all, and yet we feel defeated, deflated and downtrodden. I arrived at the manifestation gates emotionally beaten and bloodied – finally ready to surrender, to throw in the towel of my will and admit that I alone couldn’t quite get anything to work out for me.
My early steps towards manifestation in 2009 were helpful. I used the power of positive thinking when I went to visit my father in the chapel of rest, at a point in my life when I was struggling to come to terms with the fact that I was light years behind my peers, who were all in stable relationships and had secure jobs. But while manifestation might have taken the edge off my grief, I was too young to understand how committed I needed to be to truly reap the rewards. Heck, I was still going to bed with my make-up on.
Fast forward eight years and I began to think about the practice again. By now, a lot had changed. I was 29, pregnant with my second child and living outside London, the city that had raised me. I was trying my best to break down the invisible but powerful wall that had positioned itself between the life I currently lived and the one I was beginning to under-
stand I deserved. But I felt stuck.
My career was unstable, personal debt hung like a noose around my neck and, having had a near-death experience giving birth to my daughter Esmé, I was crippled by a fear of childbirth that was limiting my excitement about meeting my son. I was desperate. So I dived down the manifestation rabbit hole once more – consuming all the material I could find – and I haven’t come up since.
I’m not trying to scam you: manifestation takes work. It’s not just sitting down and thinking positively. Absolutely do that, but then ask yourself what real steps you are taking towards achieving those goals. For instance, when I finally believed I could own a home, I could vision-board what I expected my dream house to look like all day long, but then I had to go and do the ugly stuff: fix my appalling credit score, open up my debt drawer where bills were left unread and deal with it. Going into your own ‘debt drawer’ and confronting what makes you feel shame is all part of the process.
My life today is unrecognisable from how it was a decade ago. This isn’t to say crazy shit hasn’t happened – of course it has. But it’s the way I think about and react to events that has changed. However painful or difficult something is, I now know to look for the lesson in it. And the quicker I commit to the lesson, the quicker the difficult things seem to disappear.
It might sound super smug, and sometimes it feels as if it is, but today I expect good things to happen to and for me – even when the odds aren’t in my favour. There is something inherently powerful about rejecting a negative narrative of your life, taking control of it and saying: ‘You know what? I genuinely believe good things will come to pass.’
Although I’m quite ‘woo-woo’ and love being the magician of my own life, manifestation isn’t just magic – it’s about having the guts to listen to yourself, even though women, Black women in particular, are told again and again not to. Indeed, if I could go back and tell the younger Candice something, it would be this: ‘Babe, you were always right.’
I hope this book gives women of colour permission to start accepting an idea of themselves that they have often denied, because society has said: ‘That is not for you, you cannot have that, you cannot take up that space.’ I want them to finish this book, puff out their chests and say: ‘I’m so done playing small.’ You do not get what you ask for, you get more of who you actually are. The quickest way to actualise that is to show up in little ways every day as the person who has already arrived.
'Manifesto' by Candice Brathwaite is available now.
This article originally appeared in the ELLE UK October 2024 issue.
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