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Yavi Griggs

@yavi.griggs

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Mom
Model
1978 ~ 2006
2019 ♥️
2024 ♥️
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by @yavi.griggs
I've been thinking about pain lately and how we make sense of it. Why do we willingly endure suffering? Is it because we believe there's something to gain from it? And if we finally reach whatever it is we're working toward, does that mean the pain ends? I don't think it's that simple. Each experience seems to lead somewhere different, and sometimes we don't know where until we've reached the end. Even then, who's to say we'll understand it? But what about suffering we never chose? Childhood neglect, abandonment, the things we grow up believing about ourselves because of how others treated us. What are we supposed to gain from those experiences? Carl Jung's ideas about the unconscious mind becomes interesting to me. How much of what we do is influenced by things we haven't fully recognized within ourselves? Someone can spend their childhood feeling emotionally neglected, grow up longing for connection, and somehow find themselves experiencing that same neglect in adulthood. Different relationships, yet familiar feelings. Did they never learn from the pain, or was experiencing it never enough to understand it? Then there's the influence of family patterns. How much of what we call our personality is actually behavior we've learned from the people around us? How many of us are repeating things that began generations before we were born? But awareness doesn't necessarily mean freedom from those patterns either. You can understand why something hurts and still struggle with it. So does healing mean the pain disappears, or that our relationship with it changes? I question why we're so determined to give suffering a purpose. We tell people everything happens for a reason, but what if it doesn't? What if some experiences were simply unfair? Does finding meaning in what happened help us heal, or can it become another way of justifying what we've endured? And what happens when someone becomes so familiar with suffering that peace feels foreign? How would they distinguish between pain they're enduring for something meaningful and pain they've simply learned to accept? I don't have the answers. I think the more I try to understand behavior, the more questions I fi by @yavi.griggs
🥲 God my heart is breaking. Time went by so quickly. by @yavi.griggs
Le Cirque Des Vanites Cast and Crew Models: @jennis_aerial_stories @gidget_the_clown @dat1bae @elenaasmar @yavi.griggs @kekky17 @zeeparkerfire @mistressofmagik @ethereal.harlow.marlow @kmur.phy69 @whoiscazzie Photographers: @ars.picz @phantomfilmmakerpnw @vitzphotos by @yavi.griggs
Le Cirque des Vanités by @yavi.griggs
Made you look. Don’t act shy now. 🤭 📷: @byrdhousemedia by @yavi.griggs
I think we tend to pick and choose who we interact with based, at least partly, on what feels familiar to us. We gravitate toward people who reflect something we recognize. Something comfortable. Something that confirms the version of ourselves we already know. Sometimes, we avoid people who make us uncomfortable. Why? Maybe they intimidate us. Maybe they trigger insecurity. Maybe jealousy comes up. Maybe there's something about them that forces us to look at a part of ourselves we'd rather not examine yet. Obviously, sometimes people are just unsafe, incompatible, annoying, exhausting, or simply not your people. Not every uncomfortable feeling is some profound spiritual lesson. Discernment fucking matters. But sometimes? Reaction is information. Because we don't experience the world in a vacuum... Here's what I mean. We react through everything that shaped us, nature, nurture, attachment, childhood, environment, relationships, survival, trauma, rejection, love, fear. The brain learns patterns. *This feels safe. *This feels dangerous. *This gets me love. *This gets me rejected. *This is what connection feels like. *This is what I should expect from people. *This is who I have to become to survive. Eventually those patterns become so automatic that we stop recognizing them as patterns at all. We just call them us. So we keep choosing what is familiar. *Familiar relationships. *Familiar personalities. *Familiar emotional dynamics. *Familiar disappointments. Even when familiar isn't necessarily healthy. And that's where it gets interesting, for me at least. There's a quote often attributed to Carl Jung. “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Which is fucking fascinating when you think about it. Because how many things have we called fate that were actually repetition? How many times have we said, “This always happens to me,” without asking why the same dynamic keeps finding its way back into our lives? At some point, self awareness asks you to stop looking only at the people around you and start looking inward. Not to blame yourself, but to understand yourself. *Your triggers. *Your proj by @yavi.griggs
Ah, The Seattle modeling scene… whew. Especially as a Black woman. I’ve been thinking about this the same way I think about relationships lately: what are you actually doing to show up as a safe person? Because “everyone is welcome here” sounds cute on a flyer or a post. “We celebrate diversity” sounds great in a caption. But what happens once everybody actually gets there? Who is getting photographed? Who is being approached without having to ask? Who gets time, attention, direction and enthusiasm? And who is standing around watching everybody else get prioritized and utilized??? If Black models have to repeatedly advocate for themselves just to receive the same consideration everybody was supposedly invited there to receive, that is a problem. That responsibility should not have to fall entirely on the Black women in the room. Organizers need to ORGANIZE. If you are hosting something under the banner of inclusivity, then pay attention to what is happening at your own event. Advocate when you notice disparities. Check in. Redirect photographers when necessary. Make sure people aren't being quietly pushed to the margins while everyone pretends the space is equitable. REJI, DEI, inclusion,,, whatever fucking language you want to use, cannot just be something you post. It has to exist in the behavior. And please don't make posts talking about being “open and welcoming to ALL models” if you're unwilling to notice whether all models are actually being treated like they belong once they arrive. Like..shut the fuck up mannnn. Relationships, am I right? 😂 Your words tell me who you want people to think you are. Your actions tell me whether you're actually safe. And if this post makes you uncomfortable because you recognize yourself in it… well. Maybe sit with that. by @yavi.griggs
by @yavi.griggs
I wanna talk about trauma bonds. I feel like the internet has taken this word, ran with it, and now half the time people don't even mean the same thing when they say it! Honestly, I think that's a problem. A trauma bond does NOT mean two people went through trauma together. It doesn't mean you and someone else have both been through some fucked up things and now you're really close because of it. That's called bonding through a shared experience. It's not the same thing as a trauma bond. A trauma bond is something that can happen when you become deeply attached to someone who is actively hurting you. I think, THAT distinction matters so much. Because the person hurting you can also be the person comforting you. They're the person making you feel loved after they've made you feel worthless. They're the person apologizing after they've hurt you. They're the person promising they'll change. They're the person giving you these moments of affection, reassurance, attention, love bombing, whatever it is... right after you've been emotionally wrecked. And that's where SHITTT gets confusing... You're not experiencing ONLY pain. You're also getting these really intense moments of relief. Positive reinforcement. And when the good moments come after the bad ones, you can start holding onto them HARD. You remember the beginning. You remember who they were when everything felt amazing. You remember the nights where you felt so loved. You remember the apologies. You remember the promises. You remember the version of them that made you think, “THIS is who they REALLY are.” So when things get bad again, instead of thinking, “This relationship is hurting me,” you might start spiral thinking... “How do I get that person back?” “What did I do wrong?” “Maybe I need to communicate differently.” “Maybe I was too emotional.” “Maybe I should've been more understanding.” “Maybe if I just give them one more chance...” And then you get another good moment. And suddenly you're hopeful again. And THAT cycle can become incredibly difficult.. Here's what I can personally recall... there's Hurt. Relief. Hope. Hurt. Relief. Hope. Over and over, and fucking over and by @yavi.griggs
I think I've spent most of my life doing instead of feeling. Maybe that's why time feels so strange to me now. I went into foster care at 17. I started my relationship with Jordan at 18. I'm about to be 27. Somewhere in between, I became a wife, a mother, had two babies, survived things I still don't completely understand, and convinced myself that because my life looked better than the one I escaped, it must've been good. There was an entire world moving outside of me. And somehow I stood still. I don't mean literally. I did everything. I raised babies. I worked. I survived. I kept going. But emotionally? I think parts of me were frozen in places I never got the chance to leave properly. Thats the weird thing about trauma.. Sometimes you don't realize how much of your personality was actually adaptation until you finally have enough quiet to meet yourself without it. This year alone has felt like several lifetimes. Divorce. Learning things about my marriage that changed how I understood years of my life. A car accident and witnessing a man die. Finding out more about my mother's death. Learning more about who she was. Moving. Watching Olivia grow into a first grader. Now preparing for Emilia to start daycare when I never imagined having to let go of that time with her so soon. And suddenly I'm asking myself, Where did all the time go? Maybe that's why sunsets hit me differently now. The mountains. The forests. Even that god-awful I-5. Sometimes I look around and feel almost overwhelmed by the fact that I'm actually here to see it. To be. To feel. There were years when I didn't know how to do either one. I've spent more time alone lately, and surprisingly, I like myself there. The quiet has shown me which parts of me are healed and which parts still reach for old ways of surviving when I'm bored, lonely, scared, or hurting. I'm learning not to judge those parts anymore. I'm learning to understand them. The ocean has always done something strange to me. People say the sea buries the mistakes of mankind.. Maybe. But sometimes I think the sea remembers. Maybe that's why standing beside it feels like coming home and grieving at the same time. The world is moving by @yavi.griggs
I think one of the biggest things I’ve realized lately is that somewhere between being a mom, becoming a single mom, working, trying to heal, and trying to set my girls and myself up for a GOOD future...I stopped caring so much about whether everybody accepts me. Like genuinely. I don’t feel like I owe everybody an explanation for my silence anymore. If I stopped talking, stopped showing up, stopped trying to squeeze myself into certain spaces or quietly removed myself, just know it was necessary. There was no benefit to me being there anymore. And I don’t even mean “benefit” in some selfish, "what can you do for me kind of way." I mean there was no peace there. No growth. No genuine friendship. No reciprocity. Nothing that made me better, healthier, safer or happier. So I stopped forcing it. Square peg, round hole. 🤷‍♀️ I could keep shaving pieces off myself trying to fit somewhere I clearly don’t belong, or I could finally accept...girl, this just ain’t your damn hole. 😂 And funny enough, sometimes once you stop showing up and stop playing whatever role people became comfortable with you playing, THAT becomes the problem. Eh. Don’t care. Because I’ve changed. For the better. And some of the people who were perfectly comfortable around me when I was at my lowest are simply not people I care to associate with anymore. That includes certain “friend groups,” although let’s be real, I wouldn’t even call most of those relationships friendships now. Even modeling spaces, social circles, whatever. Nah. I’m branching off. I know what friendship feels like. That wasn’t it. Maybe that’s maturity. Maybe it’s exhaustion. Maybe it’s my depression occasionally saying, “girl, fuck these people.” 🤷‍♀️🖕😂 ... Who knows? Probably a little bit of everything. But there’s something else I’ve realized too. Do you know how GOOD it feels to accomplish something huge and know that I did it myself? I got into a master’s program. ME. I actually did that. And I did it without Jordan. That part means more to me than I can really explain. Because there was a time when I was genuinely scared of that man. If I’m being by @yavi.griggs

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