#BIGgirlhood
This chapter in my life is called #BIGgirlhood
I'm 31 going on 32. And I’m still feeling awkward in my being… Let's chat about it!
Yall…
I think I finally figured it out.
I think this part of life that I'm in, this in between…
no longer the girl i remember
not quite yet the woman I dream to be…
but somewhere in the middle of it all.
Soft. Pliable… bending twisting cracking with the threat of breaking… but never dismembered. (Praise God)
For so much of my life was focused on mastering the performance of womanhood. Molding myself in the image of desirability and usefulness…
At what point did i go from playing in my mother's heels, to collecting heels of my own?
Like when did I "grow up"? Where did my 20's go!?
What was I even doing with myself pre 2019??
There's an entire phase of my life that I've never sat with because I've been in survival mode.
5 years of innocence; 25 years of survival, and 1 year of rest…
So much has come to the surface since I became "stable".
And I place "stable" in quotations because the stability I thought I needed is nothing compared to the stability i have in God. And God has done some incredible things in my life; this house… my husband…
two milestones my girl self never considered to put on her prayer requests, but somewhere along the way became the lights at the end of the tunnel.
To be in a space that doesn't have an expiration date. To have space to grow into. To be aware of the space you have to grow into. Feels strange. No boxes stacked in preparation for displacement… A true settling down. I'm settling down…?
We moved in a year ago, and as of recent I am feeling myself… unclench. Relax… opening to this newness. This settling in; this conceptualizing of permanence. As a child we moved almost every single year. And I never realized how unsettled I was until I had somewhere to settle into… a place to process so that I may proceed. Proceed into what exactly? I'm' not sure…
So many "muscles" have relaxed over this past year, I find myself weeping in gratitude almost daily… but in the relaxing + releasing of that white-knuckle grip the reflection is getting clearer and clearer.
Now that I'm not thrashing, shit has started to float to the surface… there are some beautiful things that I'm finally able to recognize in the glimmers of light.
Yet in the same refractive surface, I can see this… THING. Something that I must have created in my attempts to protect myself. To survive. To keep my light.
What a hodgepodge I’ve made… what a suit of armor I have on. Pieces that I learned, borrowed, scavenged, stole and fought for. These things became my identity…
One day I woke up and realized it was time to take inventory. As meticulously as I had created this thing, I had to pick through it and make some decisions. Keep what serves my greatest good, retire the rest.
Not all of these tools I’ve collected are useless, but many of them are just there…
Mostly things I inherited… those built in patterns committed to the hard drive of my DNA by previous players. We've built up such a strong tool box! It did work!
But I find myself feeling weighed down by this "protective suit" on my journey to self discovery, and I am ready to refine and redefine myself.
I want to understand who the woman that I dream to be is…
I want to embody her habits, desires and morals. What are her goals? What is her style like? (cue Beyonce poem lmao)
I know that in this process Ill need to be sure that I hold some real space.
To hold space for the girl that I am, to grieve the girl that I was, and to retire the girl that I had to be. To hold space for the girls that my ancestors were never able to be.
I'm ready to be THAT gworl! A woman! A force to be oogled at and boogled by!
I'm ready to sit in my femininity, to fill in my mold. I’m ready to graduate from a cutie patootie to a sensual siren! I'm ready to be comfortable in not only my skin, but my path and my purpose…
I know I'm not even close to figuring this thing out HOWEVER, ya girl loves a journey… so join me on this journey to #BIGgirlhood. I think it’s gonna be a good one!
