I am always seeking things that are effortlessly beautiful. And so my newest fascination is Live Edge wood. I don’t admire it because it is prohibitively expensive. Or because it’s the newest design craze. I am simply taken with the perfectly imperfect. Live edge wood is wood in its natural state – the way I want to be.
I think this attraction to the natural is what attracted me to locs and natural hair so many years ago when I made the final decision to stop chemically straightening my hair and at the same, stop working for others. The two came hand-in-hand. When I freed myself in these ways, I finally became grounded in who I am, knowing my worth, accepting who I am and how I was made to be.
We all know, but keep forgetting: “Less is more.” As I get older (and wiser), I still balk at the time it takes for me to get ready to go outside of my house. Like we all do, I hate the lines on my forehead and the circles below my eyes. I detest the uneven surfaces of my skin and my eyebrows that are no longer there in force. I also resent that my energy is not what it used to be. But I don’t want to hate what just is. It is a waste of time. My imperfections are my truths and they are well-earned.
The circles under my eyes are like tree rings, counting the many nights that I wrote instead of sleep. The grey hairs that keep popping up, remind me that my systems in my body still work, as they were meant to. My slower pace reminds me to slow down and think more about the sheer power of being unapologetic.
Used in a sentence: “To embrace all of ourselves; the good, bad and ugly is to live, unapologetically.”