Monday, June 20, 2011

The way God thinks I look best...losing my fears and embracing my reality and destiny.

So,  I have started wearing my hair curly. This is a VERY BIG DEAL for me.  Curly is my natural hair...and I have hated it all my life...and spent countless hours fighting it. Ironing it, straightening it, blow drying it, torturing my head and my heart that somehow, this mop I was born with was inadequate. My mother, (who was my best friend and advocate...and often the one helping me try to tame my locks) used to say to me about my curls, "well, ok, let's do it (whatever the new and improved way I had come up with to smooth my hair)...but this (the curly head) is the way God thinks you look best." I hated when she would say that...because (in my immature and still forming opinion of the world) it is not what "the boys" liked. I can remember being as young as 3 years old...sitting in the hairdressers big chair say I wanted "flip" (the straight poof that Marlo Thomas used to wear in "That Girl").... My curls would not accommodate a "flip".... and so they would just get chopped off for ease of maintenance and management, until I was old enough to do my own hair care...which is when all of the straightening began...at about age 14. 


So here I am at 49...and now just too damned busy for hair care...so about three weeks ago, I took a whole cup of fixating gel and poured it onto my head out of frustration one day when I was running late for a meeting (and my hair was looking very "bozo the clown").... Wallah.... Wash and go hair (with gel). Who knew? It looks a lot better than it did being straightened. All those hours of wasted time.... All of those feelings of inadequacy. All of that pain of over heating my head! This is how God thinks I look best! 


I think it is sad when people lose their lives early, before becoming fully conscious of the need to grow outside of their day to day tribulations...to get out of our own head and discover their place in the world.  What if I had died before I came to accept and love my natural curly hair?  But this is about so much more than hair....it is about self-acceptance and finding the meaning for your life... YOUR life's mission....  


For me, starting these women uniting efforts such as Pink Link Pages and FemmeSpeak! makes life exhilarating and scary at the same time...but I am fortunate to have discovered that this is what I was born to do.  Every day we choose our thoughts...our reactions to others...our behaviors... and the meaning of our existence rises from all of this. Choosing our thoughts is powerful!  If we worship money..we will never have enough wealth.  If we worship social networks, we will never be popular enough.  If we worship beauty, we will never be pretty enough.  Our fears drive us..whether we admit to them or not.  Will we have enough food to eat?  Will we be attractive to others...(do fear being lonely?) Are we afraid we will not be remembered...or have mattered? 


What I am aware of now are the driving forces of my existence beyond my breath. Being married 27 years helped quell my fears of loneliness..so I could grow to try the curly hair at some point.... What else do I face that causes me fear?  I refuse to be scared!  I am a warrior!  I refuse to live in fear of my destiny...whatever that is.   My life's mission, I now know, is to unite and empower women. If you are also so lucky to have discovered your mission in life...you know what I am saying...all of those fears go away. You rise to your potential and your grace by being the way God thinks you look best.  Be the fullness of who you are and what you are meant to be and you will best reflect the light of God's love in the world (and likely scare the bejesus out of those who don't get you...but be patient with them, they are still searching for their mission).