Before and After

I can't believe it took only TWO hours to totally, irrevocably change FIVE YEARS of growth!

I got my first relaxer at 9 and i have no clue how that felt. But at 32, it somehow feels... well... i dunno. Kinda like the rest of my life right now.... Good bad or otherwise, there's no goin back. It is a drastic change, just like everything else. And it will take work to make sure it's a positive change - just like everything else.

As I looked at my pics, the few where you see my full face, I look like a little girl w/my natual hair. With it straightened, all I see is 'woman'. And maybe that was the reason this change feels so right and so true to me right now.

I was not grown at 25. I may have been an adult. But certainly, life had not done the work it has done now. I was mature enough to do grown-up things. But there was another component of that that I just had not grasped. But God... and life has never been the same.

The last six months has sent me reeling, but it's also pulled me fully into my own as a woman.

Months ago, when I first felt the start of change, I said to God that I wasnt sure I was ready, I didn't feel ready. He said to me that one collaborative set of events would happen that would prove just how ready I am to move into this new season.

Lo and behold, between all this madness with H and my grandparents being ill and this thing of work and all that the last few months has dumped in my lap, somehow (grace), I've stood back up and I feel a confidence and a strength that I didn't know was inside me.

God told the truth. I'm ready.

And somehow that inward change ties w/the outward ones...

sooooo... so that I can have picture proof that I actually WAS natural for a few years, here we go:

BEFORE:

the only style I could do, forever! my ponytail!

ponytail from the front. i have no idea what I was smirking at.

not a great pic, but my twistout from this past weekend! my LAST twistout!

sideview of my twistout. cant tell her, but the definition was GORGEOUS!

AFTER:

first pic of my first relaxer in 5 years! (ignore the clothes and such. seriously)

Tierany did a GREAT job!

Ok. So. Now that I have my photo documentation, we can get bck to regularly scheduled blogging!

I haven't told or shown my family yet. I'm just gonna show up. My parents will jump for joy - especially my dad. He'll feel like his kid is back, in some very real way. And that's ok. Because the stuff on the inside, the things I most wanted him to embrace and accept, he has and he does. He had even made his peace with the hair. And although I didn't do this for anyone but me, I totally get how such a physical switch coupled with all the other shifting coulda thrown him off, so now maybe it wont feel like we're such strangers anymore.

And if we get that back, then that blessing alone is worth this surprisingly bittersweet way I feel inside....