Tag: shallowness

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Song & Verse: Show me how big your brave is.

(Young) Woman. Grown Woman.

In August, I turned 38 years old. My theme for this new year is, “I’m a grown ass woman.”

Now to put that in context, I say during the first couple of years in my thirties, I came into my womanhood. The changes that transformed my life on my 30th birthday (and every year since) carried me away from girlish thoughts and behaviors. When I hit my 35th birthday, I felt like a “grown woman”. Up to that point all my vacations were crashing with friends or the cheapest hostel or motel in the vicinity. For the trip I took for my 35th birthday, I asked myself, “I’m a grown woman, why am I still vacationing like a college girl?” Not that the way one vacations is representative of who they are, but I think the mindset certainly is. I was spending all my free time trying to see people in their space, in their lives. None of them were trying to get to know me in my space or my life. And I returned from those vacations exhausted. I hadn’t devoted any time to nurturing myself.La GraceI didn’t think this birthday would be a big one for me. But let me tell ya, the last two years have kicked my butt. So much so that I’ve lost energy, enthusiam, and interest for a great many things. I’ve put away the childish things completely (people pleasing and people chasing). I’ve walked away from the dead relationships (people who suck you dry or attempt to destroy you in more creative ways) and I let go of the unproductive situations (everything else that doesn’t edify me spiritually). My thirties have been very cathartic and revolutionary. Achieving, claiming and walking in my womanhood has been a progression like anything else:  Introduction to Womanhood => Settling into Womanhood => Emanating Womanliness.

Grown **Ass** Woman

This is how big my brave is: I will be who I am.

La Grace 3I have lived my life with a heart-deep desire to be accepted, appreciated and loved for who I am. Who hasn’t? I’ve spent a lifetime getting to know people who have never been interested in knowing me… so I’ve loved a lot, but I haven’t really been loved. That’s a sad thought, but it’s also empowering. People aren’t comfortable with my blunt directness or the sincerity of my person. I have never asked anyone to modify themselves to be around me. It sounds incredibly arrogant to even think the thought, yet nearly everyone I know has told me at one point to “tone down” or “pull back”. For years, I struggled with the question:  What is an acceptable dosage of LaShawnda to share in any particular envionment?

This summer, I have learned and shared boldly this jem: A person’s inabilty to accept who I am is not my problem.

I don’t need to make excuses for the woman I am. I don’t need to subjugate the person I am to accomodate another person’s sense of who they are. If I can’t be who I am in any given interaction with another person, then they don’t need to be interacting with me. I don’t need to waste my time or my energy trying to figure them out. I can keep moving unemcumbered so I can openly greet the person(s) on my path who are ready to openly greet me in return.

I will no longer hide the fullness of my personality so others can be comfortable in their shallowness.

Today, ask yourself how big your brave is. Don’t shy away from your answer. Embrace it. Then pursue it. Honestly, I wanna see you be brave!   

SONG & VERSE: BRAVE by Sara Bareilles

You can be amazing
You can turn a phrase into a weapon or a drug
You can be the outcast
Or be the backlash of somebody’s lack of love
Or you can start speaking up
Nothing’s gonna hurt you the way that words do
And they settle ‘neath your skin
Kept on the inside and no sunlight
Sometimes a shadow wins
But I wonder what would happen if you
 
Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
 
With what you want to say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
 
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I wanna see you be brave
 
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I wanna see you be brave
 
Everybody’s been there, everybody’s been stared down
By the enemy
Fallen for the fear and done some disappearing
Bow down to the mighty
Don’t run, stop holding your tongue
Maybe there’s a way out of the cage where you live
Maybe one of these days you can let the light in
Show me how big your brave is
 
Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
 
With what you want to say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
 
Innocence, your history of silence
Won’t do you any good
Did you think it would?
Let your words be anything but empty
Why don’t you tell them the truth?
 
Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
 
With what you want to say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
 
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I wanna see you be brave (Repeat 3x’s)
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All that glitters is not gold.

EFF Group shot 2000-2009
I had a great time this weekend. I had been looking forward to seeing and meeting people who had shared the same rare opportunity as me – working for the Johnson Publishing Company as an Ebony Fashion Fair Model (EFF). I had always considered the Ebony Fashion Fair as my sorority – a sisterhood of shared fashion and entertainment memory. Of shared childhood dreams of modeling and becoming part of the history of an iconic American brand (Ebony Magazine) that came to represent everything that was dream worthy to Black America. It has been a joy and a pleasure to have had the EFF as one of the many opportunities God has colored and tailored my life with.

That being said, I want to caution people who praise and over-admire the physical beauty of people.

The first time anyone ever called me “gorgeous” was when I was 25 and they had just learned that I would be modeling for Ebony Fashion Fair. That memory has stayed with me all these years. It has grounded me. I had worked in the same office as that woman for over a year and she had never as much as spoken to me. I didn’t ask at the time, but I certainly thought, “Am I only ‘gorgeous’ because you perceive models to be gorgeous and now that someone will pay me to wear clothes that makes me attractive?”

It was a disturbing idea for me. My time with EFF was discombobulating for that very reason. I never thought anyone ever saw ME. They saw a brand. They saw an image. They did not see, nor did they want to see LA’SHAWNDA.

Many beautiful people buy into the adulation of other people. I don’t consider myself a physically beautiful person. And I’m okay with that. I would prefer for my beauty to always shine from the inside. And with that, people who share parts of my life may describe me as a beautiful person after they have taken the time to get to know ME. After they’ve invested TIME, not blind, worthless admiration, to get to know and appreciate LA’SHAWNDA the person.

I’m sharing this because one question and follow-up question to a few people this weekend caused a cat-storm to rain over my head last night. My question: “How are you doing?”

Each replied in different conversations: “Great!!!”

Each time I asked: “Is that a real great?” It didn’t quite ring true. (Cue cats.)

They each assured me: “I am absolutely great! Everything’s wonderful!”

Last night one of girls, after several drinks, started complaining to a mutual friend of ours, as I stood there, that I was a Debbie-downer. Suddenly everything about my outfit was wrong, I needed a wardrobe make-over, my wig was horrible and needed to be retired. “Why would you ask someone if their ‘great’ was real,” this person snapped at me.

“Why would someone tell me they’re ‘great’ if they’re not,” I replied.

I’ve said this before and I will continue to say it: You can’t have a real conversation with people who are sharing false information.

If my asking someone if their “‘great’ is a real ‘great'” leads to me being attacked, well… the attack sort of answers my question. If my sitting on the floor for a crowded group picture leads to half the women in the photo gasping in horror and a couple of other folks telling me how crazy I am for doing that, then the shallowness of their superficiality is beyond my ability to explain or even understand.

I say this because people who only receive and appreciate validation based on how they look are only ever going to be concerned with the image they portray and how other people view them. There will be nothing more important to them than the illusion they create for their public’s consumption. The illusion of their fabulosity. The falseness of their greatness.

My responses when people I knew asked me how I was:  “I’m good. No real complaints.”

“Do you really mean that?” (Attempt to give me some of my own medicine.)

“Yeah. There’s always the fact that I don’t have a man or children, but life has been good to me. My biggest complaint this week is that I couldn’t take another week off work. Is that really a problem?”

“What do you do?”  

“I’m an administrative assistant.”

End of conversation. They got more truth than they expected. But I had no issue with speaking my truth. i do what I do. I am who I am. It is what it is. And LIFE IS GOOD!

My point here is: Truth and honesty about who/where you are in life contributes more to your life satisfaction than projecting greatness. Once the lights go off, can people still see you? Were you truly emanating light? Or were you only reflecting the artificial light from the depths of your emptiness?