Unfiltered Me

For the last several months, my brain has been swirling like springtime tornado, fed by the winds of a soul blowing in the direction of complete overhaul. Hell, my entire life for the past year has been just that..... storms and debris with just enough sunny days to keep me from going underground for good.

It was hard.

I still find it almost impossible to write about. My story, like so many others who've dealt with a lifetime of anxiety, confusion about who and what we really are, and the subsequent depression that comes on the heels of those painful unanswered questions, is so intensely personal that I just keep finding myself not quite ready.

I took this picture on my birthday last week. It's an unedited, unfiltered, un-botoxed, extensions-less me.

I'm 46 and this is my face.

I decided somewhere in the middle of storm season that I'm tired. Like, exhausted down to my last little wrinkle tired of leading with my face or body or Daisy Dukes or any other shiny thing intended to capture your attention. It's equal parts scary and relieving to say.....

I don't need you to look at me in order to feel like I'm worth a whole sky full of adoration.

As I let the wrinkles set in, so too came a warm kind of wisdom and discernment.

When I accepted the few extra pounds of body fat that come with being 40 something, I found myself able to exhale a sigh of relief.

And while little tinsel-colored hairs are desperately seeking to dominate the blonde ones (not gonna lie, I'm fighting it tooth and nail), my new-found grown woman soul thinks just a little less about her own self and a
little more about the people God puts in my path every day to tend to and take care of.

I've found the love of my life.

And it just so happens to be....

Me. #girlgonehappy #girlgonegrownup #girlgonelove