A Look Back and A Deep Breath...

I love to travel and I'm thankful for a career that allows me to travel on a regular basis. I have a great sense of adventure and I'm always amazed when I meet people that have never ventured beyond the city or state that they were born in. To me, the world is such a big place that I want to see it all!! Unfortunately, I only get one life within which to see it, so...I have to squeeze in as much as I can in this life that I have.

My sense of adventure has led me to 37 states in the U.S., plus Washington, D.C.,be it driving through, vacationing, or having a layover there. I've actually lived in 8 of them, and I don't even have parents in the military!! I've gone swimming in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as well as the Caribbean Sea as I finally took a step out of the country this year to Trinidad and Tobago and the Bahamas. I'm a certified scuba diver so I've sat on the ocean floor and flown high in many airplanes over the years. I'm very thankful to my mom for teaching me to get out of my comfort zone and to see what the world has to offer.

She may have just created a monster though because most people that know me, think that I'm crazy for some of the things that I've done over the years. When I got my diving certification, my friends and family were amazed that I would swim with the fish and yes, sharks, yet I don't really like to eat very many kinds of seafood. I interned at Walt Disney World while finishing college. On what I like to call a 2 year spurt of energy, I ran 4 full length marathons (that's 26.2 MILES each) and several other shorter races and a mini-triathlon.

While standing on the beach in the Bahamas this summer, I looked out at the beautiful sunrise on my last day there and how clear and calm the green waters were whooshing on the sand and I figured, what the heck, I'll only live once and there were very few people out, so I stripped off the nightgown that I was wearing and ran into the ocean for a quick dip. I don't know that any water has ever felt so good. A few years ago, I decided to do an REI adventure travel trip that took 9 strangers and me on a kayaking voyage through the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington state and Canada. I arrived on San Juan Island on a catamaran that set sail from Seattle, and returned to the city via a seaplane!!

Through all of these experiences, I've come to really get to know who I am inside, the person that I am when no one else is looking. I've learned to be much more comfortable in my own skin, and assertive with others that go too far in their expectations for me to conform to images or actions that conflict with who I am. I'm still learning how to choose my battles sometimes, but I've come to be quite peaceful in my spirit as I do the best I can to be the best person that I can be. I try to remember the words of a friend I once knew that said, "...do what you know is right, and don't compare what is right to what other people are doing."

I've talked in several of my posts now about my natural hair and I remember when the idea of going natural was so foreign that I would have laughed if anyone told me that I would now have natural hair (for 5 years no less), and even more, that I have committed to having Sisterlocks! In reading many of the blogs of other SL'd ladies out there, I find one common thread aside from hair that we all share, and that's a true sense of self and connection with our inner spirit. It seems that we all have in one way or another become delighted to embrace our natural selves both inside and out. We share our frustrations and our joy about the challenge to go from how the world expects us to look, to the women that we are in our natural state. There is a natural beauty revolution going on in the community of women with nappy hair, but the phenomenon is also picking up slowly in our society as companies like Dove are now starting to feature real women in their ads.

When I did the big chop on my hair, I felt free. As I prepare to get my sisterlocks this coming Saturday (Yay!!!), I feel as if I'm taking a deep breath and embracing a whole new era of my life as a natural woman. No matter what experiences you have, good or bad, never forget to look back and be thankful for the lessons of the past, then take a deep breath, smile, and look forward to the new adventures ahead.

Here I am enjoying the view from the summit of Mt. Diablo in California. It was a foggy and overcast day so the clouds were amazing to see as some of them were below us.

And finally, watching the sun set on another day at the beach in Sausalito.

Please leave me your comments!! I love to receive them! Tell me what's on your list of things to do before you die?