08/23/2026
A little about your baker❤️
This is my Flying nun visor. Hat? Visor? I dunno what to call it. I know it's giant and wide and it probably looks ridiculous.
20 years ago I wouldn't have been caught dead in this hat. I would have been so self conscious. So convinced that people would be telling stories of the dumb lady in her weird giant blingy duck butt hat. 20 years ago, at 35 I was only just beginning to feel confident in my own skin, my own body.
I love this weird hat. I love it because it keeps the sun off my face. If I've done anything right in this world it's probably been skincare. I may have been lackluster at being Extraordinary in everything else, but I washed and moisturized my face.
I started using Mary Kay when I was about 23 and I was loyal for about 10 years before I began to try other things. I would always go back to Mary Kay.
I do not sell Mary Kay or any other product, lest you think this is some coded sales pitch. Well I do sell cookies. Maybe rubbing royal icing on your face is some ancient wisdom, if I could verify that I would market, no question.
I trailed off, where was I? Oh yes, i tried other things off and on until I ultimately landed on Clinique. I really do love it.
I love taking care of my skin. I'm a high maintenance girlie. I know it. I've made my peace with it. I don't apologize for it any longer.
Is it shallow to care about your appearance? Your makeup, your clothes, aging? Maybe. I don't really care.
There has been no harsher critic in my life than the sound of my own voice echoing in my head. My voice picked up where others left off.
As I began to heal in those twenty-somethings I had to begin to love myself. Not in an egocentric way but in the way someone with wounds changes their bandages and begins to use muscles that had atrophied.
I hated my appearance. I hated my body. I could spend hours picking it apart (the way others did)
As I moved from hate to healing I was told by my counselor to find one thing I liked. She suggested I look in a tiny mirror inside my compact and find one thing I didn't hate and spend a few minutes every week looking in the tiny mirror saying nice things. I decided I liked the color of my eyes (that was it). Over months and years I tried to follow this direction. Slowly I moved to a bigger mirror.
I had used a mirror every day of my life. Brushing teeth, fixing hair and makeup. But the person I saw looking back at me, never felt like me, I was almost completely detached from the person in my head.
When Mary Kay found me I was on my path toward healing. The women I met were kind, wonderful and encouraging. I loved the company. The company I kept in my team and the company values. My experience was life changing so I bristle when I hear MLM horror stories.
I left the business (obviously) but the taking care of my skin as a means of self care, self love, self acceptance never left me.
I was well into the healing process when I had this beautiful baby girl. I didn't want to pass on that critical eye, that body dysmorphia, that uneasy existence.
Learning to mother a daughter took my recovery to another level. The best way to learn is to teach and it was never more true than when I tried to raise her to like and love herself.
I hear a hint of criticism in her voice toward herself from time to time and I wonder if that's the echo of a voice I tried so hard to silence.
Everything I see in her is breathtakingly beautiful.
So here we are at the "No Bus for Us" homeschool group kickoff event. That's a whole blog post I need to write.
When I looked at this photo the first thing I saw was the hat. I felt like I needed to explain it. Some habits die hard huh?
But I course corrected. Wearing that wide brimmed hat in the summer is a small way I remember to take care of myself. It's an act of defiance. A quiet way I accept who I am whether others get or like it.
The depth of the rest that sinks down into your soul, as a woman when you finally stop adjusting your shirt and avoiding mirrors, or hating on yourself before others get the chance, is freedom.
Many of my peers, women of a certain age, I'm 55 take an "I don't give a damn what people think" attitude. It's bold and it ballsy and I love it.
But sometimes that Rhett Butler line betrays a deeper truth. Rhett absolutely gave a damn about Scarlett O'Hara. He reached a place where it was too painful to care and he forced himself to let her go.
I see that same reality in myself, and in women like me.
I'm here to tell you that you don't have to let go of feeling pretty or sexy or feminine. If girlie girl was never your energy that is perfectly fine. I believe everyone likes some accessory - maybe it's a perfume, or bubble bath. Maybe it's a nice ring or a bracelet for special occasions. Maybe it's skincare.
Or maybe it's a hat.
This girlie girl loves her blingy hat. I love taking care of my skin. I love that I began to love myself while I was still in my youth. I love that I can mother my daughter from a healthy place. I love watching my daughter slay her own demons and I love my fierce granddaughters owning their space. I love that their 'I don't give a damn' what other people think is actually true for them as they wear princess gowns, rainboots, and a crown to the grocery.
Healing sometimes takes generations.
