Sometimes growth means taking it all off.

We as a people do a ton of things to be beautiful--not for us, but for others. We are constantly worried about how we look and this concern affects how we feel. But the person that seems to offer us the most critical evaluation of ourselves is ourself.

I think we can all understand this song.

I'm not brave enough to fix it on my own...

 I had to get brave, though. I really did.
I had said I would do it some day. So I did it. And now I feel completely naked knowing that you are seeing this.

No hair, no makeup, no silly smirk. Just me. 

Sometimes fresh starts mean hard lessons. These lessons can come through steps that you never knew were necessary. For me, this fresh start needed to come through giving up vanity and becoming vulnerable and most importantly honest with who I am.

All my life I was the girl with the curly hair. Or, most recently, the girl with the mohawk. My hair became my identity--not my identity but the identity I chose to create for myself. I chose to use my hair as a veil between me and the world around me. It's been a defense mechanism whether I was willing to admit it or not. If I had bright blue hair or flaming red hair or dreadlocks, then I defined myself as such.

And this defense was also an incredible distraction. I would squirm in my jeans if they were too tight or tug at my shirt that felt too short and then fiddle with my hair to calm myself. My hair was something I could instantly fix.

And it wasn't my body that was the worst part of the problem. It was my self esteem. I was never good enough for me. I was the harshest bestower or shame.

But now I am me. Just me.

I walk into public places and I squirm until I touch my head. "Is my hair okay?" I'd ask.

"No hair. I am me."

In facing myself as truly me, I am relieved. I am uncompromisingly me now. I just have to square my shoulders and be essential in the face of my shriveling vanity.

I am here now to say "Screw you, inhibition and vanity" and offer people a chance to know me as Rose, the girl, the mom, the person, the mover, the shaker, the force.

That's right, friends. I am a force. I am a force no longer caught up on how I look. I am free to be me--a person with broad thighs and big boobs and unlimited potential and I love it.

Blog from the Safe Room (aka bathroom)

Mother's blog: star date 8675309

I am writing this--perhaps my last living blog--from the bathroom. The spawn have broken the lock on the door. I have wedged a croc in the door to ensure my safety. 

There are twelve more hours until the spawn are loaded onto the school bus for the first time this year. I do not know if I will survive. 

At the beginning of the summer, they were charming. Adorable, even. They smiled at the sunny days and went outside without provocation. 

Then, once the romance of a golden summer turned the lawn a dingy, dry tan, they withered with it. They shrank into the tv room, scarcely leaving except to satiate the whining hunger in their guts every seven minutes. They turned pale, only giggling when the laugh track on their insipid television show bade them to. They drooled. "Snacks" their throats gurgled as try stumbled from the room, lifeless limbs dragging behind them. 

By August, they were trying to pick each other off in elaborate ways. My daughter fashioned a bear trap with combs and scrunchies. My son tried to poison his sister with tomatoes in her cereal. 

Last week, they realized that it was funner to join forces and exterminate the matriarch. 

They played with Legos in my room. On my floor. They took turns giving each other mani/pedis. On my same floor. They made dinner and watched me eat every. Bite. Of. My. Cereal. 

Legos. 

They drew out plans for six business ventures, four full-length musicals, and an acre-wide garden. With chickens. 

My children are trying to kill me. 

There is an electrode kit on top of a rock-tumbling kit on top of an accordion on my kitchen table. There is also a coat hanger sculpture that resembles a tree monster or an elephant or a pegacorn or the starship Enterprise on my love seat. 

The cleanest room is the bathroom. 

This is where I am and where I will stay until they are on the bus. Or need to brush their teeth. Whichever comes first. 

The bus will be here in eleven hours and 51 minutes. 

Pray for me.