I am a 23 year old newly wed. Loving married life, my hubby, and self employment with my 2 businesses.
But first, lets back up quite a few years. I was born with a hemangioma birthmark. 1 in every 3 babies have a birthmark. 90% of those birthmarks are harmless and cause no health problems. It could be as simple as a small mole that grows quickly in the first months of birth but then disappears over time. For me though...it wasn't that simple. My birthmark was in my airway and effected the development of my vision in my right eye. Growing at a rapid pace I had a trachea by the time I was 6 weeks old until 3 years old! Lots of problems, a couple surgeries, feeding tube, a week worth of being incubated and paralyzed, daily alfron interferon shots to reduce the birth mark, minimal vision in my right eye which caused a lazy eye. Once I got past 4 my birthmark issues were a thing of the past and doctors then tried to correct my vision by giving me a patch to cover my good eye to hope it would strengthen the "bad eye". (I HATED the patches, and it did no good.) I had glasses at a young age. I easily got sick. Always getting a flu shot, it didn't matter. If there was colds, croup, flu going around I would get it. There got to be a point when everyone in the family got a flu shot and every single one of us were horribly sick. That was the last time we as a family ever got a flu shot. To this day we are flu shot free! (Judge all you want, but in our defense we haven't been sick like that in since that last flu shot.) There were lots of happy and good times but those "bad" memories for my parents and family trump a lot of the good ones.
Because of my birthmark I was very shy and had self confident issues when I was in grade school. I always felt classmates where looking right at my birthmark and paying attention to my lazy eye. I always loved when my mom would curl my hair for church or special occasions. I felt pretty and thought people were looking at my curly brown hair and cute outfit instead of my lazy eye, which was magnetized by glasses, facial birthmark and trachea scar from surgery. Once I got in middle school I got contacts and the itch at a young age to "play" with make up. I liked the idea that I could cover up my birthmark, so kids would stop asking, "Whats that on your face?" I remember being so scared to ask my mom to wear make up because I knew for sure she would say, "No you're too young for make up!" To my surprise she said ok. We went to the make up centers in the middle of the mall to get extra coverage concealer and foundation. I got one natural brown eye shadow pallet and we left.
TURBOFIRE
and ChaleneEXTREME. I also borrowed a friends INSANITY and P90X and tried a few of those workouts, but they just weren't my favorite go to workouts. I would also try to spot reduce my stomach by tons of crunches, planks, and other ab workouts I could find on the Internet. If i knew then what I know now that you can't spot reduce fat away, I wouldn't have wasted so much time! I liked how working out made me feel. I didn't always want to do it, but I had that perfect body image in my head that I wanted and I was going to workout to get it.
Because of my birthmark I was very shy and had self confident issues when I was in grade school. I always felt classmates where looking right at my birthmark and paying attention to my lazy eye. I always loved when my mom would curl my hair for church or special occasions. I felt pretty and thought people were looking at my curly brown hair and cute outfit instead of my lazy eye, which was magnetized by glasses, facial birthmark and trachea scar from surgery. Once I got in middle school I got contacts and the itch at a young age to "play" with make up. I liked the idea that I could cover up my birthmark, so kids would stop asking, "Whats that on your face?" I remember being so scared to ask my mom to wear make up because I knew for sure she would say, "No you're too young for make up!" To my surprise she said ok. We went to the make up centers in the middle of the mall to get extra coverage concealer and foundation. I got one natural brown eye shadow pallet and we left.
Once I got to high school I still had some confidence issues but by this time classmates had forgot about my birthmark due to me learning how to apply natural make up, so my face looked like everyone Else's "normal" face. By this time my self confidence was more worried about the skinny body image. I was big into volleyball and deep down I hated the tight spandex outfits.
So I worked on my game! I thought that if I was really good, people would notice my drive, talent, and athletic ability instead of what I thought was a big booty, and that lower ab pooch, that always showed up in tighter shirts and dresses. My birthmark left me with only 65% of an airway. So what most people thought was a easy workout, I would get tired quicker and winded sooner. They always told me I needed to keep my body in shape. So would work out with my mom in our living room to a couple old step aerobic VCR's that she had, and eventually TurboJAM,
It wasn't til my Junior/Senior year when out of no where I finally didn't give 1, 2, or even 3 sh*ts about what anyone thought of me. I was who I was and that was how it was going to be. If you didn't like it too bad. Where this came from I'm not real sure. I was strong willed, when I set my mind to do something I did it. I didn't let my past self image get in the way, and I didn't let anyone know that I would get tired and winded quicker. People may know it but I never stopped. For me my workouts were a way to keep that positive self confidence. I really think it was what I learned about body image, confidence and hard work from Chalene Johnson's workout DVD's (Turbojam, TurboFire, and ChaleneExtreme) that I really liked working out. 2 weeks before my senior volleyball season started I broke my foot. I was devestated. All the hard work I put in seemed like it was gone. Doctors told me kiss my volleyball season good bye because I would be in a boot for 6 weeks with no pressure, and additional 2 weeks walking with a boot, and then physical therapy after that, with the possibility of surgery if I chose to continue senior sports and the possibility of college ball. By then it would be winter club volleyball season! I wasn't about to have that. My mom had got involved with Young Living Essential Oils and she had really started to learn a lot about all the benefits and cures to different things. So we decided I had nothing to loose. The oils were either going to work in a quicker time frame that what doctors had all told me, or I was miss all my senior volleyball season. We learned the concoction of different oils to apply daily plus added heat to make the oils deeper into the skin to the broken spot in my foot. With in 2 weeks I put the boot aside! I could walk.. It was still painful but I believe it was because of the stiffness from the boot and I was use to "babying" that foot for long enough that it was always on my mind. I was slow moving when I started playing ball. I had lost my quickness and jumping ability so that took awhile to gain back. I missed the first couple games. My senior season still didn't go quite as planned but I did Play ball, and doctors didn't quite know what to think when I said I hadn't been using the boot, they saw me walking, and that I wasn't going to any therapy and surgery was completely out of the question! That was the selling point for me on oils having a bigger power than doctors meds! That's when I knew these oils weren't just some "new scheme" my mom had gotten bought into! To this day for any injury, cold, aches, pains and even cleaning products/disinfectants, we use Essential Oils.
I got my Aesthetics's license from Aveda because I really wanted to learn the therapeutic head, neck and shoulders, & hand and foot massages, calming uses of essential oils, and the mechanical way of doing facials instead of using bulky microdermabrasion machines, and harsh chemical peels. I went to a Young Living training by the creator and owner himself, Gary Young in Dallas TX. Lots of great information and success stories. Directly following that training I got my Cosmetology license from PCI. During this time was when I also became a beachbody coach because I wanted the 25% coach discount, as well as I wanted to help my roommates and friends out with their fitness, but I didn't take the beachbody business opportunity too seriously, because I still needed to find my Big Girl job. I worked at a couple different highfalutin salons in the city, and I hated different things about each one, the City being #1 hate. I got the opportunity to buy a barbershop in a small farm town Roland. I jumped in and its the best thing I ever did!
The BIG NEWS now is that I will be moving my salon from main street Roland to our house on East Street Roland.
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Cheers to the journey God has put me on! Can't wait to see where it lead me next. :)
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