Flawless! (Extended Article)
Flawless is defined as: Without any blemishes or imperfections.
I was at a point in my life, where my daughter was off living her best life at college. I was a single woman, an empty nester, filling her time with working and shopping. Who else loves an enjoyable shopping trip to Marshall’s or T.J. Maxx? Both? Me too!
As was our habit, a married friend and I met to catch up over lunch. Younger and more tech savvy than I, she suggested I join an online dating site.
Umm, what?!
I knew nothing about online dating. She laughed at my protests and countered, “Maureen, this is a new millennium. This is how most couples meet now.” Unsure, but trusting my friend, I agreed to have her help me set up my online dating profile.
Fast-forward to March 5, 2013, my doctor diagnosed me with breast cancer. As I tried to wrap my head around the fact that I could lose both of my breasts, I placed a call to my aunt.
After going over my test results, a sudden outburst from her stunned me. She blurted out, "So sorry. And here you are not even married yet!” In retrospect, I understand that her reaction was out of concern for me. She worried that I would have no one to help me through the treatments and recovery process. In the moment however, her sudden outburst resulted in an awkward pause in the conversation. I was thinking: “What's at stake is bigger than marriage! I am fighting for my life!” I hung up the phone shortly afterward, feeling deflated. I got out of bed and stopped to look at myself in the mirror. I looked blotchy, and I was a mess. Cellulite on my thighs, bags under my eyes; I didn't look at all like those perfect women in the magazines, nor did I feel amazing.
My wake-up call.
Having breast cancer was the wake-up call that led me here today, contributing to this magazine and talking about how to be flawless and learn to love the part(s) of your body you hate.
Two weeks after my double Mastectomy, I went back to the surgeon because I was experiencing stiffness in my thigh. He ordered tests that confirmed I had Deep Vein Thrombosis. I was rushed directly from his office to the emergency room and from the emergency room; I was sent home with injections and instructions to inject myself daily.
Meanwhile on my dating profile.... After staying with my sister for a while so she could administer my injections, I was able to go back to my home and recover in my own space. I checked my profile on the dating site. I don’t really know what I expected to find, but there were all these messages from the same gentleman wanting to connect. Dating under normal circumstances was tricky enough, but with the cancer I was battling, dating seemed unrealistic, so I didn’t bother replying to any of his messages.
Two months to the day, I was medically cleared from the first of 3 surgeries so I checked the dating site inbox for messages. He had messaged me again. This time around, I responded. We exchanged numbers and spent hours chatting long-distance over the phone. As time went on and we got to know each other, he would make comments like, "Girl, you have some legs on you!" Meanwhile, I was thinking, " What legs is he looking at!” To understand my reaction you have to know this:
The countryside of Jamaica, where I grew up, allowed me to play outdoors. A section of my grandmother's backyard houses comprised these large boulders and rocks. (In Jamaica, their popular name is Round A Rock). As a tomboy, I spent my days jumping and skipping from one boulder to the next and so it was no surprise when one day I fell and cut my left thigh so deep that it left permanent scars in the skin. An indelible mark on my left thigh that looked like the masterful design of a skilled tattoo artist. I hated that scar! I developed body dysmorphic disorder related to my left leg. You know how we all dislike something or some part (s) of our bodies and ourselves? I never liked my legs because of that scar.
Back to dating. Eventually we agreed to meet for lunch at the local mall in my town. I was excited that I had met someone amazing, but not sure how to navigate the road ahead. Like a woman on a mission, I put on my high heels. I mixed my baby oil with coconut oil and shined and polished my (ugly) legs and wore a mini dress to showcase the legs he had been raving about. I kept praying all the time: “ Legs, you have to close the deal for me because I have no boobs to do it.”
He was charming and intelligent on our date and I allowed myself to see the possibility of nurturing something romantic between us. I didn’t want to hide anything, so I was upfront about my cancer diagnosis and the long road ahead with many more surgeries.
To my surprise, he wasn’t deterred at all!
In fact, he held my hand through the entire thing! Nurse Lewis, as he was affectionately known to my family and friends, planned his life around my care 24 hours a day.
God used the ugly part of my body - my legs, to bring laughter, joy and love back into my life. We got married on January 30, 2016. I have thanked God daily for the blessing that is my husband.
Too many of us think they have to have a perfect body to be loved or to find the perfect partner. I learned that all we have to do is to love and allow ourselves to be loved just as we are. It's so crazy to think we may never have found each other if it hadn't been for my “ugly” legs .
I'm going to revise my earlier definition of “Flawless”.
I believe that as women, being flawless isn't being absent of flaws, but instead, it is being the best you can be despite them.
Every time you look in the mirror, I want you to see that you are powerful! You're amazing! God created you to be extraordinary! You are enough! Every part of your body, even what you consider the "ugly” part, is here to do fantastic work.
I believe in health and wellness, mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally. I invite you to look in the mirror and be kind to the person looking back at you. Next time you judge yourself, remember God can use even your ugly parts to give you the greatest desire of your heart. Sometimes the “ugly” parts of our bodies are the same parts someone else loves most. You are God's masterpiece. He made you flawless. Being Flawless is a Choice!
Let me hear you repeat after me:
“I am flawless.”
The “FLAWLESS PARTIES” I host were born from a personal experience I had while living in Jamaica. I received kind words that were very impactful during a traumatic time in my life, when I confronted my abusive relationship.
I sat on the steps at the entrance to my Cellular store, despondent and overwhelmed by the many stressors in my life then. My mind was a scrapyard littered with garbage. As a woman approached me, my eyes swept over the many cuts on her face where the wounds had healed. She stood in front of me and demanded that I get up. “You get up this minute, close the store and go home,” she shouted at me in an angry voice. She then extended her hands to mine and pulled me off the steps. Once we were inside the store, as tears rolled down my face, she stood directly in front of me and pointed at her own face. She began touching her cuts, making a comparison between her face and mine. “Miss Maureen, you are a beautiful woman and I don’t see any cuts on your face. Go home, look in the mirror, and see how beautiful you are.” She waited there with me until I closed the store for the day. That moment forever changes the way I look at myself in the mirror. I was one of the best-dressed women but didn’t realize that I was beautiful. For years, I had lived with a man who abused me. I was yearning to hear him say that I was beautiful.
That woman’s encouraging words are ingrained in my mind forever and make me believe in the power of women. Her words made me realize that we all wear our scars differently. Some of us are experts at hiding them under our makeup and clothes, while others have earned a PHD in not talking about them, and for some their scars are visible on their faces. The transparency of the woman who spoke those words taught me that we are more alike than we believe. Flawless Parties are my way of paying it forward. They are designed to teach us to stop body shaming and start a fantastic resurgence of owning who we are and owning all our beauty, in whatever shape, size or color we come in. The parties show women how to love all aspects of their womanhood, including what we consider the ugly parts of our physique, those traits we love to hate. Further, it teaches women to celebrate their bodies for what they can do and not for their physical appearance.
I always begin the flawless parties by asking women to model in front of a mirror, to take a piece of plain paper and write down what and who they see, and what they are thinking about her. They’re the only ones who get to see what’s on the papers. At the end of the gathering, the women again model in front of the same mirror and answer the same set of questions. The idea of the flawless party is not to change any woman's body, but to help her make peace with her own body.
Flawless Parties also help women look in the mirror and love the person looking back at them and to stop waiting for someone to define who they are. We are beautiful. We are God’s masterpiece. God made us fearfully and wonderfully. We are stunning in God's eyes. He made us flawless in spite of what the world wants us to believe.
