Sitting on the now familiar carpet of my childhood bedroom, I put pen to paper and wrote a letter to a friend. He was living abroad at that time and I wanted to send a letter to stay in touch. He knew me best: knew what I was struggling with and what my hopes and fears were. It was during this letter to him that I realized that I didn’t necessarily know what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew the type of women I wanted to be.

It was at a time in my life that I felt like I didn’t have control of the circumstances going on in my life. I felt like I was living an ugly black version of the person who I knew was just underneath. I desired to be so much more than the person I currently was and felt that if I wrote out who that person was then perhaps it would give me some direction.

I remember writing ‘cute’, ‘elegant’, ‘soft spoken’, ‘fashionable’, ‘god centered’, and so forth. It was a long list. When I sealed that letter off, it felt like I was putting a message in a bottle – hoping that someway, somehow, someone would see it and come rescue me from myself. Little did I know, that it was a letter more to myself than to him and that it would pave the way to who I was to become.

There is so much pressure to know what you want to do with your life. But have you ever stopped to think that the bigger question is, who do you want to be? How do you want to be described to people and how do you want to come across?

I no longer want to be cute, because I’ve surpassed that. I look in the mirror and see a beautiful woman, one full of flaws and imperfections, but beautiful none the less. I’ve cultivated an elegant exterior but I also know that it’s also apart of my soul to be elegant. I probably won’t ever be soft spoken, as I give and receive passionately and express myself accordingly. However, I know that I have a quiet spirit and that has become more prominent over time. The idea of what god centered meant at that time has changed but my faith is evident in everything I do and lays in something stronger than I ever thought imaginable.

Do you ever think of the type of person you want to be more than what you want to do? Who does that look like, and are you that person or on your way?