Saturday, June 16, 2012

Daddy's Day

"There is nothing like looking into your little girl's eyes for that first time. There is nothing like realizing, that you have the power to create something so delicate and so precious." This is the classic dad quote. This is what we are told as infants. This is what we are reminded of as toddlers, kids and teenagers. With a dad, comes an irreplaceable source of love. They are the sun to our energy. Never ending, strong, and loyal. The one man in a girls life who can consistently be looked towards for advice, warmth, and a heavy heart. A father and a child share a bond which is rare. A lust for time together, side by side, which never dies. Their protective souls, and pure acceptance is a charm in the scheme of life which we should remember always. Despite the amount of fights, or midnight screams, or even lack of approval for each venture we take, a daddy is the one man you will always return to when the sun crosses down over the mountain tops. Fathers day, represents more than a twenty-four hour period of chocolate, cards, presents, and activity. Just as we encourage ourselves to search deeper than face-value when visualizing ourselves, take this as an opportunity to exercise an analytical eye for thought. Utilize fathers day as a time to aim your attention towards the men in your life whom have made an impact on you! Who have left an etermal footprint on your life. Take fathers day as an opportunity to thank the masculine figures whom have changed you! Whether it be an uncle, or a friend, or a grandfather! Focus your attention on the ways in which you as a daughter. Or you as a child. Or you as a niece. You as a friend or you as a son, are going to re-circulate that love which your father has thrown into your playing field always. Never failing to come around when we need their support most, fathers will never draw back from the love they feel. Whether it may be in a similar fashion in which I reveal my love, in going to sport's games, or expressing interest in their hobbies! Remind your dad of the affection you will feel for him for the rest of forever. Shout from the rooftops tomorrow, "I love you daddy!" Apologize for the eye rolls, and the teenage attitude, and emotion filled days. Thank, for the life which you have been provided. Thank him for being your rock. Thank him for just being him.. Our daddies fill our lives with truth, motivation, laughs, hugs, and devotion. They have shaped us into who we are, the people we once were, and the people we are destined to become. They embody the men which we should all search to receive in our lives. Holding traits which cannot be found in any other relationship. A debt of gratitude is owed towards the men who never fail to be there when the rest of the world is not. Love them on Fathers day. Love them on Monday. Love them everyday. It takes a true father to know his child. But it takes a devoted child to get to know his father. Be that child. Never allow your relationship with a dad to act as a one way street. Respect them in the same manner which they have always respected you. Appreciate your dad for who he is. For the quirks he embraces. For the smiles he shares. For the time he spends with his pride and joy. Continue fathers day, expand that twenty-four hour love to a 365 day period. They love you and always have. Tell your dad that for everyday which you forget, that you love him with every inch in your heart. Without our daddies to show us the way, we would be lost in our own world. They work hard. They play hard. But most noticeably they love hard. Happy Fathers day.

Monday, June 11, 2012

The Beauty is in the Acceptance






LUV's first guest blogger is Crystal Maldonado a girl facing the roughest of obstacles, alike the rest of us. Beauty is in the acceptance. Maturity is in the understanding. Just 2 of the many lessons Crystal teaches us as our June LUVgirl! 

“Can I play with it?”  It was a question I got a lot. As a brown girl – 1/2 Puerto Rican, 1/4 Polish, 1/8 Italian, 1/8 French (Canadian, if that matters) – living in a predominantly middle-class, white town, my hair was always a topic of discussion. To me, it was hardly special. Not really curly, sort of wavy, definitely not straight. And brown – not chestnut, not cinnamon not oak – just brown.
My classmates loved it; I did not. In fact, when my kindergarten teacher asked the class to draw a self-portrait at the start of the year, I drew myself as a blonde-haired, blue-eyed little girl. 
“That’s not what you look like,” my mom said added. “But that’s pretty!” I’d protest, convinced that my brown hair and dark eyes somehow were not. 
I failed to understand why my classmates enjoyed my hair so much when I couldn’t stand it. They wanted to stroke it, braid it, fluff it, pamper it. They wanted to tie it back and twirl it around a finger. They wanted to close their palms around the thickness of my ponytail and compare it to their own! 
I suspect this had much to do with the fact that I was the brownest person they’d ever known. I was exotic, but not threatening. My hair – and by extension, me – was on display for my peers to examine, though they were always very kind. 
“I love your hair curly,” they’d gush, wrapping a ringlet around their finger. “I wish my hair was ever so curly.”
I was dumbfounded. As much as I relished in the attention (I yearned for anything to make me feel accepted), how could they not want their flowing, golden locks?
How could they want something that I – a chubby, brown girl with glasses – had?
Couldn’t they see how much I longed to be just like them? To look anything like them? Couldn’t they understand that, in kindergarten, I’d forced my mom every single day to untangle my hair and tie it back or braid it so I could pretend my hair was as silky and lovely as DJ Tanner’s on “Full House”? Or how, in third grade, I’d gotten so fed up with the mop on my head that I’d stopped combing through the tangles and let it turn into such an unruly mess, that it actually snapped a hair tie in half while I was giving a presentation in front of the classroom?
Even straightening my hair didn’t make me love it. It either wasn’t straight enough or didn’t fall on my shoulders perfectly. The texture appearing too rough. It wasn’t the beautiful mane I’d wished for as a kid.
I spent an ungodly amount of time wishing my hair – and the rest of me, too – looked more like the celebrities on television or the girls in the classroom (who were usually white, while I was only half, but did not look it).
I started to lose hope. And when I realized I wouldn’t magically wake up one morning with perfect hair on my head, I stubbornly decided it was time to make the most of it. I started to look into how I could ‘tame’ my ‘wild’ locks. I discovered how to use hair products. Learned the purpose of a diffuser. Realized that combing my hair made it frizzy and that letting it air dry and develop into curled ringlets worked a lot more efficiently than washing my hair before bed and waking up looking like a cat had exploded on my head.
It was a struggle. But I managed. And in time, I started to become okay with my brown, wavy mane! It was slow. Very, very, slow. But now? Well, now, I let it hang in all of its curly glory. And I like it. Love it, even. Some days I still wish it was as smooth, straight and perfect as Jennifer Aniston’s, but mostly, I realize now that no matter how badly I hoped I’d someday wake up and look exactly like that yellow-haired, blue-eyed drawing I first made in kindergarten, it was the second picture I’d drawn – of the pudgy, round-bodied, squiggly-haired, brown girl – I should have embraced all along.