I think back to primary school, I clearly remember my pets accompanying me wherever I went. Some even bringing along their babies.  I remember that hot summers day in assembly when someone tapped me on my shoulder with a ruler and as I looked back…there she was…the school bully…with a smirk on her face…and she said “meisie jou Luise loop uit jou kop”.  Mother earth please open up and swallow me was my immediate thought.  But that did not happen …so I politely thanked her and shaked my pets off my shoulders and killed them one by one.  Then there was that day mom had just washed my hair and I had rollers in whilst my hair was drying…I was playing jumping rope in the street. I remember a beautiful young man who accompanied his dad whilst visiting my dad. He sat in their car and watched us jump rope.  Me showing off and trying to get his attention.  I remember running inside, asking mom to remove rollers.  I remember my thick curls and feeling like a queen. Jumping up and down in the street.  After the first 20 minutes my hair no longer felt like beautiful curls.  I ran inside to have a look…I remember that bush as if it was yesterday, my mom immediately plaited my hair.  It was that day that my kroes kop minced and it was embarrassing because….I don’t even know why…I remember them making fun on the beetle in my face and the dirty black mark on the other side…today they are silent because my flaws are now my beauty spots.  I come from a place where my beauty was not accepted in society as year after year everyone was trying to go straighter and whiter….and slower becoming someone else…it was when I was old enough to be me that I finally got the opportunity to be comfortable in my own skin with my own hair and my own colour and that’s where I am. The girl is a dark skinned coloured, with bushy hair and large curves and I love her…I Am her…I Am She…

Later in high school I met my right lol that’s what I thought…he was every girls dream and he was running after me….I remember one day wearing my hair natural on our date to club galaxy and him telling me not to wear my hair like that again..the very next day he visiting and my hair was washed, blowed and swirled tightly to ensure its as straight as can be…  This man was a dancer and he was sexy lol…I remember him singing in my ears the song by Millie Vanilli called I am inlove with you girl…but I clearly heard him singing I’m inlove with two girls…I asked him about it and he said I heard wrong and I believed him….then my legs opened and I was pregnant…and he was gone…I was left to raise my baby on my own…in a society who was now saying I was a disgrace to my family and would amount to nothing, that my life was now over…I didn’t understand as I was very much alive…today I have my honours and many other accolades, I am an entrepreneur, a motivator, teacher, preacher, mother, wife, grand ma, sister, I am a coloured,.  I am her…I Am She