I’m not alive unless I am creating something. I now feel so much more beautiful, so much sexier, so much more interesting. I look at the woman I was in my 20s and I see a young lady growing into confidence but intent on pleasing everyone around her. Through it all I have learned to laugh and cry and grow. I have had disappointments in business partnerships as well as personal ones, and they all left me feeling neglected, lost, and vulnerable. I have experienced betrayals and heartbreaks in many forms. I’ve been through hell and back, and I’m grateful for every scar.
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I pray that I am able to break the generational curses in my family and that my children will have less complicated lives. Male and female energy was able to coexist and grow in my blood for the first time. I now believe it’s why God blessed me with my twins. I questioned what it meant and tried to put it into perspective. I had to process that revelation over time. I researched my ancestry recently and learned that I come from a slave owner who fell in love with and married a slave. Connecting to the past and knowing our history makes us both bruised and beautiful. Only when I saw that clearly was I able to resolve those conflicts in my own relationship. I come from a lineage of broken male-female relationships, abuse of power, and mistrust. Everyone’s voice counts, and everyone has a chance to paint the world from their own perspective. The beauty of social media is it’s completely democratic. They will hire the same models, curate the same art, cast the same actors over and over again, and we will all lose. If people in powerful positions continue to hire and cast only people who look like them, sound like them, come from the same neighborhoods they grew up in, they will never have a greater understanding of experiences different from their own. They opened the doors for me, and I pray that I’m doing all I can to open doors for the next generation of talents. Imagine if someone hadn’t given a chance to the brilliant women who came before me: Josephine Baker, Nina Simone, Eartha Kitt, Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Diana Ross, Whitney Houston, and the list goes on. Photographed by Tyler Mitchell, Vogue, September 2018 My kids and husband did, too.įloral headdress by Phil John Perry for Rebel Rebel. But I was patient with myself and enjoyed my fuller curves. I became vegan temporarily, gave up coffee, alcohol, and all fruit drinks. After six months, I started preparing for Coachella. During my recovery, I gave myself self-love and self-care, and I embraced being curvier.
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Some of your organs are shifted temporarily, and in rare cases, removed temporarily during delivery. After the C-section, my core felt different. Today I have a connection to any parent who has been through such an experience. I was in survival mode and did not grasp it all until months later. I am proud to have been a witness to his strength and evolution as a man, a best friend, and a father. My husband was a soldier and such a strong support system for me. My health and my babies’ health were in danger, so I had an emergency C-section. I was swollen from toxemia and had been on bed rest for over a month. I was 218 pounds the day I gave birth to Rumi and Sir.