"You are beautiful. You are gorgeous. You are perfect the way you are"

My reflection in my bathroom mirror stared right back at me with eyes unblinking but moist as I repeated my daily mantra.

"Trina, you are beautiful. You are gorgeous. You are perfect the way you are"

Why was it so hard to sink in today? I could feel tremors rack through my body threatening my knees to cave in. For crying out loud, I wasn't the little girl who spent hours crying in bed because she was the only one not told she was so pretty in church. I was no more the little girl who would waste half her daydreams wishing she had a lighter complexion with hair cascading down her back in silky waves like an Arabian stud. No, I wasn't that girl anymore.

I was a beautiful black woman, only sometimes plagued by her childhood memories. I was a grown woman who knows her skin and hair is perfect the way it is but still needs daily dose of reminders because her childhood prescribed the medications.

Having belonged to a small family-run church, with most family members having skin shades lighter than mine and long flowing hair, I yearned for compliments. I didn't want much, just a "you are pretty too" would have been enough. It would have made my whole day and night too.

I remember Sundays. Of course, they were considered special days in my family. We had to look the best for the Lord. I would have held the same excitement with my family if not that my great aunt would begin my horror by bathing me. She always would scrub my knees and elbows so hard that beads of perspiration broke out on her forehead and top lip. The blackness of my knees and elbows bothered her so she wanted to literally scrub them off. I saw red stars. Well, other colors too but mostly red stars as I felt my skin become raw from the abrasion.

"Stay still, Trina!" My aunt would chide me as I squirmed like a worm in distress. "They are so dark. You ought to get them clean"

After enduring the bathing, and donning my beautiful Sunday outfits, I would look at my reflection and bless myself with a smile because I believed I looked great. However, I get to church and watch other kids get their hair petted and their cheeks grazed lovingly by older people with countless coos of "Oh my! What beautiful long hair you've got" and "Dear child, why do you have to be so pretty?"

Of course, they were right, the kids were pretty but all I wanted to scream was "What about me!? Am I not pretty too!?" I still vividly remember the dejection I felt. I believed I wasn't and would never be good enough. So forgive my adult self, if some days the memories are a little bit more unforgiving and I have to take extra dose of assurance to remind myself that I was good enough.

"Trina, you are beautiful. You are gorgeous. You are perfect the way you are."