It Took the Heart of the Panther to See My Inner Beauty

It was coming out and I was trying to prepare myself for what I’d look like bald.

When I was a child I wasn’t told I was pretty or beautiful as a whole, but there were features about me that always got compliments. One was my blue/gray eyes and the other was my thick brown wavy hair. All through school I kept my hair in long flowing locks. I never really appreciated how awesome this part of my body was. But things changed around the time when I became anorexic and my Grammy had her struggle with cancer. My hair started to thin out. 

I remember finding clumps of hair in the shower and just starting to freak out. I remember spending hours crying, I mean one of the things people thought was attractive about me I was losing. I was expecting my hair to resolve itself once I got healthy with my weight, but that wasn’t the case. I went to Dr. after Dr. and they could find nothing wrong with me except that it was from extreme stress. My hair kept on falling out over the years. New stresses just kept on coming into my life to cause me anxiety and worry. My mom almost burnt down our apt, my father gave me a choice between him or Randy, losing my mom, being disowned by my father, the car accident, loss of school and life, losing my father, my house, living with the in-laws, living life as a hermit with my pain meds, chronic pain, and depression. But my hair started to get better after I was able to start to work on growing as a person and getting off my pain meds. My hair still isn’t close to the thickness it once was, but for the first time in years, my hair is growing in a healthy way! I've also come to realize that my beauty is on the inside, not the out!

T'Challa also felt a great deal of stress in his life when he had to take his role as King of Wakanda! Stepping into his father's shoes was no easy task. Having Killmonger take his throne. Then having to prove that he was the rightful King was one of the hardest things T'Challa had to face. But he rose above his stresses and grew as a person, truly earning his place as the Black Panther!

Have you ever been under so much stress that it affected your health?