The Morning I wore Red Lipstick

It wasn’t even nine o’clock in the morning, and I had already met myself several times.

Not the version of me standing in front of the mirror getting ready for a baby shower.

The old me.

The wounded me.

The woman who had spent years quietly turning ordinary moments into opportunities to wage war against herself.

From the outside, no one would have known.

That was the thing about my particular kind of suffering—it was mostly invisible.

I could get dressed.

Put on makeup.

Fix my hair.

Smile for pictures.

Walk out the door.

Show up to the party.

All while an entire war was raging inside of me.

And this particular morning would have once been the perfect battlefield.

I was meeting my little brother’s girlfriend for the first time.

High stakes.

It was also her baby shower.

Higher stakes.

And because it was a family event, it would be a reunion of sorts. People I hadn’t seen in a while. Conversations. Pictures. Socializing.

All the things that once sent my nervous system into overdrive before I ever left the house.

And then there was the empty seat.

Momma.

She’s been gone for years now, and the everyday absence does get easier. You learn to live around the hole. You build a life around it. You laugh again. You celebrate again.

But the big events have a way of reminding your heart.

Someone is missing.

Someone should be here.

A new baby is coming.

Momma should know.

Family is gathering.

Momma should be here.

So before I even climbed out of bed, the ingredients were already there.

Social anxiety.

Family.

Grief.

Meeting someone new.

Wanting to make a good impression.

The old me would have taken all of that and poured gasoline directly onto the fire.

Before my feet ever hit the floor, I would have started planning.

Okay. Don’t be awkward this time.

Don’t say anything stupid.

Don’t compare yourself to everyone there.

Don’t feel less than everyone you see.

Don’t embarrass yourself.

Don’t be too much.

But don’t be too quiet either.

Be normal.

Whatever the hell normal was.

Then I would have walked to my closet.

And apparently one cannot simply choose a dress when one is at war with herself.

Oh, no.

That would be far too easy.

I would have tried on one.

Hated my stomach.

Tried on another.

Hated my arms.

Another.

Too tight.

Another.

Too frumpy.

Another.

Why can’t I lose weight?

Another.

Why don’t clothes look on me the way they look on other women?

By the time I finally chose something, I wouldn’t have just gotten dressed.

I would have presented myself with a detailed inventory of everything I believed was wrong with my body.

Then came the makeup.

Another battlefield.

I used to stand in front of the mirror annoyed that Momma never taught me how to put makeup on.

It sounds like such a small thing.

But wounds have a way of hiding inside small things.

I would look down at my little pink tackle box full of makeup and think:

I should already know how to do this.

Somewhere inside me, there was almost this ridiculous fear that someone would discover I was actually a fraud.

That despite being whimsical and girly and loving all the pretty things, I didn’t actually know what the hell I was doing with half the stuff inside that little pink box.

Surely the Girl Police would arrive at any moment to revoke my membership.

Ma’am, step away from the mascara. We’re going to need your girl card.

But this morning was different.

This morning, when I thought about Momma and makeup, I chose a different memory.

Not because the painful memory wasn’t true.

It was.

Momma didn’t teach me how to do my makeup.

But another memory was true, too.

I was little.

I was watching her get ready.

I remember watching her put mascara on her eyelashes, fascinated by the whole process.

“Momma,” my little-girl voice asked, “how do you know when you put on too much?”

She tickled my belly.

“You don’t! They can get so long they hit you on the nose.”

And we laughed.

I can still hear it.

Her voice.

My laugh.

That tiny moment between a mother and her daughter that somehow survived all these years.

And standing in front of the mirror this morning, I realized something.

Both stories were true.

I could focus on the mother who didn’t teach me how to apply makeup.

Or I could remember the mother who once tickled my belly and told me my eyelashes might grow long enough to touch my nose.

Both memories belonged to me.

But only one deserved my energy that morning.

So I chose that one.

And honestly, in hindsight, I’m not entirely convinced Momma knew much more about makeup than I did.

I don’t remember her wearing much.

But when she did?

Blue eyeshadow.

Always blue eyeshadow.

So maybe neither one of us had any business teaching a makeup tutorial.

And that’s okay.

I have Facebook reels for that now.

I continued getting ready.

In the past, this would have been the moment I began dissecting my face.

I hate this scar.

I hate this sunspot.

Why does my eye do that?

And why, after blessing me with beautiful black hair, did my own head have the audacity to betray me and start growing white ones?

I could find a flaw anywhere.

If I couldn’t find one, I would keep looking until I did.

But this morning, I reached for lipstick.

Bright red.

I smiled as I carefully applied it.

Red had never really been my color.

Not because I didn’t like it.

Because red gets noticed.

And for a long time, I didn’t want to be noticed.

I wanted to blend into the wall.

Please don’t look at me.

Please don’t judge me.

Please don’t notice I’m awkward.

Please don’t notice I don’t belong.

Just let me stand over here.

Actually, just let me go home.

But this morning, that red lipstick meant something different.

It wasn’t just a color.

It felt like a declaration.

A tiny revolution happening on my own lips.

The woman looking back at me wasn’t asking permission to be there anymore.

She wasn’t trying to disappear.

She was saying:

I’m here.

Look at me.

I’m here.

I’m alive.

I’m part of this family.

I’m part of this world.

I’m so damn glad to be here.

After I got dressed, I did what I usually do.

I took a few selfies.

Proof that I don’t always look like a bridge troll.

😂

But even that used to be dangerous territory.

Three bad pictures could ruin an entire morning.

I would start picking myself apart all over again.

I hate the scar on my throat from the thyroid scare I had more than ten years ago.

Why does my eye look like that?

I don’t look like that in the mirror.

It’s the camera.

It has to be the camera.

Most selfie sessions could have ended with me storming the corporate headquarters of Apple demanding to speak directly to the CEO about why the iPhone had personally conspired to make me look terrible.

Never mind that I’d already spent forty-five minutes dysregulating myself by criticizing every inch of my body.

Clearly this was Apple’s fault.

But this morning, after three pictures, I felt the old monster begin to stir.

I don’t like these.

There she was.

I recognized her.

And before she could get comfortable, before one thought became five and five became fifty and I found myself spiraling down the same familiar path, I stopped.

Nope.

We’re not doing this.

We didn’t come this far to crash out here.

You look great.

You know you look great.

You feel great.

Let’s go.

And just like that…

We went.

No spiral.

No tears.

No ruined morning.

The thought came.

I noticed it.

And I chose differently.

That is what healing looks like now.

Not never having the thought.

Not never seeing the shadow.

But recognizing it before I hand it the keys.

We were almost ready to leave when I realized I’d forgotten tissue paper for the baby shower gift.

I knew exactly where it was.

At the top of the extra closet in Caleb’s room.

Hunter was standing in the doorway holding Pobby, our one-year-old Chihuahua.

He was loving on him, telling him goodbye because we were going to be gone all day.

Old me would have looked at that sweet little moment and thought:

Don’t interrupt him.

You can get it yourself.

I would have stretched.

Climbed.

Struggled.

Possibly knocked half the closet down on top of myself.

Anything before inconveniencing someone else.

But this time?

I asked for help.

That’s it.

No dramatic breakthrough.

No orchestra playing in the background.

I just asked.

And Hunter helped me.

The world kept spinning.

Pobby survived the interruption.

Nobody collapsed under the unbearable burden of Jasmine needing tissue paper.

Imagine that.

We finally started toward the door.

By this point, it was around 9:10.

We had wanted to leave at nine.

My son had needed to grab a few last-minute things before we’d be out of the house all day, and I could tell he felt responsible for making us late.

“I’m sorry, Mom. We’re running late.”

And then something happened that I don’t think I fully understood until later.

I laughed.

“I’m not sorry. I had some things to get too, and it was important to me, so I took the time to do them.”

And there it was.

The lesson from yesterday.

Living and breathing inside me.

Just the day before, I had discovered another shadow while shopping for clothes.

I hadn’t tried anything on because I didn’t want my family to have to wait for me.

When I traced the behavior back to its root, I found the belief underneath it:

My needs inconvenience other people.

Even deeper:

I am a burden.

I had promised myself something when I found it.

I need to do what is right for me. The world will adjust.

And less than twenty-four hours later, there I was.

Ten minutes late.

The world adjusting.

And more importantly, my son was watching.

He apologized because he had needed time.

And without planning some profound parenting moment, I showed him something different.

You don’t have to apologize for every minute you occupy.

You are allowed to need things.

You are allowed to take time.

I am allowed to need things.

I am allowed to take time.

We can both matter at the same time.

Nobody has to disappear so someone else can exist.

Maybe that’s how generational patterns actually change.

Not through one giant declaration.

But in tiny moments.

In fitting rooms.

In bathrooms.

In closets.

In cars running ten minutes behind schedule.

In a mother telling her child:

It’s okay. I needed time too.

I thought about the dream I’d had the night before.

In the dream, everyone was walking away from danger, but I couldn’t keep up.

My leg was dragging.

Something was attached to me.

A fluorescent green snake.

I pulled it off, but it attached itself again.

My strength was disappearing.

I was about to lose consciousness.

And even then, my instinct wasn’t to scream:

Stop! I need help!

My instinct was to figure out where I should collapse so someone might eventually notice me.

Even in my dreams, apparently, I was trying to be considerate about my own damn collapse.

But then morning came.

And I put on red lipstick.

I asked for help.

I took the time I needed.

I interrupted the spiral.

And when my son apologized for taking up time, I told him I had taken some too.

Maybe the old belief is still attached in places.

Maybe I’ll have to pull it off more than once.

That’s okay.

Because now I can see it.

And things lose some of their power once you can see them.

For so much of my life, I thought healing would mean becoming someone who never felt insecure again.

Someone who never had an ugly thought about herself.

Someone who never felt awkward.

Someone who never needed reassurance.

Someone who walked into every room completely confident and completely healed.

But maybe healing is much simpler.

Maybe it’s standing in front of the mirror and hearing the old voice say:

You don’t belong.

And reaching for the red lipstick anyway.

Maybe it’s hearing:

Don’t inconvenience him.

And asking:

“Hey, can you help me?”

Maybe it’s hearing:

You’re running late. You should feel guilty.

And answering:

No. I needed time too.

Maybe healing isn’t the disappearance of the old voice.

Maybe it’s finally realizing that the old voice doesn’t get the final vote.

That morning, I didn’t become a different woman.

I became more fully the woman who had been underneath all that fear the entire time.

The whimsical one.

The awkward one.

The funny one.

The woman with the scar on her throat and white hairs growing through her beautiful black ones.

The woman who sometimes takes terrible selfies.

The woman whose eyeliner may never be symmetrical.

The woman who misses her momma.

The woman who is still learning.

The woman who sometimes needs five more minutes.

The woman who sometimes needs help.

The woman who takes up space.

The woman who belongs.

Me.

And I painted my lips bright red.

Not because I needed anyone to notice me.

But because, finally,

I had noticed myself.

And I was no longer trying to disappear.

I was here.

I was here.

I was so damn glad to be here.

🌷 Closing Reflection

Before you leave the garden…

Imagine getting ready tomorrow morning as though you already belonged.

Not because you earned it.

Not because someone finally approved of you.

Simply because you do.

Notice the voice that asks you to shrink…

to hurry…

to apologize…

to disappear.

Then ask yourself:

“If I truly believed I belonged here… what would I choose instead?”

Maybe it’s wearing the bright lipstick.

Maybe it’s asking for help.

Maybe it’s taking five extra minutes.

Maybe it’s smiling at the person in the mirror instead of critiquing them.

Healing rarely arrives all at once.

More often, it looks like a hundred tiny moments where love quietly votes louder than fear.

What will your first tiny vote be today?