My Beauty Uniform

is a stretched-out sweater, pilling everywhere, light brown to highlight my fine-tresses.

My Beauty Uniform

is capturing your joy, the way your smile starts slow, slow enough that only I know you might flash a grin that makes people who think they know you take a closer look.

My Beauty Uniform

is my daughter’s brow gel and mascara that I sneak from her room when she’s not at home.

My Beauty Uniform

is this wisdom that I can’t give away for free, dips into depression and aches from anxiety, the worry that keeps me up nights, the years I’d never want to relive that I’m thankful for living.

My Beauty Uniform

is stretch pants with a hole at the knee, a t-shirt that proclaims I’m a dreamer, bunny ears to make my students look twice and very cozy socks.

No one is going to ask me my beauty uniform but the secret of it is looking in the mirror and saying I look fabulous no matter how I really look. There’s nothing to do every day but thank this saggy, super-cute-resilient body for giving me one more day to capture joy and withstand the-next-worse-thing one stinking minute at a time.