Phenomenal Woman, That's Me...

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them
They think I'm telling lies
I say
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips
The stride of my step
The curl of my lips
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me...-Maya Angelou



If I'd been able to have a conversation with GOD prior to being born and He'd asked me what I'd wanted to come into this world as, I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. I love being a woman. There's an unspoken strength in all that we are. Mother, wife, sister, aunt, friend are some of the titles we hold but there's something about that word woman that makes me hold my head a little higher... I love every ounce of it. I love who I am and what I'm becoming even more...

I had a great childhood and upbringing but I was a little slow with discovering and fine tuning the team of me. I got off to a pretty rocky start. I grew up the oldest of six girls and let me say it took me a while to find my rhythm. I was what most would call a late bloomer. I remember being twelve years old and standing at about five feet eight inches. At that point most of my girlfriends had graduated from training bras and were making the smooth transition into A and B cup bras. Aunt Dot had long since visited them and they were fighting to keep the boys away. Not for me though, puberty apparently had called out sick on the day that she was supposed to stop by my house and had made up the hours by giving my dose of feminity to one of my friends. I was pretty certain of this because a few of them definitely had been given too generous a dosage and all I wanted was for Miss Puberty to own up to her mistake and give me what was rightfully mine.

And boys... forget about it! My first "relationship" started in the fourth grade. I'll omit his name but I think I won him over because he was painfully shy and couldn't build up the nerve to talk to any of the other girls and because I was at least three or four inches inches taller than him and and at least twenty pounds bigger.We were absolutely smitten with each other. He played in a baseball league at the recreation park across the street from my childhood home. I vividly remember my girlfriends and I going over to the park in the late afternoons after school to watch his games. In that park is where I had my very first kiss. Well maybe the second but this was the first that didn't stem out of the simple curiosity of kissing a boy or didn't result in a spanking from my mom after one of my male cousins decided to tell her what he'd witnessed. I remember me bending down and going in for the kiss. Our lips briefly met, he smiled, and I turned around and ran home without ever uttering a word. My friends teased me about that day in the park and how I'd fled for a while but I was on cloud nine. I had been lagging behind and I'd fnally crossed over into the "I kissed a boy territory". I was official. We spent the rest of the school year in bliss and spent the summer talking on the phone and writing letters even though he lived less than a mile away. It was summer and with no school and no baseball summer league, we didn't have much of an opportunity to see one another. When fifth grade rolled around one of the more aggressive girls sank her teeth into my beau and he happily obliged and went her way. I always hoped that he'd come back but eventually his dad decided to move the family to the next town over and he and what we'd shared became a fleeting memory.

I spent the next few years in my books. There was a reading program that most schools had begun implementng called Book-It that encouraged children to read by giving them a free coupon for a personal pan pizza for every three books they read. It was a marriage of my two favorite pastimes, reading and eating. My parents and I made many trips to the local Pizza Hut to get my free pizza. No one thought much of it, most kids had to be forced to read. I did it because I loved reading and because I knew there was a cheesy pizza that I could eat in front of my sisters that I'd be able to taunt them with by saying that it was mine and mine alone. Around this period is when I first noticed the guy that would take up most of my thoughts towards the opposite sex through my sophomore year of high school. He was the most handsome boy I'd ever seen... We'll call him "Quincy" because I'd be doing the adoration I had for him no justice if I didn't give him a name. He was tall, thin as a rail, of caramel complexion, and had the most beautiful head of hair that I'd ever seen on a man. He was older than I was and was a cousin of my close friends, (who were mostly all related), so we incidently ran in similar circles. He hung out with their older brothers and it just so happened that my next door neighbor was his best friend. Even after he and his parents moved down the street to the next town I always had an opportunity to see him. I spent many a day from the age of ten years old until I was fifteen pining for "Quincy's" attention. Nothing ever worked. He knew I liked him, after awhile there wasn't anyone that didn't know it. Although, he sometimes flirted with the idea I simply wasn't his type. At that age boys weren't really concerned about what was below the surface. A pretty face and a slim figure was KING and my three book a week pizza habit hadn't done much to help.

In my freshman year of high school, a year before my parents packed the family up and moved us out of the town I'd done the majority of my growing up in, they made the decision to take me out of the public high school I was attending to transfer me to a regional all girls Catholic school. I had become somewhat of a nuisance. My need to fit in had caused me to become a disrupton in most of my classes even though I still performed really well in most of my subjects. The straw that broke the camel's back for my mom was the makings of what the police later labeled a riot that I ended up inciting, (all the police's words), on the way home from school.It occurred right near city hall, might I add, in October of my freshman year. The situation ended with me being given a free ride to the local police department and a week spent picking up trash in the city park. My parents had had enough  of my shenanigans and felt that a change in my environment as well as a "you're grounded until your dead punishment" would work for me. To this day I say  that decision was the best decision that my parents ever made for me. I spent only a year in my Catholic school because like I'd said before, my family moved to south Jersey in search of our first home, but it was the year that turned everything around. I began to discover who the real Rolanda was. Up until that point, I'd never realized that she'd been hidden. The pressures of how I looked, boys, and trying to figure out where I fit in were now obsolete. These people didn't know me and my school wasn't coed. I could decide who I wanted to be there and that's exactly what I went about to doing...

Fast forward seventeen years to present day and I'm still learning about myself on a daily basis. I have my moments but I can say that even before I knew who I was I knew what I wanted to become. Two more high schools followed after my family's move and through the transitions I discovered my self confidence, sense of humor and my outspokeness. I never waited for an opportunity to present itself. Attending four different high schools taught me that. You have to be able to seize the moment and in some cases create opportunities. It was the easiest way to make friends and to excel in whatever challenges I faced. When Miss Puberty finally realized her error she made up for it by being generous with me too. My body trimmed down in certain areas and grew in others and the boys finally started to notice,(in my adult life "Quincy" noticed too but we'll save that story for another time). My three book a week habit began to pay off as well having caused my brain to become like a sponge always absorbing information and being able to dissimenate it at a moment's notice. To this day I still sometimes wish for the pizza delivery guy to show up at my door after I've read a few books.

As I get older my senses become keener. I become more in touch with myself as a woman. I find myself seeing past my physical flaws and being in awe of the color and smoothness of my skin or the roundness of my hips or simply how after a shower when I'm in my most natural state I feel my sexiest and most powerful. I love that regardless of what I've experienced my ability to love has never been jaded. I'm so optimistic about what I'll one day be to someone and what he'll one day be to me and the life that we'll one day build. I'm setting professional, philanthropic, and financial goals for my life and I see myself drawing closer to them every day. My faith continuously grows stronger and I pray daily, among other things,  for wisdom, patience, discernment, and peace. I'm creating my legacy and that excites me more than anything. I'm sometimes mystified by myself and the capacity in which my brain operates. I do my best to be a great daughter, sister, aunt, niece, cousin, and friend. More important than anything else, I'm focused on being an extraordinary woman and I don't want to limit myself to the confines of what society and/or anyone expects of me. I dream and think so big sometimes that I overwhelm myself and there are days when I feel like there isn't enough time to get it all done. I want to be strong enough in who I am to be able to successfully fulfill all the other roles I'm destined to play in my lifetime.This blog is just another part of my journey. I encourage everyone reading this to take the time to first find out who you really are outside of all the roles you play in people's lives. Find out who you are to you! That's probably the most important role one can ever play. You can't sufficiently be anything to anyone else until you know who you are to yourself. So day by day, piece by piece, I'm building me and what an extraordinary me and woman I will be... Take note.