Whew Chile! 2020…2020. It held no punches, but through it all, I came out on top. I could easily write an entire dissertation on what went wrong but I’d rather focus on all of the great things that occurred in 2020, the lessons and all.

Let’s start with personal lessons and growth:

Patience: The first thing I learned was patience, with both myself and my kids. This is the first time I’ve ever spent this much time with my kids consecutively. Let’s be real life changed drastically. I was accustomed to my normal routine of wake up, get the kids dressed, get them to their respective locations (school..daycare) and then I go to work, we pick them up, go home, cook dinner….rinse and repeat. Well in March, there was no go to work or drop the kids off….it was just US, together….24/7. Literally. At first, it was allll good in the hood LOL, because I thought it was temporary and then it started to set in that nope….this might be a long term thing and that’s when panic set in and hit me like a ton of bricks. I’ve literally had to completely re-wire my thinking and my idea of what life is and may be going forward and more importantly give myself and my kids grace and patience as we navigate this new norm. Lesson Learned: Have patience and Grace with yourself and Your kids

Cooking: The second thing I learned or re-learned rather is my love for cooking. I had fallen into this cycle of repetitiveness and had quite honestly fallen off on my cooking game. Well that all changed when I realized how much these kids REALLY eat and how much I was NOT willing to continue ordering food on UberEats and Doordash LOL #iwillnotgobrokeplayingwithyall Lesson Learned: Stop being lazy girl and cook for your family! 😂😂😂

DIY/Renovations: The third thing, which is one of the things that excites me the most is my love for DIY and renovating my creative studio. We obviously spend a ton of time here at my Creative Studio so over the course of the year, I’ve spent time jazzing it up, since I closed the doors in march due to the pandemic. It was honestly what I needed but didn’t know it. I’ve had time to create a space I love, make mistakes, correct them and come up with other ideas. I bought a SAW y’all. While many may be like “yea ok girl, big whoopidy doo” that is big for me. I can with full certainty say that prior to March 2019 (when I began renovating the studio) I didn’t have a creative, DIY, renovation bone in my body. I had never painted a single thing in my life, I had barely hung a picture. Well look at me now… #mamaimadeit Lessons Learned: It’s ok to Pivot and switch gears, you just have to DO IT!

Blacklivesmatter: The fourth and in my opinion the most important for personal lessons and growth was the sense of pride that I had and still HAVE for the way that WE as Black people came together after such heartache, pain and trauma we experienced while watching the senseless killings of innocent black men and women. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmuad Arbery’s death shook me and quite honestly almost broke me. I had never felt so helpless in my life and so filled with anger, fear and shame #atthesamedayumtime. My anger stemmed from having to witness this time and time again and the feeling that much like every other instance it would be old new days later (we learned that wasn’t the case! 🙌🏾).

My Fear stemmed from knowing that every single time my AMAZING AND BEAUTIFUL BLACK HUSBAND and MY BEAUTIFUL BLACK SON, MY AMAZING DADDY leave the house, they could and would always be a target. That kinda fear hits different, and it’s definitely a “if you know, you know” moment and the reality is that it didn’t stop there. I know and love MANY amazing black men from family to friends and this is their reality. A reality that I quite honestly have not experienced first hand.

My shame stemmed from the amount of ignorance I have had ALL these years when it came to just how poorly these black men that I love have been treated. It took a VERY serious and candid convo with my husband for my realize that EYE too have been a part of that problem. For a lack of better words, it was a low buzzing thing, just below the surface and not nearly as front and center as it should have been. Don’t get me wrong I’m not stupid, I’m well aware of the injustices that black men face everyday, but SEEING IT, along with the rest of the world, back to back to back, that shit was traumatic. Which then clicked to me JUST how traumatic it is for black men everyday, specifically MY BLACK MAN. Summer 2020 humbled me. PERIOD. I won’t ever be the same. So let’s get back to the sense of pride part. My pride stems from the fact that we collectively as black people came together with ONE cause in mind. To demand equality and justice for the wrong doing present and past. I witnessed incremental change, I saw REAL allies, I saw people come together for ONE cause and it wasn’t immediately diluted with “but” at least not on my timeline because that was a sure fire way to get #BLOCKEDT . So yea 2020 was throwing them  hands at your girl…. Lesson Learned: Know that change can and will come when we come together and most importantly, protect and support the black men your life, with all you have!

Now moving on to Professional lessons and growth.

As a content creator, the beginning of 2020 was REALLLL sketchy and by sketchy I mean, it was a desert. Brands obviously were impacted much like the rest of the world and partnerships were placed on hold temporarily and for some permanently. It literally went from ghost town to boombastic….ironically riiigghhhhtt around the uptick of movement within the black lives matter movement. I say ironic with much sarcasm. I believe a lot of this was performative but I digress. This made me MUCH more aware of the brands that I work with and created a new system of selecting brands I choose partner with. The FIRST thing I do when a brand reaches out is head to their socials to see what type of energy they had on or around June 2nd and thereafter… and I’ll leave that there.  

Management: But as the partnerships started to pick up, I started to get a little overwhelmed. I’ve literally been doing this solo dolo since the beginning so asking for help or hiring on a team for my personal brand was never even a thought. Framework Digital Media enters the room 😂😂 Y’all, I can say with FULL TRANSPARENCY that I had ZERO desire to acquire management or have anyone have ANY input in my brand because it’s my baby and I GOT THIS, or so I thought. So I received an email them, read it and immediately had this strange feeling in my stomach. I cant even describe it, but it was one that I couldn’t shake. Enough that I decided to “entertain” the email and respond. AGAIN, I still had no real expectations, I was just “seeing what they had to say”. I get on a call with 2 of the ladies and immediately knew that I was in trouble. The convo went too well, well enough that I immediately text my husband like ummmmmm I think I might be working with a management agency. He of all people KNOWS that was outta left field. I had literally talked MAD smack about this topic all together for YEARS and here I was considering it. I gather more questions and get on ANOTHER call with them. Meanwhile, I get an email from TWO more management companies wanting to work with me.😳😳  NOW I’m feeling myself, like OK SIS…then doubt crept in like ok why is this happening now???? Anywho, skipping to the important part, I SIGNED WITH THEM (Frameworkdigitalmedia)!!!! 🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾 And ya’ll it has been THEE biggest blessing for my brand since I began. I literally couldn’t have envisioned a better transition and relationship. My team supports me and they took the time to understand me and my needs and where I want my brand to go and have presented opportunities that align perfectly with my lifestyle and my brand. I LITERALLY couldn’t be happier. I could go on and on and on, but I will save that for another blog post! So in short, Brownskinbeautiful is represented by management and my life has been made soo much easier. Lesson learned: It’s ok to have help, it might be a blessing in disguise.

Last but not least, I trademarked my brand Brownskinbeautiful. That was a huge accomplishment but this was solely competed by that amazing beautiful black man that I talked about earlier, my husband. When I tell y’all, nobody supports me like him. I MEAN IT and I’m talking from Day 1, when this was all an idea. He bought me my first camera, my first editing software, my first MacBook…you name it. He saw in me what I didn’t even see in myself. He also saw the vision of my expanding my brand and needing to secure it the appropriate way and here we are! BSB is allll mine. Because of this trademark, I was able to secure my handle on IG to keep some consistency across all platforms for branding. Lesson Learned: Get your ish together the legal way.

So, whew….that’s all I’m sharing for now because baby this was a NOVEL 😂😂