MandiBox Beauty

My decision on this has been like a seasaw, going up and down. I can't run away from who I am at my core, and being a woman who believes in and wholeheartedly loves Jesus is central to my life. Oh, the countless reasons I can share why I believe, the miracles, the spiritual encounters, but none of this will make you believe. Faith is an interesting catch-22; you have to have faith to experience God, but many have to experience God to have faith. So, I decided to create the "Find Your Beautiful" Camp Chapel as a place where you can stop the crazy catch-22 cycle and truly come as you are. Whether you are a believer or not, there will be something special for you at the Chapel. From Art and Dance, to a War Room and Devotionals, you will have something to contribute and receive. There will even be a place for you to share your doubts and disbelief. I believe this is all part of finding your Beautiful. The best thing about the Chapel, besides the awesomeness being built wi...

I've gotten a lot of questions from people wanting to know what exactly "Find Your Beautiful" Camp is. Despite reworking the mission and vision, this is still difficult to really explain. However, I'll do my best here! Beautiful is a word many people have tried to define and redefine. The one thing that is common among all the companies and organizations that are giving beauty a definition is that they keep trying a "one size fits all" model. No matter how much "diversity" they include, it's still presented as a concept that people should strive for, always leaving room for failure (you fail if you don't buy the product, join the business, subscribe, etc). Through "Find Your Beautiful" Camp, I'm aiming to break this not so Beautiful, in fact downright ugly, model. "Find Your Beautiful" Camp is based on the principle that Beauty is a perception that one must create and see for themselves. It is a state of b...

Yes, I'm back...again. The success this blog may one day see will truly be hard earned. Only God can truly start with nothing and create beauty in one-shot. For the rest of us, creating beautiful things is a process. I learned some time ago not to make promises about this blog. I have always had huge visions and hopes for it, but better to surprise than disappoint you. So, I leave any who read this with a little glimmer of what I dream this new effort to bring:

"I feel empty. I'm empty in every way!" I'll never forget shouting these words at my husband through a flood of tears as he did his best to comfort me. I was inconsolable. As I look back at those nights without my HunnyBee, I feel a twinge of shame and guilt. As a person of faith, who really believes there is an almighty God who loves me, I rarely reflected that during those days. I had so many emotions, but was mostly filled with fear, hurt, and anger. I'll admit that I felt a lot of guilt, which manifested as anger with myself. How could I be so selfish to bring another baby in this world knowing my body doesn't handle pregnancy well? Did I jinx things because I prayed for my last trimester pregnancy pains to end quickly? I managed to make the situation my fault. I pumped every night so I could bring my baby breastmilk. I felt like it was the least I could do for him. My husband and I woke up every 3 hours, though neither of us were ever really sleeping. I...

Tomorrow marks 1 month since my HunnyBee made his arrival and those 10 long days in the NICU almost seem like a lifetime ago. However, I promised to share, especially because I want to encourage DiversAble Models out there to be fighters and to always do what you know is best. 2 hours after my boy was born and we had just been transferred to our recovery room, the nurse came in to check my vitals. I was in pretty stable condition. At 35 weeks gestation, the hospital checks things on babies they normally don't check for, thank God. In the delivery room, HunnyBee's sugar level was tested and was at 38. I didn't know how to interpret this number at the time, but I was encouraged to breastfeed him as soon as I could. I tried, but because breastfeeding is quite the mission for me (another post for another time), I wasn't very successful. Back in the recovery room, my boy's sugar had gone from 38 to 24 and I saw the nurse race to get one of the doctors. His face looked ...

The last month or so has been a whirlwind, filled with tears...joy, pain, sadness, and many emotions in between. If you've been following my Facebook posts, you've been on the journey with me, but when I started writing about my pregnancy, I really wanted to focus on the uniqueness of having a baby as a person with Diverse Abilities. This post is intended to get back to that focus, which obviously includes the emotion, but can't ignore the more practical things. At 32 weeks and 5 days gestation, I had a regular appointment scheduled with my high risk OB/GYN. That morning I woke up not feeling well and had been having Braxton Hicks contractions for over a week. That all to familiar heavy feeling in my pelvis, the one that caused me hip pain that never went away during my first pregnancy, was back with a vengeance. I went to my appointment and she decided to do an internal pelvic exam. I was only 1 cm dilated, but the baby's head was a bit low and my doctor felt I shoul...