Princess Lukah

Lukah Zuri Scholtz-Saaiman
Today I am a very proud Nani.

Today marks the birth of an extraordinary girl, a girl who God knew when he placed you in your mommy’s womb will be a gift to her and to everyone around you. Little princess you are a spectacular gift, a blessing and oh so very special.
I remember when I saw you for the first time, I went with your mommy for her sonogram and we found out that you are a girl, I couldn’t help but cry, it was tears of happiness. I couldn’t believe that a miracle like you were growing inside your mommy and you already touched my heart then and I already loved you. The happiness boiled up inside of me and the excitement for your birth was impending that was 5months ago and today you made your appearance, a healthy, beautiful little baby girl.

Your daddy always said when he has a daughter he will name her Lukah, thus your name, it was your daddy who chose your name. I wish he could be here with your mommy and feel the love and joy that she felt when she held you in her arms for the first time, but God had other plans, but I know that he was with you, your spiritual guardian, and is having such a magical party in Heaven to celebrate the birth of his little princess.

Lukah you are an extremely special child and I cannot even explain how excited all your grannies, aunties and uncles are, how we counted down the days till you decided you finally grace us with your presence. I am overwhelmed with emotions, the happy kind.

Baby Girl I vow to love you unconditionally, I vow to protect you, I vow to be there for you, I vow to be an aunty that you can be proud of, I vow to support and believe in you, I vow to be inspiring and someone that you can always count on. I vow to tell you about the Love that your mother and Father shared. I cannot wait to hold you in my arms and tell you what a strong woman your mother is, what a loving, amazing figure she is. I cannot wait to tell you about your father, how inspiring, loving, admirable and calm soul he was. You were created out of pure love and you are love. I cannot wait to meet you, to hold you in my arms and tell you all these things, I am excited and all so blessed to have the opportunity to be a part of your life, to be someone that you can call aunty or Nani, someone that you can depend on, someone who you know will always love you.

God always has plans bigger for each of us, bigger than we can comprehend. Princess you are a blessing an angel that God sent to us, you will be loved, nurtured, cherished, encouraged and protected. I love you Princess Lukah, our little miracle, our God sent Blessing.

P.S I am so proud of your mommy, she is a strong one and as soon as you are old enough we will drag you to the mall, we’ll just have to see if you enjoy shopping like mommy, or would rather complain about how long everything is taking like your daddy..

Love you forever and a day

Aunty/Nani Jo

comfortably cinderella

Being comfortable in your own skin is something that comes with age, I guess. By comfortable I mean embracing the flaws and perfections and accepting and loving the you, that you are. It is a transition that starts in a mental space that transcends into the physical. Have someone just ever come up to you and told you that you look amazing, but you feel so dull and want to ask the person if they are mental? But it’s funny how a change in mentality can have the effect of exceeding the view that you have of yourself.

Hitting the mid 20’s used to be such a scary thought, the idea of growing up, but actually the thought of how a person in that age category is supposed to act, supposed to think and do things. Being in your 20’s is all about exploring and finding out who and what you are. It’s about taking the preconceived ideas and setting it to your own ways. It’s about finding out who you are, what makes you tick and finding your own uniqueness and how it can impact your life in a positive way, even turning the negatives into some sort way that can benefit you in a positive way.

I take the simple example of being Cinderella or actually just her losing her glass slipper. We are all Cinderella’s in our own unique way, some more than others, but all waiting for our fairy godmother to transform us, to have our dance with prince charming, lose our glass slipper and ending up happy with charming. So you are Cinderella, looking and feeling all comfortable in your track pants and t-shirt, getting all anxious and nervous when someone just suggests that you have to go to the ball. (The mall being the modern day clubs). So you go stand in front of your cupboard, scratching for the perfect outfit, with the help from your fairy Godmother, (the wonderful people from Mac, Revlon, etc. and of course fashion blogs) you get to look like the perfect princess that you are. You show up at the “ball” looking like your fine self and of course the other princesses are also dressed to kill, I mean it’s a hunt and everyone has the same goal in mind on some unconscious level or another. You have an amazing night through all the pulling down of a skirt that keeps riding up and wanting to reveal your crotch, or the pulling up of a top that the twins just want to jump out of and of course those 6ínch heels that’s hurting your feet from all the dancing, but hey you are a princess, got to keep up appearances. You spot prince charming and he asks you for a dance, the fact that the punch just kept flowing totally leaves your mind and of course you’ll dance, you have been waiting for this moment for a while now. You end up having a wonderful night, you even lose a shoe because hey that punch was just too tasty no wonder it flowed the whole night. You end up with prince Charming and like Katty Perry says in her song, “you go to bed with a 10 and wake up next to a 2”, and he rather turns into a frog. How is that for disappointment? Well the moment the prince states that oopsi your foot is too small or too big to fit the shoe, the same way your hips are too wide or your nose too small, you start questioning yourself, doubting who you are all because of one person who isn’t happy with your appearance.

So you’ll find a lot of fake prince charming’s out there or should I rather refer to them as frogs, those who will make the shoe fit even if it hurts you, because your breast size is appealing, but the moment they realise you had a little help from wonder bra, it’s on to the next one. The same prince charming who is amazed by the filtered flawless you and scared off by the unfiltered flawed you. The only way you’ll actually be able to find the prince is when you start to stop looking for the imperfections in yourself and start embracing it. start by accepting the fact that you are growing horizontally now instead of vertically, the fact that the only way you’ll ever have a thigh gap is because well it is photo shopped in, the fact that who you are will attract the frog who will turn into the charming King and not the Prince who turns into a frog when you start losing your appeal.

So Cinderella your show didn’t fit, is it a bad thing? Months later when you stop pulling down the skirt that keeps riding up to reveal your crotch, or stop using that little extra help from the chicken cutlets, when you start to embrace the wide hips, full lips, small nose, everything that you thought made you flawed, then only you’ll be happy, coz your change in mentality transcends into the physical.
So mid 20’s is about living all those miserably failed Cinderella moments, the unforgettable frogs, learning from the intoxicating punch and embracing the imperfect dirty, that makes you the Princess that you are.