In my life, con­fi­dence has not been an easy thing to hold on to. You see, I did not always know that a woman is not born with this thing they call con­fi­dence, and I did not know that con­fi­dence could not be bought at a store. I didn’t even know that before you can have con­fi­dence you have to first have a high level of self esteem. What? You didn’t know any of these things either? Well baby girl, you are not alone. Many of us young ladies have been mis­in­formed about what hav­ing con­fi­dence means and about what it takes to build our confidence.

Grow­ing up among my friends, I never thought that I was as pretty as the other girls. I never had the right hair or the right clothes, and let’s not even get started on the right shoes and acces­sories. These are the things that got the other girls noticed, I thought. Back then, my self esteem was pretty low, mean­ing, I didn’t feel very good about myself and all I could see were the mate­r­ial things that other girls had and that I did not have. In other words, I spent a lot of time com­par­ing myself to my friends and female peers. In order to build high self esteem we must rec­og­nize that WE ARE ALL WORTHY OF RECOGNITION. We are all unique and beau­ti­ful, and we show­case our beauty in many dif­fer­ent ways. My nappy hair is just as beau­ti­ful as your straight hair, my choco­late com­plex­ion is just as beau­ti­ful as your vanilla or caramel com­plex­ion, and my style is just as fash­ion­able as the lat­est trends. These are the things that we have to proudly acknowl­edge because as black women, we come in a mul­ti­tude of beautiful-ness. As India Arie says in her song, Video, “I know my cre­ator didn’t make no mis­takes on me”. Hav­ing this kind of atti­tude toward our­selves is a build­ing block for hav­ing high self esteem.

Once the high self esteem is in place, the con­fi­dence will flow from our every move­ment. What you wear or look like will only be a com­pli­ment to the pride that will brighten up a room once you have entered it. I hope that you have been encour­aged to hold your head up high when fac­ing the world and to believe deep down in your soul that you are a strong black woman.