My Transition

     Hello! My name is Heidi Martin, and I'm addicted to cosmetics. I have always been fascinated with "putting my face on". My mother used makeup as leverage all the time in my childhood because it's what worked. "You can wear makeup today if you do this for me" she would say.

     Part of me loved being able to to be someone else. I could wear makeup anyway I wanted and become a new person. I experimented every way I could. A lot of the time, it got me sent back to my room. I tested out how much black eyeliner I could get away with; how high I could apply eye shadow; how dark a lipstick I could wear and just how much blush could I fit on my cheeks.

     Fast forward 10-15 years, my love and passion for cosmetics are the same, but my intentions and aesthetics have changed. I want to enhance the beauty I already posses rather than to become someone else. I have moved past the awkward "I'm not pretty enough" stage of girlhood. Not only do I want confidence for myself, but I find myself thinking about how amazing it would be to help others get through that stage. It's a miserable place to be, and it wasn't long ago that I was in the middle of it.

     Let me give you a picture of a 13 year old: Her mother accidentally cut her hair so short that everyone thought she looked like a member of a 90's boyband. She was covered in freckles and too short for her weight. She was insecure and just wanted to feel pretty. This was me. Anyone relate? I've heard this exact story told by hundreds of women over the span of my adult life.

     My friends have often referred to me as the "walking makeover". I always have makeup in my purse, and I'm always excited to share. So why was I working retail and warehouse jobs that had nothing to do with my passion? I think if you have conversations with the people who work these jobs, often times they can't even tell you why or how they came to be working for several years in a field they had 0 passion for. That's my answer. I don't know. But I feel now that I have a perfect vision of where I don't want my life to go.

     Change is good, and I am now more ready than ever for it. I started training to be an Image Consultant in February of this year because my sister in-law suggested I would be good at it. "No I wouldn't" was my first thought. Then came, "Maybe I could do that" and then I couldn't stop thinking about it. How I would do it. What I would focus on. "I could totally do this!" I found myself sharing with others. Of all the things I have ever told my family and close friends about, this is what I received; "You'd be perfect for that!" "You could do so much with that!". So I am.

     I find myself feeling a bit out of my comfort zone, but that is a good feeling. I haven't had the "times they are a changing" butterflies in far too long. My passion for enhancing my own confidence and beauty has evolved into how can I help other women? I am so totally stoked out my mind to move forward with this new chapter in my life.