Getting to know the Lipstick Tomboy
Getting to know the Lipstick Tomboy. Welcome to the Lipstick Tomboy Blog! It’s been quite a journey these last few weeks and I still can’t believe you are here. I’m so excited to see where the remainder of this journey takes us. I am incredibly proud to call myself a Lipstick Tomboy. What came out of my mouth that day are really just ideas describing who I believe I am. I have been describing myself this way for years. So far there are many women who identify with that video even though their experience isn’t identical to mine. Ultimately, that’s why are here. I want explore all things Lipstick Tomboy including female empowerment, owning our authentic selves, diversity, inclusiveness, sport, food, fashion, adventure and fun.
So while we are at it I’d love to take this inaugural blog to catch you all up on me and my experience as a Lipstick Tomboy.
I started playing soccer at the age of 5. My father always believed that female athletes were better athletes than men in many regards. The rhetoric in my childhood home was always positive surrounding females and sport. Women could do anything they wanted. So it was no surprise that my father and his best friend were my first soccer coaches. Our team name was the Super Butterflies and let me tell you…we were FIERCE. My soccer journey continued for many years playing with local club teams and traveling all over the states for tournaments. I vividly remember being at a soccer tournament when I heard that women would get their own World Cup. It was a watershed moment for me.
Around the age of 12, I was hand picked to start training with the high school swim team. I trained and competed against high school kids from the get go. It was a crazy experience as I was competing with kids who were bigger, stronger and faster than me. That only lasted about year or so. There were 5 of us who had been training the same way and this began the legacy of the Fab Five Freshman. The expectations were high. The training was rough. The anxiety was real. My coach put a lot of individual pressure on us to win every single race and make every state final and I ultimately burned out. This was my first experience with anxiety. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had crippling sports anxiety which kept me out of the lap lane for the next 15 years.
My childhood overall was pretty ideal. My parents carted us around to all of our practices and activities. My father was entrepreneur with his own business and my mother is a retired school teacher. I was a scrappy kid with freckles and scrapes on my knees. I had a creek (crick as we’d call in it Oklahoma) behind my house that I’d play in all the time. If I wasn’t there then I was playing around in the front ditch, riding my bike or climbing the pecan trees. My grandparents lived on a farm north of town and my brother and I go there for long durations in the summer. We’d spend time fishing on Mohawk lake with my grandfather and coming home to gut the catfish so we could fry it up for dinner. We’d also help him care for the cows on the farm and fish out of the pond “down yonder”. My grandmother had a garden and she and I would pick vegetables so we could pickle or can them. I learned to cook from both of my grandmothers and continue many of their traditions to this day.
I had opportunities to play sports in college but turned down scholarships to pursue a theater degree. So I didn’t continue my sport but I did use my athleticism and teammate mentality to meet new people as an adult. Every time we moved to a new town I’d find a soccer team to play on. Those women were always my tribe, my besties, my champions. This is how I have forged many of my adult friendships. So it’s no wondered that it has carried over here.
For now, I wanted to give you a perspective of where I come from and my origins. I’ve had a many various experiences as an adult that have brought me to where I am today. Many of those we will cover in other blog posts and newsletters. My childhood is where the Lipstick Tomboy way of life was forged. I hope you are as excited as I am.
Together we can do great things! Let’s do this!