To be a young Black girl in America is to know early that beauty often excludes you. I thought beauty lived in someone else’s skin, someone else’s hair, someone else’s reflection. As a young Black woman, especially in spaces where eurocentric features are celebrated above all, I often felt invisible. With poetry as my only outlet, that quiet ache of not seeing myself reflected in beauty standards planted the first seed of why I chose Esthetics- I wanted to learn how to care for the skin while helping to rewrite the definition of beauty so that no one else would feel erased. Over time, I began to see art not just in galleries or poetry books, but in faces, in bodies, in the everyday details of how people carried themselves. Esthetics revealed itself to me not as an industry of vanity, but as an industry of healing. Skin tells stories. Stories of struggle, of healing, of becoming, and mine has been both canvas and battleground. My love of art shaped how I view beauty and I realized, just as a poem holds both darkness and light, so does a face. Just as a painting is layered, so is our self image. When I look at someone's skin, I don't just see texture or tone- I see rhythm. My training in Esthetics will allow me to treat and transform, but my creative background ensures that I will never reduce a person to just a “before” and “after”. For me, Esthetics is about helping someone find harmony between how they look and how they feel, bridging the gap between the external and internal self. I chose this career path because I know what it feels like to shrink under the weight of beauty standards, and I also know the liberation of reclaiming them. I chose this career because art has always been my first language, and the face is the best canvas I could imagine. I want women, especially Black women, to see beauty in their reflection without hesitation. What once felt like my greatest insecurity has become my greatest inspiration. Esthetics is not just about glowing skin, it's about restoring confidence and joy. It is where my artistry and my empathy meet. Choosing this career path is not simply about entering the beauty industry, it is about creating a space where beauty feels expansive enough to hold everyone’s story no matter what.