Dress // Oh Hey Girl • Harness // Jakimac • Boots // UNIF • Beret // eBay

I honestly can’t believe 2016 is over, it’s mental to think 365 days have gone by and the absolute whirlwind that has been this year. Globally, I think we can all agree it was shit. A horrendous chain of events that left our hearts heavy. The deaths of many beloved stars – Bowie & Prince hit me hard. The US presidential election. Fuck. A LOT. OF. THINGS. HAPPENED. THIS. YEAR. And although, yes 2016 was difficult for many but on a personal level this year was so much about perseverance if anything.

It’s funny for the last two years I’ve been doing year round tarot readings for myself and theme of this year was strength and without a doubt I have felt that energy in it’s utmost capacity. I actually hadn’t thought about it until sitting down and writing this but this has been one fucking hell of a shitshow of a year and even though the first few months were rather arduous, harrowing and discomforting my efforts have really paid off and not only that but that amount of shit I’ve achieved this year BLOWS MY FUCKING MIND!!! It’s been a year of tremendous growth, if you follow me on my Instagram and blog I know I keep reiterating this but bloody fuck I don’t think I’ve ever done such a goddamn 180. January 1st, will mark my official one year of being substance abuse free and I can’t believe how far I’ve come in that regard. Reflecting on this time last year things were hazy and disconnected, I liked the way detriment sounded. Girl like wildfire. Girl like devastation. Girl like bulletproof. It’s strange to really muster these words but I never really thought I’d ever feel real happiness or find it for that matter but this year proved me wrong. This year was about saying yes to many things instead of staying stagnant in the dark. It was about pushing through walls of fear. Just fucking doing it and seeing where I would fall. And even if I did, getting right back up and picking up all the pieces, reassembling it and walking it the fuck off. It was about starting a lot of things I only dreamed of doing, things that just floated in thought and graced my mouth but never put into action until now. I finally started dance, which is one of the copious amount of things that I’ve wanted to do for years but always felt discouraged. And even though I’m still a beginner I found out my passion for voguing, which has been a tremendous outlet for me and a beautiful and fierce AF art form in and of itself. I finally got my Learners cuz it’s been about fucking time I learn how to drive ha! I spontaneously enrolled in the Freelance Makeup program and am ridiculously inspired by the MUA community and tremendous support I’ve gotten so far. I started taking photos again. Collaborating. Making some dope shit. Met some incredible human beings these year. Spent three weeks in Italy with my family and being incredibly inspired by that trip. Went to Pemberton Music Fest with two lovely souls who I met this year and had the time of my life seeing some of my fave artists. From seeing FKA Twigs in the pouring rain wearing identical rain coats looking like dumplings to losing my shit seeing Die Antwoord for the 5th time and having a pretty wondrous moment with a goddamn rainbow hovering over the stage seeing Miguel. Having my cousin move to Vancouver, reconnecting with her and taking dance classes every week. That one day during Pride, dressed to the nines with my fucking tribe, soul sistas for life, the MOTHERFUCKING HOLY TRINITY and staying out till 7AM. Exploring my own backyard that this city has to offer with my love. Starting this blog it’ll mark it’s one year in about a month! Shaving off my eyebrowz (honestly it’s been one of the most empowering things I’ve done this year) and getting baby bangs. Fell in love with myself. Sat with the destruction. Pulled everything a part and in the words of my mother, SHUTUP. SIT DOWN. AND LOVE YOURSELF. It’s a delirious feeling to examine everything in retrospect, that we are always constantly in flux but I am so fucking proud of myself for having the courage to cast out the dark, light them fucking demons on fire and watch the ashes transpire into something magical, unimaginable and truly mesmerizing.

2017, I have no idea where you’re going to take me but lets hold hands and dance to the sound of the fucking unknown.

Girl like electricity. Girl like pistol. Girl like magic.

Much love to all you beauties.

xx

Dress // Free People • Jewellery // Most rings from SHOPDIXI, thrifted or found while travelling

Sometimes I like to dress up and exchange all my dark clothing for something a little more fanciful with plenty of lace, in what I deem as my white witch looks. Ha!

Honestly though, I am absolutely dumbfounded by how quickly 2016 is coming to a close and to think how prior to this year I would’ve never ever imagined to be this jubilant as I am right now. These images from my Italy trip with my fam jam this past summer seem fitting because after what seemed like an endless trek walking uphill and and downhill on uneven cobblestones we finally made it to the top of the side of this cliff that unveiled itself to this fucking unreal view. I remember looking out into the great abyss of the ocean, trying to take in the magnitude of colours and radiance but this moment held a peculiar sort of magic that cannot be matched. For copious amount of reasons this trip meant so much to me but I distinctly remember how upon soaking in the mystical pulchritude of Cinque Terre, I felt a sort of harmonious hum that flowed through my very form. Perhaps the only proper equivalence to illustrate the degree of such significance would be the feeling of making peace with yourself. A certain connectedness to everyone and everything, past, present and future. A particular stillness that extends its arms in great fervour, encircles you in glorious benevolence and whispers acceptance.  you are home.

Dress // USED House of Vintage • Boots // UNIF • Necklace // SHOPDIXI

“The symbolism of the Scorpion is wrapped up in it’s ability to focus on it’s power, this is the Scorpions special gift. Scopions magic is the magic of “defense”. We all have to protect ourselves from threats. Many times we do not notice threats, but the scorpion was born to protect itself from invasion naturally. Scorpion Attributes and Power: If you get your power from the scorpion, such as one who is born under the zodiac sign of the Scorpio, then there are a few things to be mindful of. Even if you are lured by the scorpion, then the scorpion is the animal for you. Be mindful of its attributes and powers. If you are enticed by the scorpio, it is because you need to protect yourself. You were born with an innate power of self preservation, and you need to use this power at all times. The challenge will be to perceive your gift and more importantly, to use it.”

– The Hoodwitch

With Scorpio Season coming to an end in ways it is somewhat a relief. November is always the most hectic and overwhelming month of the year for me since everyone in my family is born this month including one of our doggos! I always find it mental how both my parents are born three days apart (Nov 9th & 12th) and how my sister and I are born a day a part by two years (mine the 22nd hers the 23rd) and of course Pom our first lil nugget is born on the 28th. This time of the year always possesses an abundance of high energy, a time for celebration but also I find it to be a month that also lends itself to being quite inquisitive, reflective and mystically powerful for me. In past year’s surrounding my birthday I usually experience some sort of identity // existential crisis if you will…no drama here right?! I think when I was younger I was always afraid of getting older, fearing I hadn’t accomplished all the things I wanted to do in my life amongst a spinning downhill spiral of negative self-talk but as I turn 25 tomorrow this year feel’s a lot different than any other. If anything, I feel fucking elated it’s a curious sort of bliss that I’ve been experiencing lately one I can’t properly describe. It’s all encompassing yet expansive, it’s the sort of light I’ve been speaking of all year trying to locate it and I feel as if I’ve finally been able to harness it and am still learning how to use it. It feels a lot like the sort of vibrancy everyone possesses but is a matter of really looking inwards, pulling everything a part and somehow assembling it all back together to see how it all works. The sort of light that comes with confronting all the pernicious elements of who you are and burning out the dark. The sort of light that begins with a single flame and eventually manifests into wild fire, one that can’t be put out. The sort of light that is mesmerizing and contains a certain kind of radiancy, celestial and divine.

xx

Dress + Boots // UNIF • Socks // American Apparel

This is basically my version of Wednesday Adams! Halloween is my favourite time of the year and I thought I’d bring y’all some casual dead girl looks. Although I am a fan of more warmer weather I can’t deny that all the anticipation of October leading up to Halloween is the most thrilling, considering it’s almost an exercise gearing up for the pandemonium that is November….basically the fact that my entire family is born next month shit get’s a bit cray. If I’m honest every day for me is goddamn Halloween because I am constantly that bitch who is a tad bit overdressed and as of late I’ve been having a lot of fun experimenting with my usual makeup routine. This holiday though has always held a certain magic for me, not only do I love seeing people turn out some rad costumes whether it’s witty, more glamorous or a bit frightening but the fact that I get to celebrate my friendship with my two best friends! That’s fucking right, the MUTHAFUCKIN’ HOLY TRINITY all first hung out five years ago today! I’m the most elated to be turning out some serious sick AF looks with these bad boys mixed in with a lil debauchery.

“‘Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world.”

 William Shakespeare

And so my loves, I leave you with this quote.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN ALL YOU FREAXXX. I HOPE YOU ALL EAT A SHIT  TON OF CANDY, SLAP SOME GLITTER ON YO FACE, FEEL FIERCE AF, STAY SAFE AND HAVE FUN! 

p.s if I see any of you fuckers with your ignorant culturally appropriating costumes you bet your ass Imma call you out and slap you.

xx

(My sistaaaahs be real stunners, Meg & Colby & I)

Dress // DollsKill • Boots // Alexander Wang • Harness // Jakimac

Pardon the randomness of this post, my mother took most of the images for the looks and although she has an eye for beauty she was having trouble trying to function my camera as she is not the most tech savy, bless her heart.

If anything I’ve really taken from my mother is that she always famously says to my sister and I, and basically everyone I know is to SHUTUP. SIT DOWN. AND LOVE YOURSELF. Quite the blunt woman isn’t she? These words are usually followed up by, “If you can’t love yourself how the hell are you going to love anybody else?” I can’t tell if RuPaul stole these words from her or vice versa but either way that’s some motherfucking straight up truth there. My mum is a fascinating human being, extraordinary in more ways than I can count, I’ve definitely inherited her complex (and at times savage) intensity, her endless creativity, her visionary nature, definitely her contingent moodiness, sharp sass, and overwhelming generosity and passion for life.

It’s funny growing up with my mum we are so damn similar in personalities that it often ended up in conflict. We both have reactive natures, moreso me than her if I admit it so you could only imagine what it was like living under one roof especially in a house full of Scorpios. Talk about mega intense energy emanating from all directions it could basically make one implode. Actually though. We joke a lot that I am most definitely her karma because of all the shit I put her through as the lil rotten teen delinquent I was and because (this is what she tells me) that she was quite the rebel herself as a youth and I am somehow her karmic payback. HA!

This trip to Italy meant a lot to her since we haven’t been on a family vacation in years cuz momma has been hustling like a maniac, I don’t know how she does it really. I couldn’t quite properly express to you even if I tried the captivating magnitutde of beauty that this country has to offer. These images were taken in the towns of Montepulciano, Montalcino and Pienza in Tuscany,  the countryside of Italy with endless rolling hills, greenery that extended for miles, and just like everyone says it really is like a fairy tale setting brought to life.

First and foremost if you should know anything about traveling with my family especially with my two sistaaaahs (okay Meg is my cousin but she’s basically my sibling) you will hear us for goddamn miles. My family is pretty mischievous, we definitely know how to have fun, not to mention if you get us three girls plus my dad laughing you can hear our maniacal cackles reveraberate like crazy. You should also know that if you get Colby and Meghan together they tend to enjoy singing….and dancing….in public with absolute zero iota of fucks given. And yes, I do commemorate them for unapologetically being themselves I, myself however get embarrassed fairly easily not to mention I know when on vacation and hanging out with them in general they will deliberately showcase their talents publicly to no avail.

We were in Tuscany for about four days and most of these pictures are taken from our second day where we spent the majority of the time exploring different towns and walking up a shit ton of stairs to see these stunning views encapsulating such magnificence. For one thing I’ve learned about traveling to Europe, cobblestones are not your friend. Guaranteed at some point if you’re wearing shoes that aren’t flat you will bail. You can only guess that that happened to all us girls on this trip followed by laughter and then assistance. All the adorable towns we visited had a castle or fortress of some sort, I remember the one in Montalcino we made our mum walk up the shady looking stairs to reach the looking tower she was so not pleased but we all cheered her on considering doing any activity that requires exerting a lot of energy is beyond her haha. It was windy as all fuck up there and climbing all those steps definitely killed my soul a little bit but it was worth it because the views up there were unlike anything I’ve ever seen or experienced before. Energy exists everywhere and every place you travel to holds a certain kind. Some places though they have a specific pull to it, a magnetic connection that only make sense to you when you experience it for yourself. Tuscany, is one of them. Magical in every sense of the word, whimsical and without a doubt romantic. My family and I were completely enamored by it’s charm and is a place I hope to return to and relish in it’s striking resplendence once more.

xx

Shirt // Jbiebz Purpose 2016 Tour (LOL) • Boots // Alexander Wang • Necklace // SHOPNIN3 • Sunnies // WildFox

I’m not going to lie this has been a hard one to write. After two years of having purple hair I decided to change my hair colour and for the past few months being this blue tone with turquoise hues has really been the start of a new era for me. If you’ve been following my blog for a while I speak a lot about the human condition, the strange duality and everything in between that plays a role in our lives. As much as this somewhat resembles your typical ‘style blog’ you will never find me writing about the garments on my body, although that isn’t too say that my personal aesthetic does carry an element to this platform, it is much more about the story telling for me. Looking at how we’re more than eight months into 2016 I have to say compared to this time last year where everything was far more destructive and harrowing I am doing a lot better. For the first time in a long time I feel proud of myself and that’s something I often forget to give myself credit for. When I really sit with myself and look at how monumentally fucked up everything was and felt in 2015 I’ve honestly done a complete 180. I’m no longer self-medicating and abusing a handful of vices that used to be my coping mechanisms and have extracted myself from toxic situations and people. Sure, the party is fun and you think it never ends but when you get sucked into a world thats nothing but a dangerous mixture of blurred nights, intoxication, deception and waking up with the heaviness in your heart you thought you had so innocently eradicated the night before accompanied by a delirious pounding in your head is it all really worth it? I’m definitely someone who takes things to the extreme and I often like to test my personal threshold. I thought for a while I was “invincible” purely enjoying life because I was going out all the time and made the all time excuse of ‘being young and free’ bullshit. Of course, there is a time and place to dance away the night and escape momentarily from life’s tribulations but I was more than knees deep in a noxious cycle of addiction and affliction without really being aware of it or anywhere near admitting it. For months I was in denial that I had a problem because my fucking dumb ass logic and Ego self got the best of me and assumed that I was still a perfectly functioning human being because I still (somewhat) managed to carry out daily duties like my job. I know that I’ve always suffered from depression and anxiety, something that’s accumulated and carried itself over the years as an eleven year old and into my adolescence and now into my twenties. So when parts of me were depleting and instead of asking for help, taking initiative and doing the work on myself I found solace in my vices. In the quiet, the war inside my head grew vehemently louder and stronger and my addictions were becoming out of control. I felt outnumbered by my demons but I still refused to do anything about it. It wasn’t until my partner relentlessly called me out on it and told me to get help. Although, that period of my life was absolutely sickening – quite literally and metaphorically – and a complete shitshow in the most horrendous way I count my lucky stars every day that he did that for me and that I have managed to kick my substance abuse habit to the fucking curb and never look back. It wasn’t easy and it took a whirlwind of unfortunate events to really get the light to find its way through my clouded presence but I have to say for the first time in an extremely long time without hesitation, I am happy and well. 

(Kendahl’s DIY on how to make a dress fit when you’re too lazy to get dat shit altered :P)

Dress – Brandy Melville • Shoes – UNIF • Jewellery – from everywhere // mainly thrifted

Apologies for the lack of updates lately and that I may have been a bit MIA. I’ve been living a super low key life as of late that mainly consists of hermit-ing and hanging out with five people I actually feel comfortable around and trying my best to re-centre myself because it seems that February was pandemonium. Being in your twenties is kind of like dealing with the nuisance of teen angst only it’s more refined in some ways and less screaming and more crying, or maybe its an amalgamation of both and it’s still this huge cluster-fuck-of-god-knows-what and everybody is still trying to “figure it out” but you’re a little more self-aware (at least I’d hope so) and really trying to get from A to B instead of lingering somewhere in the middle. Everybody that knows me knows that I get stressed out (extremely) easily. It’s funny because in certain difficult situations I do excel but then the majority time I’m just a fucking chicken with its head cut off. Fabulous. My sister often says to me, “When are you not stressed out?” It’s almost become this running joke because I legit have some sort of crisis every other day whether it be an existential one, or dealing with my identity, or because I’m trying to be a perfectionist with my fucking eye liner. Okay, so I’m a tad bit overdramatic. But this last month the heaviness hit hard in unimaginable ways. I thought I was done with my demons, really demolished them and put them to rest but when a series of unfortunate events occur and snowball, shit gets real out of control. I had fallen back into some terrible old habits and my anxiety had severely increased to the point where it was debilitating. I know everyone says, it’s going to get worst before it gets better and for the most part it’s unfortunately true. But sometimes you really need to be knocked down to know where you stand and fuck does it ever suck with your head against the cold pavement but I promise you, you will rise.

I think somewhere in 2015, I lost a huge part of myself after experiencing some traumas and I’m still trying to process that amongst tackling old demons. You see, fear is not unfamiliar to me – in fact it’s been my friend for quite some time now. Years even. It’s been sitting on my shoulders, towering over and whispering doubts into my ears. It’s held my hand throughout history, resides in my chest, compressing my lungs. Fuck it, I’ll admit it it’s encompassed me. But this time even though fear did get the best of me, I don’t want to be acquainted with it anymore. I want to be able to stare it down right in the fucking face and scream at it and not be petrified. I don’t want it to make me sick to my stomach, lunged over and holding my sides or 5 am panic calls to someone close to me or having to surrender myself to certain vices in order to self-regulate or have the noise from the war inside my head become so loud I can hear it reverberating off the fucking walls. I don’t want fear to envelope me like it has and has been doing so many times before. There’s been an ample amount of negative self-talk lately from the girl upstairs and all I want is for her to quiet it down. This past week, I’ve seen actual progress for the first time in god knows how long. I know shit like this can only be taken in baby steps because as much as I’d love for my fears, traumas and demons to all evaporate instantaneously we all know that’s a whole lot of rubbish because this sort of soul work is really dependent on time and action. Recently, for every negative thought I have about myself I’m trying to combat it by telling myself three positive things I actually fancy about myself. That may sound a bit cheesy but I want to create new thinking patterns and abolish old ones. I’ve started seeing my counsellor regularly instead of just on occasion, as well as reading more frequently and even taken up intro hip hop lessons (I’ll probably share when I feel more confident in the mean time I’m getting my moves down haha.)

I know I still have a long way to go, and there are days where I still feel absolutely defeated but creating these minor changes even if they may not seem like much, is definitely a beginning. Perhaps chaos is it’s own catalyst of sorts that can indubitably propel you in a multitude of directions whether it be for better or for worst. My demons are colossal, they eclipse all my light, they’re conniving vicious fuckers that are damn good at that sweet talk. But maybe if we’re honest destruction is needed in order to come full circle. As much as we’d love to conceal all our hideous elements and pretend like they aren’t present that shit will keep returning and demanding itself to be recognized until it corners you and stares you straight in the fucking eye. So 2016, I hope this will be the year I find my strength and uncover the light. Here’s to finding my way back from the wreckage and travelling towards my heart space – to centreing myself and coming out the other side.

xx

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