I cannot believe how long it’s been since I posted something here. I have a few thoughts and new developments in my life to share. Oh before that, I realized that on September 21st and November 27th, a whole bunch of people in Canada viewed my blog. I don’t know anyone there but thanks for the clicks eh. Newest development in my life is I have a life partner now and my extended family got a whole lot bigger. I am still on cloud 9 though I’m not sure about him, he is probably second guessing himself right now ;), JK JK. There are more people in my life, more to share my life with and more to love. I’ve been living in Ohio for almost a year and half and I just completed my first semester of grad school (I know, finally!) training to be a school counselor. I fall in love with the program each time I step into a classroom. The idea of helping people to be their best possible selves is satisfying. More update on that as it happens.

So the election was last month. We have a president-elect that is not the most political person but as I’ve heard from people, that’s part of his appeal. The American people-those who chose to exercise their rights-voted for him, they wanted change. I am trying to give him a chance as I believe that ‘united we stand, divided we fall.’ I was a big Bernie supporter during the primaries because of how genuine and passionate he was about his plans. I just love his tweets (@sendanders). I fell in love with him when I saw the picture of him getting arrested on August 13th 1963 for protesting segregation. However, he didn’t win the primaries because I believe that this was Hillary’s time, she has worked for over 40 years for this. It was upsetting to watch her lose to Trump. This was my first election as an American citizen and it almost feels like my voice didn’t matter because my vote did not make a difference and I wonder if I would have felt the opposite if she’d won, that my vote and voice matter. On the bright side (for me) this year was also the election year in Ghana, and my party the New Patriotic Party won. Nana Akuffo Addo is finally president, he has also fought to become president and I am excited about the changes he will bring to Ghana. Though I did not get to vote in Ghana, I was as invested in the process, at least 3 days before, as I was with the elections here. I will share the two photos I have talked about.

As stated above, I got married on September 17th, the first time I wore my wedding dress, before buying it, I knew it was the one. I felt beautiful in it, it was simply elegant, yes I will share a photo. Now, going into the dress shopping, I had one brand that I really wanted, it’s called Mori Lee but I ended up falling in love with a Sincerity Bridal gown. I follow them on Instagram and I see that they feature a lot of brides that wear their gowns. After the wedding I sent them a couple of pictures and they asked if they could share it on social media and I said “yes of course, that’s why I’m sharing it with you, I want everyone to see how I looked in that beautiful dress.” They haven’t shared any of the photos I sent them. I decided to look through their entire Instagram and I realized that they have never featured a black bride, they only black person was a model for them and I had to actually look very closely to make sure. I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions so I decided to check their twitter and Facebook, there is one black bride on their Facebook account from 2012 and not one on their twitter account. I don’t want to be the person who associates everything with race but if I spend over $1000 on a dress and I learn that the designers may not really like people like me, I have a problem with it. At a point I thought maybe they haven’t posted it because they had other brides before me but then after stalking some brides, I realize that it really doesn’t matter when you got married since someone who got married about 2 weeks ago just got featured. I loved the dress and now I feel like I could have given my money to a brand that appreciates people like me. It’s very disappointing.  So to be absolutely clear, I am not whining because they didn’t post a photo of me on social media, I am writing about this because they chose not to feature me possibly because of the color of my skin. I am a little upset about the fact that I am regretting investing in something that made me feel beautiful, something that was a part of the best day in a lot of peoples lives.