This post is to celebrate my good friend Maya Washington aka Shameless Maya! I’m immensely proud of her, she’s one of those friends that I watch and admire like a mix of a proud mama and a genuine fan. It was exactly a year ago today that she started her youtube channel and journey of completely shamelessly promoting herself for 365 days and today she has 2 million views, almost 80,000 youtube subscribers, 19k instagram followers and an amazing amount of support from people all over the world. The girl has done good for herself!

As long as I’ve known Maya she’s been crazy talented, creative and beautiful. She wasn’t one of those people searching for who she was and what she wanted to do because she’s always been very comfortable in her own skin and has always been the epitome of a true artist with no limitations to what she could do from makeup, photography, interior design, dancing you name it Maya can do it and do it very well! I’m genuinely a fan of my friend.

I remember the conversations we had before she started the “shameless journey”, she was scared, she was worried, she didn’t know what she was doing or why but she did it anyway. I am the biggest supporter of “doing it yourself” no matter how scared you are because what people don’t realize is that when you truly decide that you are going to do it and give it your all, the universe puts you on its back and carries you so fast that you can’t even imagine getting off. The energy and the drive that opens up inside of you when you commit yourself to truly being who you are and getting what you want is so powerful that you don’t have the time to look back at your old life. Maya found that energy this year and rode the wave further than she could’ve imagined.

As I mentioned she’s always been an artist and in a true artist fashion she celebrated her anniversary by letting go of one of the many things that made her popular, she shaved her head!! My girl is ballsy son! Her hair is beautiful and many people started to follower because of it but she never let that become her “thing” and she refused to do it just because it’s popular the motto was always, “ok you like my hair? I’ll make some hair videos but that’s not all that I’m about”. In the words of Maya, “life is filled with so much color and there’s so much more to talk about than just hair”. It’s so true! Maya is one of my friends that I can talk to for hours and our conversations cover everything from hair, to God, our dreams, love, music, fashion, race and happiness. She’s got a vast amount of knowledge and now her followers will get a real chance to see that her inner beauty is even more stunning than her outer beauty.

Maya i’m proud of how far you’ve come and how much further you’re going to go. Long hair, no hair you’re just as beautiful and your courage is inspiring! Keep doing you boo! xo         

 

The big buzz

 

Day 1: Be Shameless