I have tattoos.: Nonprofit founder, grandma, Christian, never been in trouble

Monday, July 30, 2012

Nonprofit founder, grandma, Christian, never been in trouble

I was 50 years old when I got my first tattoo. Since then, I have had four more.

It wasn’t something that I would have ever thought of doing, but once I received the first (as a birthday gift), I really thought it was a way to express those things most important in my life. I love my tattoos.

This particular tattoo on my foot is special to me because I founded a nonprofit organization to help refugees and underdeveloped communities in East Africa. It reminds me to continually walk as Jesus would have me to walk – forward with faith, with strength, with purpose and to follow His mission.

I have never been in trouble. I was a good student, wife and the mother of two summa cum laude students; both professionals. My husband and I have been married for 39 years, dated for six and had children six years after marriage.

We go to Africa twice a year to serve the underserved and overlooked in the world.

Utembeye na imani – means “walk by faith” in Swahili.

Tattoos help define who I am.

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I have tattoos.

The most recent research shows 40 percent of Americans between 26 and 40 have at least one tattoo. That's nearly half of us. Furthermore, 36 percent of people between 18 and 25 do. Normal people. Successful people. Smart people. Truly, anyone.

Yet outdated stigmas and discrimination still exists, based solely on some people's unfounded misconceptions about the way a tattooed person looks -- completely disregarding the statistics, individual characters and the stories behind the tattoos.

Yes, tattoos are a choice. So is practicing a narrow perspective.

Perhaps the increase in tattoos amplifies some people's already prevailing prejudgments about people who look different than them. It's so much easier to write off a person based on something you, on the surface level, do not understand than it is to actually consider what lies underneath, below the skin.

This website was created after I witnessed an incident of discrimination against the "tattoo demographic," as a whole. This website is intended to help educate and dispel myths that you can even begin to classify people with tattoos in one "demographic," much less as all trouble-makers, all out for attention or in any way worth diminishing based on assumptions; no one deserves that.

Ultimately, this website is not even about tattoos, but it is about the real stories behind each person's surface. This website is not intended to convince anyone that they should get a tattoo, or that they should even like tattoos if they don't choose to get one themselves.

After all, as the saying goes, the only difference between people with tattoos and people without tattoos is that people with tattoos don't care whether or not other people have tattoos.