Every time she saw a modelling ad in the paper or on a billboard, her heart skipped a beat. The excitement, however, was always short-lived. After years of disappointment, an opportunity with her name written all over it fell into her lap one Saturday evening. This was more than just a pageant…it was an invitation to begin peeling away layers of insecurities that had left her broken for years.
As a child growing up in St. Lucia, Cindel Hollancid always wanted to be a model. At the age of 13, she moved to New York and discovered a world of opportunity. She saw ad after ad for aspiring models to sign up with modelling agencies, but didn’t actively begin pursuing modelling until she had completed high school.
It all seemed promising, until Hollancid discovered that every opportunity she sought turned out to be a money-making scheme.
The agencies would take her money and then tell her she didn’t have “the look.”
The constant criticism, in addition to insecurities she already had from her days in high school, took a toll on her emotionally, and Hollancid, who had been sent by her mother to New York to live with family friends, began believing the negative voices around her and in her head.
“Some people would tell me that I was too short, or too fat,” Hollancid told The Weight She Carries. “So, naturally, I began to feel really ugly about myself.”
After years of being swindled out of money by different modelling agencies that weren’t real, she gave up her dream of becoming a model. She joked with friends that someday she would have a daughter whom she would put into beauty pageants so she could live vicariously through her.
While Hollancid accepted that modelling and beauty pageants were not part of her destiny, she was determined that, one day, people would know her name.
Jack of All Trades…
After high school, Hollancid took a 10-year break from school and struggled to find her place in the world. She went from job to job and did every kind of work imaginable. She moved often and would live with a friend until she had overstayed her welcome, then she would move in with another friend.
“I house-hopped a lot, and I wasn’t respected because of some of the choices I made,” Hollancid said. “I even got married at one point and that lasted a year.”
When the marriage dissolved, Hollancid began dating someone else who she had history with, but his parents didn’t approve of her. They told their son that she was “unstable”, and because she wasn’t part of the “elite” at church, they fought to keep the two apart, Hollancid said.
They succeeded.
Hollancid was devastated and contemplated suicide when the relationship ended. To make matters worse, her ex moved on and married someone who attended the same church. The following year, the couple was expecting. Unable to bear the sight of them every week, in addition to every other aspect of her life spiraling downward, Hollancid left New York.
“It was so hard for me to see them together,” she said. “That was the young lady that his family wanted him to marry – the same family who said I was unstable and didn’t have any wifely skills, according to them.”
Meanwhile, Hollancid, who was now 27, settled into a job as a unit secretary at a hospital where she met a Nigerian woman who worked at the same hospital as a podiatrist. The two were the same age.
“She had completed college, gone to medical school and was now doing her residency as a podiatrist,” Hollancid said. “We became very good friends and I felt embarrassed that we were the same age and yet she was so accomplished.”
Hollancid hadn’t planned to go back to school. She was making good money and figured she would retire as a secretary, but her friend continued to encourage her to go to college.
“For years people told me I wasn’t good enough. Coming to college, people said, ‘Cindel, you want to be what? A nurse? I don’t think you can do it. Nursing is hard.’ And when you’ve heard that for so long, you believe it.”
Still, Hollancid was determined to prove them wrong and began taking one class at a time.
During college, Hollancid had her heart set on eventually marrying a pastor but couldn’t understand why the men in the seminary overlooked her and pursued other women instead.
“Why was I never picked, why was I never chosen? Why was I the one they never got married to? Why was I the one who got used and put aside? I always wondered why,” she said.
As she cried out and questioned God, she felt Him tell her that the ones who had hurt her didn’t deserve her.
Hollancid decided to take a closer look at herself and embarked on a journey to self-discovery.
Overcoming deep-seeded insecurities…
What Hollancid began to realize when she examined the negative thoughts in her head was that two major events that had occurred during her tender years had an enormous stronghold over her life as an adult: the death of her father and being sent away from her family in St. Lucia at 13.
“I grew up in a single-parent household without a father figure. I looked to men to fill that void, and men can read into a woman’s vulnerability. So, unknowingly, I communicated all of my insecurities to them,” Hollancid said.
The dysfunctional relationships had lead to even more insecurities, and the inability, at the time, to set boundaries left her feeling used.
It was then that Hollancid decided that she wouldn’t let anyone define her. She continued to focus on God and how to love herself.
“What I’ve learned is that your actions begin with you. Me constantly telling myself that I wasn’t good enough translated to me not feeling good enough for many years. Now I know that I AM good enough.” – Cindel Hollancid
And Then It Happened…
Many years later, Hollancid was on her computer trying to send a link to a gospel concert to a friend, when she stumbled upon an advertisement for a gospel pageant.
The ad was for the 2nd Annual Ms. National & Independent Gospel Music Association (N.I.G.M.A.) Christian Pageant set to be held in Greenville, South Carolina on June 20th.
“I felt sheer excitement,” she said. “It was a Saturday night, January 6, 2018. I started going through the requirements and I was the right age. I met all the requirements listed. I couldn’t believe it! That had never happened to me before.”
The following day, Hollancid called her best friend to tell him the good news, but before she could share the news with him, he told her he felt strongly that God was telling him that they should no longer be friends…Next Page
Vimbai E. is a content marketer, ghostwriter, and the founder of The Weight She Carries. With hundreds of articles and stories publishing online, in print and for broadcast, her love of language and storytelling shines through every piece of writing that bears her name.