It has been so long since I logged into WordPress that I’d completely forgotten how. I’ve been paying for this domain annually for the last ten years, because even though I wasn’t posting, I always felt there was value in keeping up the work I’d done during the few years I was making Cities & Islands. I finally proved myself right.

I’ve done a lot in the past ten years, most notably working assiduously on my brand, Immortelle Beauty. But I’ve always been limited by the reach a niche brand can get in the Caribbean, and I wanted to step out and try something new, something accessible to more of our people.

A few years ago, I started developing Island Borne, a new brand that brings our vision of beautiful products made here to all Caribbean people.

When we started brainstorming the launch marketing campaign, we were searching for a theme. Every idea we threw out kept circling back to the nostalgia of an island childhood. I suggested our first photoshoot could be a Field Trip for the models and the team, and we started naming locations we could go to focus on the product.

Then it hit me. I’d done this before.

Cities & Islands was my little corner of the internet, one that started as a way of logging my journey while I was in China and Europe getting my Master’s, and continued once I was back in Trinidad as my own personal love letter to the island that has inspired me so much. Ten years later, I got the opportunity to reintroduce the team to another way I’d showcased the beauty of our islands.

Before the brands, there was the blog.

For this post, we revisited the Pitch Lake and Fort Abercrombie, two of my favourites in our early trips. I had some vulnerable moments looking at the pics, I can’t lie. I’ve put on some weight in some places, and DAMN I miss my short hair. But more than anything else I look at these pictures juxtaposed against the originals, and see how far I’ve come.

Reconnecting to it brought me back to why I create everything I create. And when I reconnected to my why, I stepped back into my light and was able to shine brighter.

We were all Borne to Shine.