I am beautiful (no.8)

Post #8

Does that title rattle you, maybe just a bit? 

If you are anything like me, it does.

Women are not supposed to declare their own beauty, we are supposed to wait til others bestow it upon us.

Excuse me while I cough up a big pile of “Bullshit”.

I have not liked photos of myself for some time. A very long time.

Years.

Before my daughter was born.

It’s robbed many moments from my life. I never used to think I cared until I gained a significant amount of weight.

The other day, a rough one, I was getting ready for bed and caught her in the mirror.

She spoke to me. That voice deep within that everyone talks about.

Beyond the overgrown roots, that unknown bump on my forehead, rosacea and tired eyes, I saw her.

She was waiting patiently, for me discover her.

That beauty that only I get to declare.

A knowing, a softness, a kind of grace and love looking back at me, almost like that gaze of a newborn baby.

A reflection of everything. 

My first thought was, wow this new skincare is really working.

Then there was a thought to that special someone in my life who has been showing me great care.

Yes and… it’s more, perhaps only something I can see.

And like that my whole mood changed, transformed somehow.

That so easily I could just declare something so and it is.

It’s real. It’s true. I am beautiful.

It matters and yet it doesn’t all in one.

Not because the scale gives me a certain number, or someone else declare it so. Because I looked past all the things that I so easily once picked apart and right into my being. My insides reflected outward.

Years ago, I had spent a magical, lovely, fun filled, treasured day with my closest friend. She was standing outside my car, looking down on me, as I was about to drive away and she jokingly teased, “um, I can see your grey, you need a touch up.”

We had just spent this lovely day in another realm of connection and unity, this noticing pulled me back to reality. And she could see the shock upon my face.

Before I could even respond, she said “what? I thought we were at that point in our relationship where I could say things like that.”

That moment has stayed with me, I know exactly where we were located on Vermont Avenue.

I didn’t have the words then, but they come to me all these years later.

“Friend, I thought we were at the point in our relationship where the color of my hair isn’t worth mentioning at all.”

I am beautiful. Greys and all.

And I want you to know, you are beautiful, not because I declare it so, because you do.

Sending love to you, from my open heart to yours.