Beauty in ugly?

Today is my final installation to my “roots of beauty” project. I realized this morning that I think I’ve been putting it off and stalling, knowing this would be my last question:

“Do you care if other people find you beautiful?”

This, when asked to all the different women in my life who participated in my interviews, was answered almost TOTALLY with an immediate yes. It’s an easy answer, right?
Although, it seems somewhere there is a separation that takes place in our hearts and minds. The little girls we were, who knew we were beautiful and the women we become full of doubt and self loathing.
Of course we care if others find us to be attractive or not. It just seems to be the natural way we operate as humans. The confident woman with hopes of presenting herself well, and on the other end of the spectrum, the very insecure woman praying that none would notice her or be repulsed by her. Many in between, but all of us invested with literal skin in the game.

I guess I’d hoped by the the time I got to this point in blogging about it, I would have unlocked some sort of mystery. A Pandora’s box of treasured wisdom as to how to feel and be truly at rest with yourself and therein being the most beautiful you could be, as beautiful as you were created to be.
Well, I’m sad to report I have found no such thing. (Other than the things we already know. Beauty is only skin deep…we are beautiful from the inside out…ect.)

What I HAVE learned however has proved to be valuable. For so long I have journeyed through my life feeling isolated with my own feelings of insecurities and self doubts. Judging the girls around me in my younger days and now as a grown up, the women of beauty around me. Assuming their lives MUST be easier and more carefree because of the ease that comes along with that life. Boy, was I ever MISTAKEN. For that, I am sorry. We seem to all share the same affliction, packaged differently.

The other thing that I’ve come to understand is that we are all so much more generous with each other than we have been imagining in our heads. The way my friends and family see me, despite all my obvious flaws, is nothing short of miraculous based on how I see myself. The same is true for how I see them. We are able to look past obvious snags to get to the true beauty of those we love, this is a gift from God. I believe this is how He sees us, and gifts us with the ability to do so too. May we pray for the extra strength and faith to look at ourselves through this lens too! To learn to be as generous and kind to ourselves as we are to our friends. What would happen if we obtained this kind of confidence? This kind of inner peace? Lets find out!?

I am so grateful for the women who were willing to open up and share your hearts with me. Looking into some deep, tender areas of yourselves to give honest answers is no easy feat. Thank you so much.

Honesty. Sharing.

THAT is beautiful to me.

Check out a great song by Jason Mraz called:

well if you wanna get free
and if you wanna do the passionate thing
and if you wanna get smart for the sake of your heart and oh
you should own your name and stand up tall
and get real and see the beauty in ugly