From Ugly Swan to Beautiful Duckling

I always thought the end of The Ugly Duckling wasn't right.   it didn't fit with my experience of reality at all.   i thought the world in which Hans Christian Andersen lived must be a much nicer place than mine.   in my universe when the duckling woke from his winter sleep and looked into the water what he saw was........a grown up ugly ducky!!     he just wasn't from the same clutch as those beautiful, graceful creatures, he could never be a swan, it wasn't his destiny.    i didn't know back then that Mr Andersen's  happy endings stemmed from his own deprived and abused childhood, that he was consumed by the desire to make everything better, to find the rainbow behind the rain, to become the prince in his own story.

I reached teenhood in the 60's when the vogue was for the blonde, leggy, skinny, Swedish model look, a thoroughbred.   i was dark, short, dumpy, a pit pony......... a pit pony bearing the scars of surgery.    regularly accused of being a freak, cripple, ugly,  marked me as surely as it marked Hans.  The accused ends up believing the accusers, and it affects every part of life.   how can you hold your head high when you are convinced the face attached is going to offend anyone who sees it.    looking at photos of that time i wasn't THAT bad.   no stunner but no gargoyle either. 
  

A wise man once said beauty is "the hidden person of the heart, a gentle and quiet spirit".   have you ever had that wondrous experience of seeing a plain face transformed by the sort of smile that lights the corners of the galaxy?   it's not about how we look, it's about who we are, and who we are will always be written, as clearly as an essay, on our face, not by beauty but by character.

                                     http://abraveheartfilm.com/ 

 

Lizzie Velasquez is a perfect candidate for beauty from within.   have a read by clicking the link above her photo.   to turn all that pain into something positive and to face a hostile world with a message of hope for those who are bullied takes more than courage, it takes grace, great grace.   i'm not sure i could do it.   could you?