Beauty is something that is very personal for each and every one of us.
Nobody can make you feel beautiful.
Nobody can convince you your beautiful.
It has to come from you.
It has to be a feeling that you have.
Throughout life, I haven’t changed much in regards to what makes me FEEL beautiful.
When I was a kid I had my own sense of style and I equated feeling beautiful with athleticism.
‘Anything you can do I can do’
I wasn’t competitive with females.
I wanted to be as strong and as fast as the boys.
To NEVER need anyone’s help!
The goal was always to be COMPLETELY self sufficient.
When I became a teenager, I was still into fashion, and I loved doing make up and hair.
I worked at a salon at 14; it was perfect for me then. I spent an hour straightening my hair in the morning, because curly or wavy big hair wasn’t ‘in style.’ I did my makeup on the 45 minute bus ride to school. I wore stilettos starting at about 14. I loved them and they didn’t hurt my feet, I attribute that to having always walked on my toes. To being a ballerina, in hobby, not profession.
I went through a lot in high school. I didn’t talk about it and I didn’t feel very beautiful anymore either.
It took me being in my early 20s to find that person I was, again. To remind myself of who I was. To begin to hike again and run mountains. To paint. To sing. To dance. To feel beautiful, no matter what I had been put through.
It’s amazing how abuse, rape & being exploited, will take away your ‘power’ in a heartbeat.
It’s important to remember how to ‘get it back.’
Confidence and beauty shine brighter than any outer appearance can.
I was fortunate to dress for me.
I wore heels, did my makeup, did my hair and dressed how I dressed, for myself.
If I felt beautiful, then I would BE beautiful. It doesn’t matter what others see on the outside.
I am not a particularly beautiful woman, by societal standards.
All through my youth, I was put in the middle of the (invisible to the privileged public) race & port wars we have around here, because I’m both light and dark.
Freckles were also not considered beautiful when I was young and everyone wanted to cover them up.
By the time I was around 20, I stopped wearing makeup, I didn’t want to brush my hair and I let it just dread all up. I do that sometimes.
I go through phases like that.
‘Bucking the system.’
Something that never changed for me, was my heels. I was ALWAYS in heels, moccasins or boots.
It was typical for me to wear 4-6 inch heels casually.
They make me feel beautiful. When I was younger and women bullied me, autism and my stilettos, usually are what prevented it from being re-occurring. If I was taller, women could see my developed muscle and were less likely to continue their bullying, adding autism, makes it so that by the time I realize they are bullying me, the moment has passed and they looked pretty dumb.
I spent a lot of my life, where I was present in each moment, yet, people treated me like I was a ‘ditzy woman’ or ‘unintelligent.’ The opposite was true, but I have never cared what others saw me as. I was present in those moments. Select mutism means you are still coherent & Having thoughts in each moment…….being able to speak them eventually, would be nice.
To me, beauty was something I felt, when I hiked a mountain. When I carried heavy weight. When I didn’t need anyone.
Independence is beauty, to me.
This hasn’t changed much.
I knew the ways to make myself feel beautiful.
I knew how to navigate life.
Then my ex crippled me.
This-I don’t know how to deal with.
Feeling beautiful now, isn’t easy.
It isn’t to say others who are crippled are not beautiful. The opposite is true, many take their Disabiity and it helps them shine even brighter…..
In the beginning of being crippled, I believed I could heal. I tried to stay positive and be uplifting to myself. Not allowing myself or my body to stop dancing, no matter how modified it was-noticeably or not…..
I walked until I fell down. I walked like a t-Rex, a sloth, a pirate, I crawled, I didn’t care because I was determined to heal from that spine hit, but most importantly, I was determined to not let him ruin my life any longer than the four years we were together.
After the spine hit May 10, 2020, there was no more heels and no more taking the stairs two at a time. No more walking never ending and no more feeling beautiful.
Add that it collapsed my abdomen, diaphragm and caused me to walk funny, To talk funny when my spine is unaligned, and to move my body funny (spasms.)
I felt horrible about myself.
All the tricks I had learned about myself to keep me feeling good, didn’t work. I also couldn’t keep a job the way I could before and my qualities of being dependable & reliable changed as well. I tried to go back to work before I was healed, because I refused to give up, and I didn’t have another option. I left him! September of 2020! I’m so proud of that.
I knew he harmed me badly, I just didn’t know there was such a thing as an ambulatory spinal cord injury. Now I do.
Unfortunately, given the size of the town and the connections to my doctor and the police that my ex had, what he did to me, was severely downplayed.
Imagine trying to feel beautiful when your leaving on foot with a walker and spine injury because of your ex three years later, because you aren’t allowed to adapt or receive the care you need, because of him.
Now the medical professionals and guilty community, want it to be diabetes or MS, or something else so they can get away with their indifference.
I don’t have any of those disorders though……
The thing is-it’s because of an ambulatory sci, caused by blunt force trauma. Reminiscent Brown Sequard. I know because it’s my body and I had to live through it, before I learned about it.
Funny thing is-there is more than enough, medical, physical, video evidence……..so why is this still happening? Over four years later???
Imagine to leave the country, your sleeping on sidewalks.
You gave away over half your belongings. No matter how much you were strong and honorable, honest and never gave up-it counted for nothing in the eyes of those who decided your fate and your dignity.
Imagine feeling beautiful when doctors try and downplay your injury, because they are afraid of a lawsuit; or of being seen for what they were in those moments that were crucial-a believer of your abuser, not you.
Imagine feeling beautiful with no income.
No shower.
No living situation that helps you feel dignified.
Imagine feeling beautiful while your begging the general public for money, because the systems you paid in to, failed you, all because the woman, yes, WOMAN judge, deciding your fate, decided this is what you deserved……
Beauty NOW
Wow
It has changed so much.
I still feel beautiful when I’m strong.
When I’m independent.
I learned the hard way, when you don’t use your body with sci, you lose it. So the build back hasn’t been easy. This isn’t an injury that will ‘heal’ all the way. He hit me in my t7-10 spine. He got away with everything and is rewarded by me being the one to be ostracized and isolated.
Beauty as a disabled woman.
I couldn’t walk in my heels until august 2022 and that was inside on a second floor, with a stick. The force of gravity is less near the sea and also water, as well as any floor above ground. After over two years I could sometimes wear my heels. That helps me feel pretty.
Sometimes when I’m feeling down, I put on my shoes (the ones I didn’t have to give away traumatically because of this) it makes me feel like myself again.
When I carry a water bucket up from the well, I look so weak, nothing like the woman I was before; but, I think of gaining strength. I think of becoming stronger and staying resilient.
I think of that moment only.
As an adult, taking each day only a moment at a time, is a relearned art form.
I learned how to make plans & execute them. High school made me hate the ‘day at a time’ mode of life I lived. I craved consistency and stability.
I am so proud of myself for making my dreams come true.
If people had been honorable through this-even this injury would never have stopped me. They weren’t honorable though.
So each day, I do what I can.
I don’t ever feel beautiful now.
It’s just the truth.
Unless I can run on the mountains wild and free again, I won’t feel beautiful. Unless I can take the stairs two at a time in my heels again, I won’t feel beautiful. If I don’t feel beautiful, no matter what anyone says and does, it won’t matter.
Sure, I know I’m a beautiful person.
I am so proud of myself for this time period.
Beauty to me is strength.
Physical strength.
I am gifted with a strong mind. Incredibly strong.
I was competitive in sports or shows of strength, with men never women. I was independent. I didn’t need to be faster than anyone, I just needed to do it for myself. Be independent.
Asking for help is not a strength of mine.
Needing it makes me feel ashamed.
Add the degrading aspects of this-and just imagine.
Beauty.
Beautiful.
Being beautiful.
To talk more about Islam.
The cloak was designed in mind for many reasons.
•protection (from jealousy, the evil eye and identity protection)
•to hide signs of oppression (when you can’t shower, shave, wash your hair)
•to not exploit the poor (you can’t afford ‘nice’ clothes)
•to allow for you to be protected outside the home (with the ideal being, that at home you are safe; protected and valued)
We all know that worldwide, there is a humanity crisis.
Because people are so far removed from what it means to be human.
To remember your humanity is beautiful.
To unite the world is beautiful.
We all age.
We all change.
Beauty as a middle aged woman is funny if you embrace it.
Tweezing random hairs that ‘don’t belong.’
Wrinkles, that when applying eye makeup or lip liner, were never there before.
Watching gravity change your skin.
Face makeup being pointless, unless you want those lines amplified.
Jowls.
Yup-jowls ladies.
Gravity gives us jowls.
And instead of society coming up with a less dog like name for them, they chose JOWL.
Aging is watching your beautiful natural breasts, change in shape and velocity.
It’s watching skin hang in ways you didn’t anticipate.
Aging is what it is.
For most of us-we accept it.
The majority of the general public can’t afford injections, surgeries, etc.
we just take what happens and make the best of it.
I can handle aging.
I however, am having a really hard time accepting that, now, aging is so different than what it would have been before.
I know I would have been working on my feet, dancing, hiking and living life, until my late years. For certain-if my ex hasn’t crippled me.
Accepting that my body is this way now, because of a man-is HORRIFIC.
My mother has a cervical injury from a stranger rear ending her. Hers is vertebrae issues, but still very real. It also has changed her.
My family. We are tough. We are strong. We deserve respect and our dignity intact.
Especially, in a World filled with injustice.
Is this injury easier to accept, if it isn’t caused by another?
I wouldn’t know.
Can I feel beautiful in a society that doesn’t even allow me to adapt, or preserve any dignity in this?
Probably not.
Can I keep doing each day?
Do I make walking with sticks look easy?
Do I make carrying a bucket look like it isn’t painful?
Does my independence seem strange?
I know people thought this was funny. When I can afford to-I’ll ‘lean in’ to that.
I’ll buy the t-Rex costume, the unicorn costume-I’ll make it hilarious, I’m crippled……when I can afford to.
I can’t adapt.
I literally have been asking since 2021.
If I’m to be honest, now, I wouldn’t feel safe adapting either.
I watched what the public in the USA, is capable of.
It’s why I had to leave.
I will continue to stay strong.
I will continue to keep going.
I will Continue to find new ways to feel beautiful.
I will continue to laugh at aging.
I will continue to speak my truth.
Thank you to everyone who has listened. Helped others with what you were able to piece together (this involved making our community safer in real ways).
Thank you to those that have attempted to understand this.
Personally-
How do you feel beautiful??
Without anyone to make you feel better-because that is temporary.
I haven’t let anyone near me in four years and almost four months. I know that in order to be a good partner, I’m going to need to feel beautiful on my own first.
I almost was ready, when hope that love really was magick, and that societal systems I paid in to-would be honorable-that was last year-
I realized the truth though.
People are not all so nice.
I still need an income.
I need to be fully independent. Otherwise, no relationship will work.
I live in a society that denied me many basic needs and rights, only because they felt like it.
Independence is safe.
Everything that makes me feel beautiful, I ‘lean in’ to, now.
It makes me feel beautiful to speak the truth.
It makes me feel beautiful to tell people who bullied me, how I feel, even if it comes out wrong.
It makes me feel beautiful to walk up a hill with my sticks.
It makes me feel beautiful to get myself to the store.
It makes me feel beautiful to try my hardest, no matter what obstacles meet me.
You know what else I didn’t plan for???
My anger making me feel beautiful!
My justified anger.
It isn’t pretty.
It’s beautiful.
Yay myself!
I’m so proud of who I am.
Almost 39.
A woman who attempted my hardest, to place the attention on the systems, and how to change them effectively for most.
A woman Who focused on how to unite the most amount of people.
A woman who focused on what I could do.
Even while mourning the loss of what I can’t.
For now.
Will I miraculously heal——?
Never lose hope I guess, but I need to rebuild with the fact in mind that, this may be my life.
If only I was part of a country that allowed it.
Stay human. Or at least, stay genuine. That’s respectable.