You Are Beautiful. Period.

You are beautiful, and that is a full sentence.

We live in a world where beauty queens are crowned, and we hear the constant boom of the voice in the media asking us “Isn’t she beautiful?” Sadly, we have conditioned our beauty to await the recognition of someone else.

But…even deeper is the conditions upon which we perceive our own beauty. Maybe there was a time that we could simply tell a woman she was beautiful, or a woman could look at herself and simply acknowledge her beauty without a list of conditional upon which her beauty could be fulfilled.

For years, I would wait patiently for someone to permit me with the title of beauty. On the eve of valentine’s day as I sat down to write myself a card, there was something that still heavily weighed on my heart. The realization that the arrangement of the words “You are beautiful” was never a full sentence to me.

Beauty had always been a compliment carefully wrapped in a compilation of demands from myself, from those around me and even those who once had me. Today I write to remind those who may not be strong enough to see the things that I myself never had the audacity to admit.

I could write this whole post to criticize the way I was ruined by you, but for the first time I will step over to your point of view, so you maybe understand the point I am trying to make to you.

I saw all the women before me, and see the women beyond me, and sadly even during me. And maybe I understand that you saw what you didn’t have, in the way they looked, and in the way they made others turn to look.

But maybe you could have seen the struggle in me to try and step into the light that was perfection for you. Maybe you could have understood that you didn’t always have to search for the beauty in me to be able to see me.

Maybe you could have seen that

My beauty was not in my face, my beauty was not in the shape of my carefully calculated curves.

My beauty was in my heart and in my mind.

My beauty was not in the association with you, my ex man or my next man.

No, my beauty was not in the progression of your insecurity, or nestled in the compliments of your friends.

My beauty was not a condition upon which you could carefully layer your ultimatums.

Maybe I don’t know how to explain the wrong in you, because it became the wrong that was me.

But I only pray that as you pick up the pieces of your heart that I finally threw to the floor, you find the courage to love another woman the way God made a woman to be loved.

I pray you learn to love a woman knowing that a real woman doesn’t need to be loved to feel loved. Most of all I pray I learn to be the woman that I write about, knowing that I will never let a broken soul try to fix my broken soul ever again.

To all the ladies, who wait in perfection and poise for someone to bless you with the permission to feel beautiful. Find the permission in the depths of your strength to give power to your beauty. Tell them…

Tell me I would be beautiful if,

Tell me I could be beautiful when,

Tell me I already am beautiful….but,

Tell me all these things so I can remind you

I am beautiful and that is a full sentence.

No ifs, no conditions, no aspirations, no negotiations, no alterations.