Surprise! I'm a single parent

Tonight I was talking to someone about beauty. What did she say? Something like: “Some people are gifted with attractiveness.” She is in her 20s. I am in my 40s.

I said to her you know what? As you get older you want to be with people because of their substance and not what they look like.  But anyway, you also realise how everyone is attractive and there’s a lot more diversity in what seems to be attractive. I really believe that.

When I was younger I thought I was so ugly. My assessment was based on not being perfect. I had much much higher standards for myself than anyone else – I was harsher on me. And this impacted on my self esteem – I dressed to be the third most interesting person in the room. Does that sound weird? I always assumed there were brighter and more beautiful than me and I viewed compliments with suspicion.

My Mum said: You are so beautiful when you smile – and I heard: You are not beautiful except theres a flicker of something when you smile.

I have two beautiful girls and it occured to me one day that to have such georgous kids maybe I wasn’t as 100 percent ugly as I thought. The other thing that helped was a digital camera. I spent the first two years being official photographer and then i thought we aren’t wasting fim here lets let the kids drive. Not stressed out by pictures I could delete I relaxed and had fun and now I have some pics of me that show someone who looks fine. Pity I waited till I was forty to understand that but that’s cool.

I am actively thinking about ways I can let my children know they always were and always will be beautiful.

1.    hmmm 04.14.08 @ 3:28 pm      

   “Gifted with attractiveness”, what bollocks!
   My favourite people in the world are chubby, badly dressed, with faces that tend to run down into their collars in a gradual landslide. They have hearts as big as the Universe,and I would far prefer them to a shallow, self-absorbed person who sadly might not cope with middle age so well.