The word “ugly” nullifies. It is a diagnosis: it is terminal. The word “ugly” says, you have no place in this story, except on the margins, except as a warning. Calling a child ugly: a sensitive human animal is to make them small, to diminish their existence with a grotesque comment.

Meanwhile, dead writers tell us that beautiful girls are snow and flowers – all pale, pure, brief, voiceless. And yet the world is and always has been incorrigibly varied. Drunk on its own complexity. There are types of beauty not celebrated, but sung by life. The beauty of the body’s disobedience. Stretch marks that are the distension of the skin showing where you grew, like tree rings, like the embrace of lightning. The curve of a laugh, silent cry.

Do not hate yourself for your abundance, for occupying a space in the world. There is beauty in dancing, shouting, arguing, protesting, singing… Scars are like riverbeds. Remember that what is alive does not stand still, balanced and perfect.

Violets grow spontaneously in lonely cracks of rocks, without anyone’s gaze or approval. You are a book that the world is writing. You were not born just once, but again and again…🙏🏾❤️

©️Beatriz Esmer