Revelation

After re-reading my previous post and reflecting on some other things my mother told me, I have come to a revelation.
The reason my mother is suddenly "decorative" and "frilly" is that for 50someodd years of her life, my mother never felt pretty. It's sad to think that such a wonderful woman thought for all of her life that she was not an attractive woman. For fifty years, my mother looked at her pictures, new and old, and did not see someone particularly worth looking at. She said she always wondered why I was so pretty in high school because she was so ugly. One night, she had to do some work for a nutrition class where they talked about their body image and self esteem. She said that lesson was very hard, but during it, she chose to look at her high school pictures again. She said that some of them were dorky because of her clothing or glasses but when she looked this time, she did not see an ugly girl.

I'm afraid I did not help in my mother's journey throughout her life. I remember telling her she was fat several times when I was little (she probably weighed less than I do now) and I never really saw her as a pretty lady, nor treated her as such. This is such a shame because it prevented her from learning a lesson I learned when I was 25 until she was 50: Everyone is pretty and sexy in their own way. I remember when a friend of mine told me this when I was about 22 and I told him he was crazy and that I would never be sexy. I came to realize that he was right and that everyone has something attractive about themselves. I think it's sad that my mother never realized this until now.

As a social worker, I work with people of all ages, shapes, sizes, genders, races, etc. and pretty much every one I can remember a moment, where I said to myself "WOW... how beautiful". There's beauty in everyone and I'm glad my mother finally found hers.