“Live your life and forget your age.”  -Norman Vincent Peale

This is what women do: they criticize their looks and age and weight and everything about themselves all.the.time.  Don’t ask me how I know.

When I first saw this huge image pop up in a sneak-preview of the wedding photos, I thought, “Well there are the bags under my eyes.  I was still in my sweats.  I didn’t have my mascara on” and etc.  Dumb.  I know.  Very vain.

My mom saw it and said to me “Who is that old woman with all those wrinkles?”  She is 73 and has yet to recognize her loveliness.  Tredessa had already told me that she loved the intensity of the lines on her grandma’s face, the clearness of her features.

And all I could think in response to my mom was, “I so want to be like that woman.”  I love her!  I love her vivaciousness and love for life and picture-taking and horses and her family and her encouraging ways and deep-felt love for people and the belief in the best of them all.   And if the lines on her face were a type of braille, they would read of her unwavering belief in me and love no matter what since the day I was born – even before.

We attack ourselves.  We speak badly of ourselves.  We wouldn’t let first-graders talk about each other the way we talk about ourselves.  Stupid. Waste. of. Time.

Me and my mamala…

I have her nose.  I have her blue eyes.  I even have two, deep, furrowed  lines between my brows exactly like hers.  And I wanna be just like her when I grow up.  I do.  She is the most beautiful to me.