You are beautiful. You are beautiful because of your soul. You are beautiful because of the choices you make and the impact you have on those around you. Your beauty shines- no, radiates from you when you live, work, and lead in alignment with the person you have told me you want to be. I see your beauty when you smile… not just the fake smile where your lips turn up out of obligation and you blink twice wondering if you have held it long enough, but the smile you smile where your eyes close and the wrinkles around them crinkle. It is that smile when your shoulders relax, when your mind seems to clear, because, for at least that moment, you are in true, unadulterated, happiness. As if your mind forgot about the stress, or the sickness, or the fear, or the work, or the list, or the expectation. It is the smile of you existing in the moment, soaking up the goodness of it.

And the moments afterwards, where that look of peace starts to fade, just slow enough to where I can see the emotion of love falling back and mixing, being diluted, and eventually fading into the pain, the memories, the struggle, the panic, the next step. In that transition, you are beautiful. It is where your eyes are looking out of the present, both into the past and the future, with the finite knowledge that those moments of pure happiness do not show on your face, exist in your mind, or live in your soul often enough. And even in that moment, you are beautiful.

Those things currently keeping you from that pure happiness are ok. They are the collage that make you you. Without those experiences that cracked you, you wouldn’t have space for the light to shine in. But, it is your choice to let that light shine in. Your choice to expend the energy to realign yourself to the beautiful person you strive to be. Not all the time. Sometimes you want to close your eyes and block it out and lay there in your beautiful misery, because, even in those moments, when you choose to hurt, you are beautiful.

But, again, it is your choice to let that light shine in, to use those broken and cracked pieces to enhance your experience. And when you do, the world sees your beautiful soul through your beautiful smile. And that is a smile that can move mountains. And you, my dear, will move mountains.