That Girl in Your Mirror

Calvin Coolidge said: "The world is full of unsuccessful people with talent."

I'm sure that's why my mother kept us grounded in reality, which for us, was poverty. Mom fostered a love of fairytales when I was small, but that shifted when she divorced dad, moving us to Georgia. My grandfather passed the year before, leaving my grandmother alone, so we found ourselves working a dirt farm.

This is the story of a book that changed my outlook on life, and made it possible for me to escape misery.

I didn't get along with the kids in my new school and struggled with newly met family members. Part of the problem with my mother's side of the family was that most of my cousins were very pretty, and I looked like this.

I never thought myself ugly, but I did have big teeth, a crooked mouth and my eyes, while colorful, were mismatched in size. All of my mother's side of the family were slender or athletic and I was basically a lumpy, curvy mess. I liked to eat and hated what I had come to think of as "rabbit food". We were working so hard that it awoke a voracious appetite in me; not the least of which was a desire to read in an effort to avoid food and everyone else. The reading led me to journal writing, and poetry.

I won a poetry competition in the fourth grade, that was displayed with a ribbon at the fair that year. We couldn't afford the fair, so I never saw it and no one gave me the ribbon, but it was nice to know that something I wrote was worth someone else's attention. Still, I wasn't bitten by the writing bug until the fifth grade.

My teacher shaped the writer in me, by giving me titles to write reports on for extra credit. I loved them all! That summer I started with Beowulf and then read many of the classics. I read during chores and by flashlight after bedtime.

By the time the sixth grade started, Mrs. Omelanuk moved away and her absence was hard on me. I spent most of that year doing my chores, not even reading books. I think mom knew I was missing my teacher and more importantly, I was struggling to fit in.

One of my cousins started getting into, (and winning), beauty pageants during that time and she was a year younger than I. Her mom and dad could afford it and we were all very proud of her, but it left me with doubts about my own self-worth. My cousin, naturally blonde and blue-eyed, was perfectly built and very confident.

I wasn't at all like that. I didn't even like myself. I stopped reading, stopped journaling. Visits to the library had been the highlight of my week, but I stopped even going.

One afternoon, mom brought a book to me from the flea market that was written by some beauty queen before I was born. I was skeptical that any book this small could be worth reading. What's worse is, my mom thought I should read it, so I sucked at my teeth and rolled my eyes.

"Seriously." She said. "I think you should try it. It was written by Miss America." (She neglected to say which year.)

"Lame." I laughed. "I'm not reading that." As I walked away, my mom kind of laughed off a snotty remark that irked me to no end.

"That's ok." She said smartly. "I'm sure your cousin Sherry would love to have it. She's got a pageant coming up next week."

I stopped in my tracks. Part of me wanted to snatch that book away from her; but not to read it, just to keep Sherry from getting it. I knew my mother though, and wasn't letting her goad me into reading something I knew I was going to hate. I spun on my heel, hands on my hips and smarted off.

"So?"

That hit mom's last nerve. I was then told I was going to read that damn book if it killed me. And to ensure that I did, I'd be sitting at the dinner table every night, and give her a verbal book report. Apparently, mom read it at the flea market, and would know if I'd read it or not.

I snatched the book out of her hand and went to my room just to get it over with.

I muscled through the preface, which talked about a "stairway to beauty", and love of God, yadda, yadda, yadda. Honestly? I didn't even take in what it said. I went onto the first chapter, frustrated to read it at all. To me, beauty pageants were for dumbasses who couldn't do anything for themselves.

The first chapter was called "Who Are You Really?" She talked about only being twenty and having 17-year-olds ask her how much things had changed since she was a teenager, which was only the year before, and that really cracked me up. The more I read, the more I couldn't help devouring every word.

She understood the awkward inward doubt that filled me with self-loathing. I always wanted to be pretty and smart, but also wanted the things I thought and did to matter to others. I felt that people didn't take pretty girls seriously.

She talked about the confusion that comes with being a girl, pre-teen through their twenties. All girls went through that because they wondered what was to come, who they were and what they really wanted. She talked about not wanting to look like celebrities or even just those "pretty" girls we knew. She said that if she had learned anything from competing in beauty pageants, it was that the most flawlessly beautiful girls in the pageant, usually weren't the ones who won. Individuality is beauty.

Each page revealed layer after layer of my issues, with encouraging solutions, thought provoking questions, and tips to making things better. The book was only 123 pages long. I devoured the first half of it that first day. I would have finished it, but decided to take some of her advice.

I pulled out my journal, and reread my own thoughts. A beautiful thing happened. I began to truly see myself.

My book report to my mother that night was short, basically spitting out highlights I had read, because I didn't want her to know it had gotten to me.

The following morning, I cleaned out my closet. All of my clothes were "face forward" on the hangers after that, and all of the hangers were hung with the hooks facing toward the back of the closet, to keep me from yanking them around and wiggling my clothes off when they were tangled.

I paired my outfits so that pants and shirts were hung together and I folded the clothes in my drawers. I came to realize that since the move, I had just been slapping things down as they popped up, rather than living my life. Getting organized was the logical beginning of getting back to me.

I forgot to read.

I skipped dinner and mom came to tell me I had better be ready. She stopped in the doorway and saw me lying on the floor pulling junk from underneath my bed.

Before the words left her lips, she said:

"Never mind. We can do it tomorrow."

Once organized, I read one chapter the next day. It was chapter eight, which spoke of the importance of family. She wrote about how unfair it was that we stepped out the front door with our best foot forward to greet friends and strangers, but often left our families to deal with our faults. Page after page of that chapter introduced me to the fact that my family members had lives, and feelings just like mine. Just as she said, I had been so consumed with my own misery, that I didn't give any thought to the pain my mother must be going through, what my siblings must be feeling... how awful my cousins probably thought I was.

My heart plummeted. I stopped reading and spent the rest of the day trying to make up for it. My book report that night was an apology to my mother... and she cried. I've read the book several times over the years. Some of it is outdated, (like wearing gloves in public), but for the most part, it addresses the deeper issues we face as women. I find it amazing how insightful this book is, coming from a twenty-something beauty queen from 1965.

After I finished reading the book, my life skyrocketed. I wrote books, learned guitar, entered dance competitions, recorded an album and even entered a couple beauty pageants. In the year that followed the photo at age eleven above, I looked like this.

I wasn't any different. I was just confident. The following year, I was the young lady in the photo at the top of the page. I never wilted from a challenge or gave up my dreams. I realize that those things that I love to do are what make me an individual... and that creates inner beauty.

My granddaughter recently came for a week. She has recently been left motherless and is living with my son, (her stepfather), and her baby sister, now 2-years-old.

She said during her visit how my house always feels so clean and happy, and she marveled at my closet. She had no difficulty asking personal questions, and I was so pleased that I had good answers for her, mostly taken from that book. She asked me before she left how I knew so much, and I shared this story. She got her own copy in the mail, (used because it's out of print), and has been calling me to talk about it and about the changes she's enjoying.

I wish my mother were alive to see that her flea market find changed my life and is still at work on "That Girl in the Mirror" today.