Fighting Insecurity When Your Health Changes Your Appearance

I read a quote the other day that said, “Don’t let insecurity ruin the beauty you were born with.” Now I do not know who said that, but it raised the question of what to do with insecurity when your health “ruins” the beauty you were born with. With conditions like mine, things our body has to go through can alter our appearance. If your pressure is high your face is fat, your eyes red and puffy. Certain medications can make our entire bodies bloated. Surgeries can make our hair fall out or leave us bald with long scars up our backs and stomachs. Eye surgery can leave our eyes in total disarray.

When you can’t change things about yourself and you know that the condition causing them will never go away, those little insecurities can turn into bricks you tug around with you. I am most insecure about my eyes. After my eye surgery, one of them now rolls, the other looks lazy and they are almost always red and swollen. I hate it. Now I laugh about it and cover them up, but nothing changes the fact that they will never go back to the way they were. But every day I look at myself in the mirror and remember that I am beautiful, lazy eye and all.

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It helps my confidence that I have a man who finds me beautiful even at my worst. Then I pray for the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. I did not write this post for sympathy or for anyone to comment on how beautiful I really am despite my rolling eyeballs. I just want to let other people who endure through insecurities know they are not alone. Real beauty comes when a woman knows her flaws, embraces them, adjusts her crown and carries on.