So Much More Than Beauty

I dearly wish I had grown up this way:

The things is, in terms of importance, being physically attractive lagged WAY behind being funny, smart, hard-working, brave, creative, and about a thousand other qualities in my book. I actually regarded “beautiful” as a pretty lousy compliment, almost a back-handed insult. It seemed to me that you would only compliment someone’s appearance if they didn’t have many inner riches, and my mother was clearly bursting at the seams with inner riches. I could have complimented my mom all day, and “beautiful” never would have come up. There were simply too many other, more important, things to compliment.

http://jessikneeland.com/my-mother-wasnt-beautiful/

This entire post is an incredible tribute to a mother who raised her daughter to believe beauty was unimportant.

Please read it, especially if you are a parent, most especially if you have a daughter. Teach her that everything else about HER is much more vital than her outer shell.