“I believe that deep in my memory I hold this image of my mother behind the glass, sending me a kiss and looking at me as if I were the most precious and beautiful baby in the world. Although these circumstances of my birth are factual, it’s difficult for me to imagine the scenes: being talked about in the maternity ward; being different, feared but pitied, classified as deformed. But this look, this look of love- this gift- I can easily imagine, because I would know it for the rest of my life.
Mom’s eyes found my body in that room of new bodies. She looked into my eyes and told me: You are perfect, you are enough, you are beautiful, you are mine.”
-Poster Child, Emily Rapp
I remember waking up every morning and feeling as though I were in the middle of a tornado. Furniture flying around and smacking me senseless, wind howling louder than a freight train. You get looked upon as a broken object, this fragile thing you can’t get too close to, as if your sadness could be rubbed off onto others. I felt contagious. It’s difficult to describe these feelings to an outside party, but somehow my mother understood me without ever having to utter a single word. With a single look she knew the depth of my sadness. Through the darkest period of my life she plucked every insecurity out of my soul and replaced it with words of comfort and love. “You are strong, you are kind, and you are beautiful, there is nothing that you cannot get through.” That love so deep you can feel it in every cell in your body, that is what my mother is made of, and that love is what healed me.