Leta’s Thoughts on Beauty

You can be beautiful as you work, cook, scrub and hug your way through the day.

I am not your typical image consultant. To me, beauty is not about continuous maintenance. Beauty is about the right combination of knowledge, product and attitude; then using them together as you season with time.

My de-facto grandmother, Winnie, braided her grey hair intricately, just as she wound kindness into everything she did. I remember her saying that in her youth, she was plain and “no looker,” but she knew she was beautiful. Winnie pursued a master’s degree in her 80s, made cinnamon rolls from scratch and readily gave hugs. I want to be just like her—she was one of the most beautiful women I have ever known. I look forward to having grey hair and the beauty that comes from years of laughter and giving.

Women are often told that beauty is an unattainable perfection. Even the women that we see in magazines cannot maintain that perfection over time, much less daily. I know each woman is beautiful. In junior high, I was 5’9″, “filled out,” shy and very critical of myself. I was quite the tomboy and had the stitches, scars and dental work to prove it. With 82 stitches on my face alone, only my mother called me beautiful. Over time I have learned a lot about covering those scars. I also had severe eczema; not just any makeup line would do. I wanted people to see me—not the scars, and NOT the makeup.

I hope my philosophies about beauty will help you see that it isn’t about height, waist, zits or scars. Beauty is about looking past the surface and knowing your importance to those you love. This is why its important to take some time in the morning to enhance the beauty God has given you. My Aunt Mildred was a wise woman who said, “Spend enough time on yourself in the morning to forget about yourself the rest of the day.” I will help you to learn this approach in your own life.

Work/Life Balance

Life is about balancing our expectations from the world and our expectations from ourselves.

Life gives us a deck of cards. We can’t just throw our cards aside and say “I don’t want these!”  When life experiences come, when we need a card to play, the cards we have already seen played are the ones most readily available to us. That is, we fall back on the ones we have memorized, that have been handed to us by our experiences, family, and society. That is why the alcoholic falls back without mentoring, without a real change. Why the statistical chances of an abused child becoming an abusing adult are higher. All of this is heavy stuff.  Are we a pot of destiny waiting to boil over? Or are we in charge of our own future? The eighteen-year-old that leaves home swearing to never return, finds the habits of the past haunt them. The truth is we can’t run away from ourselves.

When we were each born in the shining castle, and our parents the king and queen . . . Wait, you weren’t born into a fairy tale?  That’s weird . . . oh, none of us are. Life is full of contrast with difficulty and thrill intermingled. We have all been hurt—life can be hard. Our individual difficulties may not be as horrid as the child escaping abuse. We all know people who have overcome a difficult start in life, but how did they do it?  They systematically changed the deck of cards handed to them. Working on the why of who they are, and what they want to be. They stopped letting life events throw them around, and learned to deal with the cards already in their hand, and change the ones that were unacceptable. Changing ourselves is an internal event and not about changing the world. Life is about choices and we can mold how we see the world and how the world treats us.  We are the sum of what we choose. I believe in the power of the individual, I believe in our ability to be who we are meant to be.