The Beauty of Imperfection
A story of adversity and recovery, and beauty literally being greater than skin deep
The moral of this story, if there is one, is that you yourself are the final arbiter of your own beauty.
I met Amber almost a decade ago. I was traveling to her city regularly for work. She was an attractive 20-something brunette with a sweet disposition and a divorcee from an ill-fated marriage. She had two children, one of whom had special needs. She saw them regularly but had lost custody. She never shared all the details, but the implication was because she was a part-time sex worker (I’ve written my opinion of cultural biases against sex workers) and frankly because his family had more money to pay for lawyers to get their way. You could tell she was a kind, decent human being but had just been battered by a stormy life.
As I got to know her better over time, I wondered sometimes if she maybe had a tendency to fall in love too hard, too fast for what repeatedly ended up being the wrong fellow. But she was endlessly romantic and willing to put herself out there to find love, which I found to be a sort of understated strength. Even in low times when she carried her sadness on her sleeve she still had a certain smiling optimism.
