What Is Beauty?

It is not a dress size.
It cannot be bottled and sold.
Beauty is not a label.
It is not a word reserved for the perfect.
It is not flawless skin.
It is not perfect coiffures and perky breasts.
Beauty is not grace.
It is not lengthy legs
Or hourglass figures.
Beauty is not full, pouty lips.
It is not what you see in glamour magazines.
Beauty is not something to be achieved.
It is not something to be coveted.
It is not at all what you think it is.
Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder.

Beauty is weathered hands from doing laundry.
It is the uneven proportions of the common woman.
It is ivory, ebony and every color in between.
Beauty is the sweat beaded brow from childbirth.
It is the tears of pain and joy that fall from loving eyes.
It is the lines etched from a mother's worry.

Beauty is truth.
Beauty is courage.
Beauty is compassion and generosity.
It is plump, it is thin.
It is tall, it is short.
It is what stares back at us in the mirror,
Longing to be recognized.
Beauty is real.
Beauty is you.
Beauty is in the eye of she who chooses to see it in herself.

May you see the beauty that is in you throughout the new year.

Thank you Patty~you are beautiful!