For years I was the most insecure person you’d ever meet. Friends called me “pretty.” And guys turned their heads. But that didn’t help. Every morning I straightened my curls, applied my makeup, scoured my closet, and left the house feeling good. I’d check my reflection every few minutes in the car, even take pictures of myself to see how I compared to the celebrities I so envied. Actually, it wasn’t just celebrities I envied, it was everyone. One day I thought my hair was too dark, the next too light. Another day I thought I needed bigger lips, eyebrows, butt, boobs. You name it. I was never satisfied with my looks and it made me jealous of my friends and suspicious of boyfriends. Am I alone here?

The funny thing is … I didn’t only envy women with seemingly flawless bodies and great fashion taste, I envied the simple women who didn’t care what people thought of them. Ever seen a girl like that?

Let me describe her.

Her hair is tossed by the wind. Instead of spending 2 hours to straighten her wild curls, she lets them loose, frizz and all. Instead of winding up the window and using the air conditioner, she lets the windows down and as hair whips around her face it gets tangled in a million knots.

When her friend’s baby reaches out for a hug, she embraces the chocolate-covered child with a smile, instead of pushing her away to keep her new dress clean.

When a beautiful woman walks into the room and her boyfriend notices, she is too busy laughing with her friends to notice. Even if she did notice, she’d say, “Wow, she’s beautiful,” without the slightest bit of jealousy.

She loves people more than herself and doesn’t care about the world’s opinion of her. Or her own. She just lives. Unaffected by the criticism of others and she has no criticism to give.

In Bloom (my latest novel from The Unspoken Series) I think so many readers are relating and loving this story because Sarah’s struggle is so close to our own. What do we want most as women? Beauty? I don’t think so. That’s just a distraction. What we really want is to live. To inhale and exhale all that life has to offer and do it with strength, gentleness, and beauty. The kind of beauty that lasts after your body ages and decays.

So, with Bloom, I wanted to show this struggle for beauty turn into a woman embracing life. In essence, myself.

Sarah is burned in a campfire accident (based off of a true story) and loses the physical beauty she’s always had. As a woman in a sex-obsessed culture, this would devastate any of us. Sarah is no different.

But as she comes to terms with her new self, she learns about true beauty and how to live in a way that makes ordinary things seem extraordinary. She learns to smile from within, instead of a fake plastered on smile, regardless of her struggles.

I used to be the girl that believed true love didn’t exist, that all men were pigs, and that no one would ever love me unless I looked like her. Her, being anyone I deemed better than me in that moment.

Sarah is my story. My story of finding joy and beauty in life. In not obsessing about my appearance. And in becoming a woman who is more concerned with being beautiful than looking beautiful.

Can you relate? What are your insecurities? How are you overcoming them?

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