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She Always Appears Radiant to Me

Deborah Kristina
4 min readApr 17, 2022

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Unsplash — Ives Ives

I think about how sad it is that people have reduced a ‘good’ appearance to clear skin.

I think about this every day.

There are burn victims and acid attack victims out there.

I have always felt drawn to reading their stories.

I’ve come to like one Russian girl whose social media account I follow, for example. She suffered massive burns all over her body when she was 4 and she’s been promoting ‘body positive’ images on Instagram.

There is one woman at my workplace location who doesn’t have any hair on her head and I think she is the most beautiful woman there. When I see her, she always appears radiant to me.

When I was in Peru, I found a lot of the indigenous women to be so strong. They had rough faces, having gone through a lot. They were everywhere especially in Cusco. Yes, indigenous people have a distinct look (at least to us, I think…), but it’s not only how different they looked that made them look nice.

The beauty that I saw in their faces was what they possibly experienced in their lives.

Growing up, I attended the Boston Public Schools. From a young age, I’ve always lived in a multicultural environment. I have never thought of beauty as one standard.

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Deborah Kristina
Deborah Kristina

Written by Deborah Kristina

Author of ‘A Girl All Alone Somewhere in the World’, ‘Confessions and Thoughts of a Girl in Turkey’, ‘From Just a Girl Grown Up in America’. (Amazon.com)

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