Author's Note
Daily, we are bombarded with messages telling us we aren’t good enough. We’re too fat. Too thin. Too stupid. Too ugly. Our body parts are too little. Too big. Too bumpy. Too hairy. (Or if you’re a middleaged man, not hairy enough.) It’s important to understand that those messages come from all the wrong places. From companies who want money to make us “better.” From people who want to take advantage of us; who are jealous of us; who feel better about themselves by making others feel unworthy.
Perfection is a ridiculous goal because there is no such thing. The definition of the word is subjective—it means different things to different people. The same person who is ugly in one estimation is beautiful in another. You’ve heard it before, but I want you to believe that real beauty is what you are inside. If you were my child, I would counsel you to invest your energy crafting inner beauty, because your outside will never please everyone anyway.
I was the chubby kid who suffered peer abuse. I had a bump on my nose (still do) and thought it made me ugly. I spent too many years hurting because I believed the mean things other kids said about me. But I refused to let their words make me become something I wasn’t. And I blossomed inside. Finally one day I looked in the mirror and thought, Wow, I’m kind of pretty. My high school friends will tell you I was kind of pretty. I had lost the “chubby,” but that isn’t why. It was because I learned to let my inner light shine through. And so can you.If someone only likes you because of the way you look, that someone isn’t a friend, and definitely shouldn’t be someone you want a relationship with. (Do you really want a guy to like you only because you’ve got big breasts? Or flip that. Do you really want a girl to like you only because you’ve got big muscles—I won’t say what kind!?)
There is a certain power in outer beauty. But if you possess great outer beauty and use it in the wrong way, it can come back to haunt you.
Witness Jenna, in this book. What we all strive for, ultimately, is love. You won’t find real love because you’re beautiful on the outside. It is drawn to inner beauty.
Spend your energy crafting that, and you will know true love.
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Perfect
PoetryEveryone has something, someone, somewhere else that they’d rather be. For four high-school seniors, their goals of perfection are just as different as the paths they take to get there. Cara’s parents’ unrealistic expectations have already sent her...
