Happy Birthday Today to Dear Ann Pogue!!!

Super Woman that she is.

My dear friend Jana Stanfield introduced me to Ann some years ago and I knew she was a treasure from our first hello!

Today is Ann’s Birthday, October 28th and in honor of her birthday she wrote this delightful piece for us Pinky’s that I want to share….

Here it goes. And before you even read what she has to say,  don’t you all want to smile with Joy looking at Ann’s face and gorgeous smile!?

What is perfection?

What is perfection? What is normal? These are questions I ask myself regularly, the latter especially! I have long since disliked the word “normal!” It cannot be defined because there are far too many personal and individual definitions for such a word. Normal to me is not normal to the next person and so on. My truths are just that…mine and mine alone.

My definition of perfect as it relates to body image would be being comfortable in that center of knowing who you are, knowing your worth, being comfortable with who you truly are, being comfortable in one’s own skin, exuding self confidence, and that inner knowing that the imperfections one might see on the outside are also perfect because it’s those things that make us special and unique individuals. As cliché as it may sound, I wholeheartedly believe that TRUE beauty shines from within…true beauty emanates from the inside out! That inner light that shines so brightly from within, the Spirit with which a person lives, is just as beautiful to me, if not moreso, than say, the highest paid supermodel on the planet!

To me, what makes a person beautiful is not what they look like on the outside, but their heart and who they truly are on the inside. I’ve heard it said that, “If you know someone’s story, you will love them.” If only we could get past the societal perceptions of beautiful and perfect, and take the TIME to truly get to the HEART of what makes people tick, I think this world would be a much happier place!

I AM Ann Pogue…and here is a little bit about what makes me tick…

Entering into this world with the birth defect Spina Bifida and having FAR surpassed my life expectancy of ONE WEEK (if that!), all the while surviving and THRIVING through more than 65 surgeries (with the next one coming up in a matter of weeks!), I am now gratefully staring in the face my thirty-third year on this Earth (in just two days!) And I say, bring it on!! I’m grateful every single day to have the opportunity to embrace life in this perfectly imperfect world!! That’s not to say that I don’t regularly face challenges, but who doesn’t?! It’s what you do with those challenges, and how you handle them, that makes all the difference! When we can come from a place of embracing this perfectly imperfect world, as well as our own experiences, our lives can become a lesson from which others can learn. All I’ve ever wanted is for my life to make a difference…

I am PROUD to be perfectly imperfect! (Most days! )

“I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, after all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.”–Leo C. Rosten

“Life is no brief candle to me. It is a splendid torch…and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it over to future generations.”–George Bernard Shaw

Happy Birthday Dear Ann,

You are loved!

Laura and the OnePinky.com community