Freckles, Love and All

I have always had freckles. Truly, I have so many freckles you couldn’t count them all if you had two entire days! I even have one on the bottom of my left big toe! To say that I hated them as a kid would be a huge understatement.
In school, kids constantly told me I would be pretty if it weren’t for all those spots. Or I was asked, “What happened to you, do those hurt?” To make matters worse, school pictures came around every year after I had spent the summer outside, piling on more freckles.
So, I began to try to get rid of them. I really tried! I thought I could wash them away with soap. I made big circles of soap on my skin with my fingers and then used a washcloth…Nope.
I saw an old movie where the beautiful leading lady used buttermilk and salt to to keep her skin milky white…Nope. (And if you ever get salt and buttermilk in your eyes, you won’t forget it.)
I even used a great big glob of my grandmother’s face cream for removing “age spots.” Really, I did. Although it lightened my skin in general, it didn’t stand a chance against the millions of the freckles.
I covered them up with layers of makeup and powder from my mom’s makeup drawer in the hall bathroom, until I looked and felt like my face was covered in bondo, you know, that stuff that car repair shops use to fill in dents in fenders and doors.  Well, this kind of worked to cover them up, but it was hard to smile, or even blink, when your face felt like cracking plaster.
My efforts must have been very frustrating to my mom and dad, who always told me that I was beautiful. Certainly, they did their best to bolster my self-image. But nothing really worked…until one particular day.
My dad, seeing me try one of my many solutions, pulled me aside and said, “You know I think you are beautiful, right? Do you know why?”
I didn’t say it, but I was thinking, “It ain’t ‘cause of these freckles!”
He said, “You are the only one who has my mother’s skin, and yes, I know you don’t like the freckles, but she had them just like you and I thought she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen until I met
your mom. Now, when I look at you, I see a bit of her.”
I had never met my grandmother. So, he went to the hall closet and got down a picture of her. At that moment, even though I had been told over and over again that I was beautiful, freckles and all, something snapped for me. I got it, in a deep soulful way, in a way that allowed me to not only accept that I had freckles, but to embrace, even celebrate them, as something that ties me to a family that I love dearly, an inheritance from a grandmother I never knew.
Now, I realize that how my dad helped me then, is a lot like how I help people now through coaching. We all have some attributes, knowledge, skills and brilliance that we accept, embrace, even celebrate, and then we have the stuff we don’t, the freckles.  When I help my clients realize that they are more than their current job, lack of technological prowess, illness or income.
What perceived liability is keeping you from accepting your own unique value?
I love helping people “embrace their freckles”—if you’d like to explore how your least favorite attribute can actually be part of your strengths, schedule a complementary 20-minute call.  I would love to support you in a change of perspective that moves you forward or help you “connect the dots”. That change in mindset could mean thousands of dollars in your pocket (when you land that new job you’ve been telling yourself you’re not qualified for)!