It Is the Struggle That Gives It Its Beauty

I get a lot of inspirational quotes from books that I read and right now I'm in the middle of a memoir by Jeannette Walls called The Glass Castle. And this quote was particularly striking to me and you'll see why. There's a small conversation between Jeannette and her mother about a Joshua Tree. Now if you don't know what a Joshua tree is, it's one of those trees that from the time it was a tiny sapling, it has been so beaten down by the whipping wind that, rather than trying to grow skyward, it had grown in the direction that the wind pushed it. So it exists now in a state of permanent state of "windblowness," leaning over so far that it seems ready to topple, though its roots hold it firmly in place.

So Jeannette, as a little girl, finds another tiny Joshua tree sapling growing not too far from the old Joshua tree. She says she wants to dig it up and replant it near their house so she could protect it from the wind and water everyday so that it could grow nice and tall and straight. Her mother frowned at her saying, "You'd be destroying what makes it special," she said. "It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty."

It's the struggle that gives it it's beauty...I thought that was a beautiful way of saying it. Perhaps it is my struggle that will give me my beauty again. For I struggled to stay alive those critical first hours and I continue to struggle through every surgery, every recovery and damn, just everyday life. I so long to be beautiful again somehow and maybe this is the way that I will get it back is by showing and sharing with others my struggle. I wish I was beautiful in the classic way but I'm afraid I may never be so beautiful again as I once was. But perhaps my struggle in this windblown life I have come to know now is going to be my beauty now.