My Part Of The Story: 

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                                            If there is anybody who can attest to the challenge of defining “true beauty” it is me. My broad range of experiences have offered me a vast criterion for what is considered beautiful. It has taken many years of sifting through falsities disguised as truths and re-discovering the sources of my self-worth to be able to make peace with “true beauty”. While it is ultimately a phrase that will continue to grow with me for my entire life, I have landed on the understanding that, to me,  true beauty is founded in consistency and honesty.

                                           I often say that I was, in many ways, raised by the modeling industry. From a very early age it taught me mixed messages about my worth, my body type, and the different types of attention I would receive based on how I was marketed. The pressure to be perfect in practically every way was an insatiable mindset that was enforced both directly and indirectly. It was a world full of potential to build or to destroy. I am blessed to have faith and parents that counter balanced the negative and nurtured the positive that the industry offers. With their grounding and regular introspective work, I am proud to say that I have been successful in modeling. I have been able to thrive in that world without being completely of that world. That came with deliberate practice of consistency and honesty. I learned that honesty with myself and others about what I was and was not going to do in modeling in order to be successful was crucial. Even more important was ensuring consistency with those standards and behavior. In short time, I was a proudly more conservative model but respected for the consistent and professional presentation of that truth. It did not impair my opportunities, despite often being asked if it did. The reality is that honesty ensured my own comfort with and respect for myself, which feeds the thoughts that are carried out into words, actions, and performance in a work environment. Those things can make anybody in any job successful.

                                     In 2016 I enlisted in the United States Army. It was in that experience that my understanding of true beauty was deeply reinforced. The military met my background of pageants and modeling with a completely different culture. It became incumbent upon me to decide how that would interact with what had already been established in my heart and mind. What worked with modeling and pageantry was indeed just as valuable in the military. Consistency in attitude and behavior helped me graduate top of my company in various areas in all of the phases of my military training. My background, as well as challenges I have been met with and overcome have made me able to empathize deeply with so many other people’s stories. Honesty about about the hills and valleys of a drastic life change like mine has also been able to break stereotypes. I have been continuously humbled and brought to tears by the feedback. We are all learning together that true beauty doesn’t fit a mold, and that we are often capable of doing so much more than we realize. With all of this having been said, I am passionate about using my own life story to demonstrate the reality of working hard for true beauty, and of prioritizing self-development. True beauty and fulfilling actions requires self-awareness and intentional living. Perhaps for others true beauty means different things. I can say for myself and my life that true beauty was developed from honesty about who I am, what I have experienced, and consistency in my behavior, and attitude. It has been continually evident that pretty isn't what pretty looks like, what pretty dresses itself as, or how pretty lines up with society- it is what pretty DOES when it starts from the inside and works its way into words and actions. I stand proudly on this with all of my harsh failures and exciting successes that got me here, and deeply desire to help others discover lessons of true beauty in their own lives.