Mummy woman: she lives contrary to this world (9 photos)

Elizabeth Velazquez was born with the very rare Wiedemann-Rautenstrauch syndrome. There are at most two or three such people on the planet. People weren't too kind to her because she was "lucky" to not be in the league of conventionally beautiful women.





Mom called her baby Lizzie, Liz. She was born in 1989, at that moment she weighed only 1200 grams and doctors said that the fact that she was born alive was simply a miracle, because Rita, her mother, had practically no amniotic fluid. And the parents were happy simply because she was born and they absolutely did not care what their baby looked like. Mom and dad looked at her only with tenderness and surrounded her with care.



Little Lizzie

Elizabeth had a very weak immune system, she was thin and looked like a real mummy. Many thought that the girl had anorexia, but the damned syndrome was to blame for everything: a person with this pathology looks very bad - practically does not gain weight, and because of this, the skin sags very much. As if this were not enough, at the age of 4, Lizzie became blind in one eye, and for a completely inexplicable reason. The doctors could not find the answer, but the parents were generally skeptical about medicine, because after the birth of their daughter, the doctors assured them that Elizabeth would not live long, and it would be better to abandon her altogether. How wrong they were!



Discharging from maternity hospital

In the first years of her life, the girl did not even imagine that something was wrong with her. Her parents showed her their love every day, calling her beautiful and praising her for her achievements. But at the age of five, Lizzie went to kindergarten and then encountered the first cruelty of her peers. The children didn’t want to play with her, she, of course, got upset and asked her mother why this was so. The parents decided to talk to their daughter: “You see, daughter, the only thing that distinguishes you from all other people on Earth is your extreme thinness. But this should not affect your perception of the world and yourself. Be yourself and never doubt yourself.” .

She never doubted her parents and only their words, at that moment, were authoritative for her.



And, as they say, in the acting environment, the work “from internal to external” (the principle of an actor’s work according to Stanislavsky) bore fruit: she was so confident in herself that children simply stopped noticing Elizabeth’s unusual appearance. When the girl went to school, she didn’t have any problems there - she actively participated in school events, took on the “job” of a correspondent for the school’s newspaper, Lizzie had many friends and even became a member of the cheerleading group.



But one day a video with her participation was posted on the Internet. And comments poured in: “Take a gun and kill yourself, do yourself a favor,” “the most terrible woman in the world,” and stuff like that. And zero comments that, firstly, such an attitude towards a child is simply unacceptable, and secondly, that before writing nasty things, it’s worth finding out what’s wrong with her, what’s the reason for such thinness. Hundreds and hundreds of such messages drove Elizabeth into despair. For a 17-year-old girl who saw herself in the mirror every day and was well aware that she was different from the others, this was a heavy blow.



Parents, of course, supported their Lizzie. They said that she should not keep this pain inside herself, she should cry and get angry from the bottom of her heart, and then raise her head high and continue to live as she lived. Elizabeth did just that.

Only Elizabeth knows what it took for her to overcome these humiliations and cope with the pain. And she decided to turn the steering wheel towards a skid: to turn her physical feature into a virtue, to turn society’s hatred into love and to inspire others. Elizabeth became a motivational speaker, talking about herself and how even with such a difficult diagnosis you can not only live, but live happily.



Velazquez trained as a speaker, created a website herself, and began promoting herself as a personal brand on social networks. Thousands of people from all over the world began to subscribe to her, who wrote her words of support and claimed that Elizabeth inspired them with her example.



Elizabeth Velasquez will soon be 35 years old and she has achieved a lot. She gives lectures, speaks at conferences, talks about bullying and cyberbullying and how to counter it. How to accept yourself and how to truly love and respect yourself.

The girl makes good money, she has her own house and two adorable dogs. At the same time, Elizabeth is not saccharinely positive 24/7. She says that she, like everyone else, has bad days when she locks herself at home, is sad, and watches sad films. Velasquez calls these days “pity parties.”



Elizabeth Velasquez is a great example of true body positivity. The same, real one, who says that you should value and respect yourself, despite what physical features life has awarded you. After all, you can be the most beautiful person on earth, but if you don’t love yourself, then it’s unlikely that anyone can truly love you.