Lizzie Velásquez was born with a very rare genetic syndrome. In fact, there is only one other person in the world that has it. “Basically, what this syndrome causes is that I cannot gain weight,” she explains during her Ted Talk.
When she was born, her parents were told by doctors that she would never be able to talk, walk, crawl, think or do anything by herself.
The first thing they told the doctor was, “we want to see her and we are going to take her home and love her and raise her to the best of our abilities’ and that’s what they did.”
Lizzie says, “I credit pretty much everything that I’ve done in my life to my parents.”
However, that did not mean that she did not have her struggles growing up. She was constantly subjected to bullying and told that she was ugly.
When she was in high school she found a video of herself on YouTube posted by a stranger, which labelled her as the “world’s ugliest woman”. The video received millions of page views and commenters went so far as to tell her to kill herself. It was a turning point in her life and she realized she had a choice.
“I could either choose to make this really good or I can choose to make this really bad. I could either be grateful and open my eyes and realize the things that I do have and make those the things that define me,” she says at her Ted Talk.
“I started realizing, am I going to let the people who called me a monster, define me? Am I going to let the people who said, kill it with fire, define me? No. I’m going to let my goals and my success and my accomplishments be the things that define me, not my outer appearance, not the fact that I’m visually impaired, not the fact that I have this syndrome that nobody knows what it is.”
From that point forward, Lizzie began a life path that would lead her to become a motivational speaker and inspire millions of people to accept themselves for who they are.
What a strong woman! Listen to more of her inspiring speech in the video below!
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