You are beautiful

Transcript:

Hey, thanks for joining me. My name is Charlie, and I was diagnosed with MS in 2011. And I’m telling you right now, before I go any further, let me make sure I let everybody know that’s listening to this, if no one has told you lately: you are beautiful. That’s right, you heard it here first!

You are beautiful. And that’s one thing that we tend to forget when we’re battling something like MS. We got so much that’s going on—being beautiful and taking care of ourselves—as far as our physical, outside appearance. We tend not to do that sometimes.

You know we tend to like, my wife told me one time, we tend to wear what we call a “costume.” And for me, what I was doing was I was allowing MS to affect everything from my physical health to my mental health. As far as how I even looked and how I dressed. It was days when I wouldn’t even shave. And this was not due to me being fatigued. This was just due to me feeling, like, I didn’t have any other choice. I was giving in. And what I’m telling you right now is that that’s the wrong attitude and the wrong mentality to have.

So I want you to know and understand that no matter what you are going through—if you use a wheelchair, if you use a cane, if you use any type of mobility, even if you don’t use any type of assistance device—and you deal with the mentality where your thoughts come and go or you have problems that people don’t see. And it make you feel like, you know what? I don’t even feel like doing anything today. I’ve been there.

I have…it was days where I chose to wear the same clothes multiple days. It was days, like I said, where I chose not to shave. And that’s what…something I never did before. And I sat down with my wife, and she had a heart-to-heart talk with me, and she told me that when I was getting ready to start feeling bad, I would put on certain outfits. I would keep on certain things. And all of this was affecting how I felt inside.

Now, you may look at me right now and say, “Hey, how can someone that looks as good as he looks, suffering with, dealing with never feeling beautiful?” But I’m here to tell you that I know the feeling.

So what I want you to know and understand is that to the ladies out there that may have put their long heels or their high heels, excuse me, in their closet, or my men that had to put away their suits, due to all types of issues, whether that be from your bladder, whether that be from your bowels—I understand what you’re going through.

But what I want you to know and understand is that you are beautiful. You are beautiful inside. You are beautiful outside. So just remember that in order to maintain that, in order to feel good about yourself, you have to get up. You have to show up.

You have to get up some days and put on your Sunday best. You remember how it felt when you went to prom or how you felt when you put on your best dress or your best suit? That’s what you must do each and every day, each and every way.

But remember one thing: you are beautiful.