Presenting: My Mode, My Beauté & The Art of Redefining Yourself

Hello, here’s Lina again. 🙂

Today’s post is quite special for me and that’s why I decided to publish it on my birthday. It’s been something I’ve been willing to do for a really long time by now, but I was scared and I had (well, I still do) so many questions to ask myself. Who am I? What defines me? What is my purpose in life? How shall I lead my destiny?

I’m turning 23 today and since I’m 15 I’ve been living with an autoimmune disease, which basically makes me lose the strength of my muscles. Doctors told me that my condition is in-curable, but inside my head, in-curable is curable from within, and that’s how my journey of redefining myself began. I’ve been through a lot of very challenging occasions and of course, in some of them it was hard to keep up, but in the end, I always did it. For that, primarily I have to be grateful to my parents, they’ve taught me the values and the strength to never give up and most importantly to never make myself a victim of the circumstances life presented me with; my true friends, who were always there to support me and to share the happy and the not so happy moments. I’m also so grateful for all the people who crossed through my life and left a beautiful piece of them with me, and for the last two and a half years, my caring and loving husband, who is by my side every day. There’s one thing that all of them have and most importantly, I have: be able to give me/myself unconditional love and I couldn’t be happier and more grateful for having this in my life.

It’s so fundamental to love yourself despite the conditions. It’s so fundamental to not allow anyone else but YOU to define who you are. So, I ask you: What defines you? Is it the job you do? Is it your outer appearance? Is it your deficiency? Or is it what you’re passionate about? Is it your kindness and charisma? And if you still don’t know the answer to these questions or if the response to them isn’t meaningful for you, I ask you: Who do you WANT to be? CHOOSE who you want to be. DESIRE who you want to be. And BE who you want to be! You shouldn’t allow destiny to control the outcome of your life. Choose your destiny, even if you have to reinvent the path because we are reinventing our tastes and passions all the time. But sometimes we aren’t going after them. Trust your intuition and your instinct. Desire to be singular and don’t try to fit in the eyes of society after all the most remarkable people I know were trying to do the i’mpossible. Desire your independence and freedom to follow your passions and be the voice you hear inside your heart. Be authentic, sincere and natural, especially to yourself. Intentionally define and redefine yourself until you’re happy! I know that words don’t teach, it is life experience that does, but that doesn’t mean I can’t give you an incentive and invite you to join me and make a journey together.

My idea for this project was inspired by some beautiful people that met my eyes and caught my attention at the beginning of this year and my biggest influences were these two powerful and audacious women: Lizzie Velasquez and Kica de Castro. So, this project is called “The Art of Redefining Yourself”, and it’s about inclusion and diversity. Inclusion of all body, hair and skin types, racial and gender identities and different cultural backgrounds. Diversity is the beauty of this project. Here we don’t follow rules or trends, we do what we want and what fulfils us. Beauty and Mode here are an expression of self-care and not of snobbery or of a standard to be achieved. We define ourselves and when we change our mind we redefine. And most importantly, we don’t allow anyone but ourselves to make those choices.

I need a rolling chair for locomotion, I am able to walk if someone holds me but it’s so much easier having a way of transportation that makes things better and faster for me. When I had to go out for something I often thought about two things: 1st.: “I don’t want people to pity me because I’m on a rolling chair so I won’t go.” or 2nd.: “I won’t dress up too much so people won’t stare at me.” And the thing is: I ALWAYS LOVED TO DRESS UP! I love the whole ritual of choosing my clothes, accessories and put some makeup on. I always did! And I never really cared if someone thought I was overdressed because you know, it’s my style and it’s part of who I am! But somehow when I started using the rolling chair, 3 years ago, my inner confidence was shaken and I thought that everyone would look at me because of the rolling chair and even more if I wasn’t dressed like “someone in a rolling chair should dress”, and I lost to live so many beautiful moments because of that. It didn’t take me a long time to have my passion of dressing up to come out again and it was so liberating and empowering for myself. The compliments that I receive often are about my clothes or how glowy my skin is (hihihi me gusta) and if someone is looking weird I truly just don’t care. I love the way I look and I do things intentionally to feel happy!

I confess that my style changed a little because I needed to think more about comfort than appearance when choosing clothes. Also, my size is even harder to find but I’ve been managing and having fun with it. And I learned that comfort doesn’t mean under-dressing, on the contrary! A comfort and beautiful look is a luxury.

This is me with my partner at all times and that changed my life completely. I wouldn’t change anything that happened to me because everything made me grow as a person and that’s so much more rewarding. I’ve embraced what makes me unique and highlights me in the world. And I stopped just surviving or living in half, now I want to conquer my life.