3 Quotes I Live By

"Beauty is when you can appreciate yourself. When you love yourself, that's when you're most beautiful."
- Zoe Kravitz

For many of us living with psoriasis, it can be a challenge to truly feel beautiful. Society's views on outside beauty does not include the type of burden we carry, which is not so perfect skin. I battle with low-self esteem and my quality of life was severely affected due to psoriasis. But one day in 2011 I started to look at my deeper self. I began to discover my beauty in other ways outside of the physical. I started to really get to know me; which included who I was as a person, reasons why I responded to things in a certain manner, and my interactions with people.

I started to live for more than myself by helping others... and this is when I felt the most beautiful. I started to love myself unapologetically by accepting my flaws including the physical ones, which forced me to place myself among others who also love unconditionally. I came to peace with my psoriasis when I began to love the parts that people could not see, but only feel.
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"It is what it is."
-Alisha Bridges (Me)

This is a quote, or mantra, I use frequently. I have suffered from anxiety and depression on and off throughout my life over many things I could not control, especially my psoriasis. I've spent countless nights stressed over things that I simply could not change which included, situations and people. I drove myself mad trying to figure out how I could change what was going on around me. While some things you can control, there are many things you can not.

When you encounter the situations you can't control, the only thing you can do is change your attitude, which is what I started to do. I live by the phrase "it is what it is" which basically means I look at situations for what they are. I don't focus on the fact that something happened, but instead, I search for a solution and I try to make the best of it. I stopped suffering from psoriasis when I said, "you know what, it is what it is, and I'm going to make the BEST of my life with this disease."

"Psoriasis does not define me, I define it."
-Also me, but I'm sure someone else has said it too, lol

For years I allowed psoriasis to speak on my behalf. For me, psoriasis was usually the center of attention among those around me. I would see people look and stare but I would say nothing, too ashamed to speak up for myself. Instead, I let psoriasis speak for me, and it usually told a story of stress, frustrations with medicines, and insecurities (due to being covered from head to toes with clothes.) Around the age of 23, I stopped allowing psoriasis to define me as a person. I found the courage to speak up for myself. I tell my story about my disease, and break the chain of shame! Now I define what psoriasis is to others and what it means to live with this disease.