A Face for Picasso Quotes

“Our friendship gave us the sense of normalcy we’d been craving. It showed us that we could exist, that we could have friends, without the appearance of our faces impacting how we were treated. That not everyone would treat us poorly because of the way we looked. More than that, it taught us that we did not have to be defined by our faces. That we could separate ourselves from all we had been through. Their friendship also showed me the kind of life I wanted to have and the kind of person I wanted to be. When I was unsure of myself or nervous about meeting new people, I channeled who I was with them. I did not owe anyone an explanation for my face.”
― Ariel Henley, A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome

“It was waking up and realizing I had no idea what had been done to me. I didn’t know who saw me, who helped me, who touched me. I was helpless. I had no control over my own body.”
― Ariel Henley, A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome

“Sometimes when you’re hurting, it feels better to deny others before they can deny you.”
― Ariel Henley, A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome

“It wasn’t that my surgery was a secret; I just worried that if Nina and Victoria knew about our surgeries, they would stop seeing us the same way. I had not learned how to explain that there were two versions of me—my hospital self and my healthy self—and I did not want them to treat us any differently.”
― Ariel Henley, A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome

“With every operation, we learned how to put ourselves back together. We had no choice but to learn how to rebuild. But in this divide, I left parts of myself. I knew how to be in one place or the other. My life was constantly oscillating between the two—heaven and hell, surgery and recovery. I did not understand how to be both versions of myself at the same time. I did not know how to be both normal and different; sick and healthy.”
― Ariel Henley, A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome

“Good news!” I told my dad when I got home that evening. “My front tooth came in.” I paused dramatically. “Bad news: It’s in my nose.”
― Ariel Henley, A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome

“I read once that when a child experiences trauma, the best way to help them is to talk about it, to hold a light up to their experience, acknowledge it, and say, “This was not your fault.” And with that permission to talk about it should come a space that is safe and supportive, and most importantly, free of whatever the trauma was. But for Zan and me, this was impossible. We carried our traumas with us in our bones and in our faces. We saw our experiences reflected in the shocked and horrified reactions of strangers when they looked at us. We saw our pain in our very reflections. And worst of all, we saw every awful memory reflected in the face of each other. Everything we were at that time, every aspect of our identity, was a result of our suffering.”
― Ariel Henley, A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome

“It’s like when you reread the same sentence over and over again without understanding what it means,” I said, finally. “That’s how I feel about my life, about what I look like.”
― Ariel Henley, A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome

“The derogatory treatment of people with facial differences isn’t new. It has roots in physiognomy—a pseudoscience claiming a person’s physical appearance represents their moral character.”
― Ariel Henley, A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome

“But ignoring my experiences meant denying an entire aspect of my identity.”
― Ariel Henley, A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome

“We were treated as less attractive, less intelligent, and less worthy of basic respect.”
― Ariel Henley, A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome

“As a woman, I am defined by beauty; and as a woman with a facial difference, I am also defined by my very lack of the thing. This is a lesson I began learning in childhood. It’s a lesson I want to destroy.”
― Ariel Henley, A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome