“To me, beauty is about being comfortable in your own skin. It’s about knowing and accepting who you are.” – Ellen Degeneres

Today I took a picture of my son and I. Typical, right? Moms take selfies with their children — this is nothing new. I love the way my son looks in the picture; like such a big boy and oh, so very happy. But, you know what I don’t like about the picture? Me. Everything about me. My nose looks big, my eye wrinkles are so very apparent, and my teeth, well, they look a bit yellow.

For a hot second, I thought about deleting the picture. Why would I ever want to see myself looking like that again? Why would I ever want anyone else to see a picture that does me such a disservice? I wouldn’t, right? But then, I decided to not only share the picture on social media, but also publish it here, on my blog, which gets thousands of visitors per month. So much for a bad picture of me not being seen.

So why is it that I decide to share the photo and write about it? I’ll tell you. When I take a moment to look past my flaws in the picture, I see everything I love about my son in it. I see his endearing smile with his perfectly spaced teeth. I see his oversized cheeks which are primed for cheek squishing. I see eyes that look oh so curious about this world. And, more than anything, I see a happy child who could care less about how he looks in a selfie with Mommy.

Far too often us mothers are the ones behind the camera, hiding the fact that we are tired, have slipped a bit on self-care, and are typically looking like a hot mess. Far too often us mothers only share pictures of us all dolled up. But not today, not for me.

Today is the day I say “hi” to the world; face wrinkles, big nose, yellow teeth and all. And in doing so, today is the day that I remind myself of this understated simple fact: that what matters about me is what’s on the inside, and not what I look like on the outside. Today and all days what matters to me, the only thing that really matters to me, is that I continue to see that smile on my son’s face that you can see in the image above.