Most parents of baby girls are often congratulated and told how beautiful their daughters are when they are stopped in public by strangers.
However, this didn’t happen to Pamela De Almeida until her daughter was a toddler.
But Pamela was used to be being treated differently by strangers since her daughter has Down Syndrome. But usually, those reactions can be on the negative side, but that day at the coffee shop was different.
“I sat in Tim Horton’s with my daughter’s as I do often. Two ladies sitting near us started to stare and whisper,” Pamela recalled in her blog titled “Slice of Life.” “This is a pretty frequent occurrence for us you see; because my daughter Sophia was born with Down Syndrome. I sat there and watched these two women crane their necks to get a better look at her; completely oblivious to the fact that I was staring right back.”
While she was used to the stares and whispers from strangers, this time she was getting a little bit pissed off.
“Today it bothered me. It really bothered me,” she explained. “Just then, a couple approached me, and I thought, ‘Oh great! More people who want to take a closer look.'”
That’s when the couple made a friendly gesture and almost broke down in tears to her. He explained that he had been watching the news and saw a woman on TV who was defending her decision to keep her disabled baby.
She had done this despite a recommendation from doctors to terminate the pregnancy.
“He said, ‘The point is, you never know a person’s impact on the world. You can never know what a person is able to do unless you give them a chance,’” Pamela explained. “He looked at me just before he turned to walk away and said, ‘You are a beautiful person. Your daughter is beautiful. Congratulations!'”
That was the first a stranger had ever congratulated her on her daughter’s birth. She started to cry over the fact that someone other than a family member was able to recognize her daughter’s importance, worth, value, and beauty.
Patricia said she hopes that her story will be a lesson to others to recognize everyone unique beauty every day.
“Yes, let’s not take for granted the pure beauty around us. Everyone is a gift, a treasure to be cherished and cared for,” he said.
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