Why did his parents abandon him as soon as he was born?
I guess they were horrified by my appearance. I have Bart Simpson's ears, they are not fully formed, I have no cheekbones and my eyes droop. But I was very lucky.
Sort?
I was adopted by Jean, a single mother who had already adopted other children with disabilities. I found a home full of joy and a loving family for life.
Learning to accept yourself must not have been easy.
As a child, he loved me very much, and he used to say to my friends: "Your dad and your mom stayed with you, but mine chose me." I lost this self-love in my teens.
What happened in adolescence?
I grew up celebrating my life, that my mother had gone to the hospital and chosen me out of all the babies there filled me with joy. And I liked my hearing aids, being able to choose to hear them or not. But in adolescence, popularity is important.
Didn't it fit?
No, I was different, only the bad guys in the movies were ugly like me. At times people didn't get along with me, but generally I had a lot of friends; the person who bullied me the most was myself.
I understand.
I used horrible words, isolated myself, and found very unhealthy mechanisms to move on.
what kind
I stopped looking in the mirror, I started drinking, getting into trouble, I trained a lot so that girls would look at my body and not my face. I was spending a lot of money on clothes and I started having unhealthy relationships - I went out of my way to please others.
What was your recurring idea?
This face will prevent me from having a future: a girlfriend, a family, a job... But in life there are moments that change everything. At the age of 20 I was very much in love with a girl and she said to me: "I love your face". And I felt like the sexiest man in the world.
How did you treasure self-esteem?
I got a job at a gym. I had to leave the dumbbells in front of a large mirror: I looked at my thighs, I loved them, I continued to climb and I thought: "My legs are not bad either and I have a very funny ass...".
And did it keep going up?
I usually stop at my shoulders, I haven't looked at my face in years, but that time I kept going up and realized she had super blue eyes and I smiled and I saw my dimple and I liked it, and since since then I haven't stopped seeing good things in myself.
Did you know anything about the birth parents?
When I felt safe and accompanied I wrote them a letter. They replied that they did not wish to establish any contact with me and any further attempts would be ignored; they and a lawyer signed it. Because I was mentally well, I was able to overcome it.
Too much rejection in your life?
The truth is that I have a lot of problems with rejection, I recently had a breakup that triggered a lot of my traumas and I had to work through them.
He gives motivational talks around the world.
We are all trying to find some self-love and acceptance. As a child I thought it only happened to me, but we all feel pain, sadness, insecurities, fears and need to be loved, but we find it very difficult to talk about it, we repress it.
You bring it to light.
One of the superpowers I have now is being able to talk about all my emotions, and all kinds of people say to me: "I felt that way too". To be able to connect with a person on this level is very beautiful.
When did it open like this?
I was making a documentary for the BBC and they suggested I go and give a talk at a school. I was very nervous, I almost started crying, and I thought it had been fatal, but at the end more and more children approached me: "I'm being bullied", "I don't know my parents", "I have this disability...".
It was connected.
The parents of children with my disease call me to meet them and encourage them, I would have liked that. That's how I started traveling the world. Many families could not access basic medical care and with some friends we created the foundation, to help them.
What do you see that I don't?
Being born with a visible difference gave me the opportunity to appreciate the beauty that we all have inside.
What is the most essential thing you have learned?
The strength we have inside. I leave home every day ready to appreciate the beauty of the world and I realize that the most important relationship I have in my life is with myself, and that if I talk to myself with respect, with love and with patience I can endure everything .
