“A Brave Heart” is a story about finding real beauty

Mar 17, 2015 15:15 GMT  ·  By
Lizzie Velasquez is 26 years old and suffers from 2 rare conditions, but she remains a fighter
   Lizzie Velasquez is 26 years old and suffers from 2 rare conditions, but she remains a fighter

We often hear that “what’s on the inside matters,” but to what extent do we realize just how true this saying is? Lizzie Velasquez, once called the “world’s ugliest woman,” is determined to show us that real beauty has nothing to do with the outer appearance and every little thing to do with personality and kindness.

Velazquez was diagnosed last year with 2 very rare conditions, Marfan and lipodystrophy, which prevent her from gaining weight and lead to a series of other health issues. She’s completely blind in one eye and partially in another, she has very low energy levels and doctors are now trying to assess the condition her heart is in.

Lizzie is 26 years old and weighs about 60lbs (27kg), with her parents being told at birth that the best they could hope for was for her to be in a vegetative state and them acting as full-time caretakers.

With all that, Lizzie keeps soldiering on, as the documentary of her journey so far, “A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story,” directed by Sara Hirsh Bordo, reveals.

The film screened at the South by Southwest festival (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, over the weekend. The trailer for it is available below.

In “A Brave Heart,” Lizzie will explain how she came to find herself target of vicious online abuse, courageously reopening that old wound in the hope of changing the wrong preconception that bullying is when one kid is beaten by others at the school playground.

She took the bullying and, more importantly, her health issues and used them to help others, looking to inspire them with the strength to move on, to get up and face whatever adversity they found on the way.

“A Brave Heart” is a story about real beauty and courage, one that is meant to deliver home the oft-heard message that, indeed, true beauty shines from inside.