One Brave Girl

When Carleigh Donald heard that someone had spray-painted a message about her body and her beauty in her New Jersey town, she didn’t cry. Instead, the 14-year-old dealt with the problem herself. She found the graffiti and posed with it confidently.
“I wanted to show whoever had decided to write that, that I was stronger than that,” she told Today.com. “It didn’t impact me at all. I didn’t put my head down, and I didn’t cry about it. I didn’t give the kids the power they wanted.”
Carleigh heard from friends that someone had written graffiti about her weight and looks on a wall near the beach in Wall, New Jersey. She knew, based on comments people had made to her before about her body and the unusual spelling of her name, that the words referred to her. She found the graffiti and smiled for a photo while she was standing next to it. “It felt very empowering,” Carleigh said of taking the photo. “I looked and felt stunning when I saw the photo.”
When Carleigh told her mom Mary about the graffiti and showed her the picture, which she had posted to Instagram, Mary instantly felt proud of her daughter and posted it to her own Facebook page. “This one is hard for me, but I feel it necessary. I am asking all my Facebook friends to share and repost this as many times as possible,” Mary wrote on the social network, explaining what had happened to her daughter. “Carleigh decided that she was going to be stronger than hurtful words on a wall and that she was going to be proud of her figure.” Mary Donald is thankful for the positive feedback, and says putting her child’s experience out into the world in such a public way was a tough decision but one she felt was important. “I felt like she was taking the control back, and I was going to support her,” she said.
As she wrote in her original post, she was incredibly happy about her daughter’s maturity and positive attitude. “For me as the mom ... I type this with tears in my eyes,” she wrote. “Tears of joy knowing that my daughter can face negativity with a smile and a sense of humour. She proves that we’re all beautiful in our own way. This will take her far in life. No perfect report card, high test score, athletic race or award could top the pride I have today.”