See Beautiful with Lydia Criss Mays

We here at The Shitty Housewife are so very excited about our Wednesday’s. Mainly because our readers can take a break from listening to our lame asses and focus on something else. Something amazing. Something purposeful. Something NOT SHITTY! Every month we will be featuring a charity/organization whose mission we strongly believe in. And a mission you can get involved in. And every Wednesday during that we will just promote the shit out of their mission!
 We are honored that our first month’s organization is Atlanta’s own See Beautiful. See Beautiful is a place whose main focus is encouraging people to look at themselves, others and the world with beauty, love and respect. At See Beautiful they understand that this world is shitty and can be rough, but they are committed to looking through that crap and focusing on shining love and creating beauty. Seeing yourself and everyone and everything around you is tough. We all at some point have struggled or are struggling with our confidence in how we look. And man, as someone who has, it is so shitty. And even the days you are owning it, feeling like 10 million bucks, something can happen and boom, that awful ugly creeps back in. I can walk around all day in my skinny jeans, boots, blown out hair (like this housewife ever has fixed hair) feeling like the sexiest thing in the world for hours and hours. All it takes is for a quick Victoria Secret commercial to come on and mother fucker, I’m a gross pig suddenly. But here is the thing, I AM NOT. WE ARE NOT. We are all beautiful. If you are a good, decent, semi shitty person…YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL!!! We are all so beautiful it is crazy. We are living, breathing, creating, building, loving, beautiful people and you should feel that way every single damn day! We are who we are and we can’t change that. We are beautiful and it is just that simple.
Finding beauty is a way of life See Beautiful want us all to embrace and they encourage that through their Giving Initiatives. They focus giving back to teachers, schools, families, even animals through these initiatives by creating an adorable array of See Beautiful jewelry, clothes, bags, scarves and accessories. All of the money brought in from these incredible products goes to these Giving Initiatives helping people See Beautiful!  The Shitty Housewife was so honored to sit down with the CEO and Founder of See Beautiful and ask a few questions. Here she is….. Lydia Criss Mays, the most unshittiest housewife ever!!!
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TSH: Tell me a little bit about yourself?

LCM: I’m a wife (I try to be an awesome one, but let’s face it, I’ve been shitty a time or two or…err. It happens (pun intended)). I’m a former teacher and college professor. I never saw myself starting or running a business, but See Beautiful doesn’t feel like a business. Empowering people to see beautiful in themselves and others, and giving to causes creating more beautiful in the world is a dream. I’m also a children’s book author and use my words to inspire others – especially during the crap-filled times. Some of my favorite moments are working with some of the 200+ girls in our See Beautiful Clubs. They teach me a lot about how to better grow See Beautiful to really empower (and they keep me on fleek).

I love your mission of See Beautiful, how did you begin this organization?

The organization began with action – the need to see beautiful in myself and my own life. See Beautiful is by no means an infertility organization or loss-focused company, but both of those things are what had me in a really tough place where I couldn’t see beautiful in myself or the world around me. It was when I focused on finding beauty, in myself and the world, that I came back to living and found joy in it. As we see beautiful we create more space for identifying and creating more of it in our lives. When I recognized the life-changing power in the lifestyle I knew I had to share it. See Beautiful grew from there and it’s growth and incredible community inspire me every single day.

What has been your greatest accomplishment since beginning?

That’s hard. We could play the numbers game and say that one of our greatest accomplishments is having donated over $50,000 to our See Beautiful Giving Initiatives (every sale benefits the See Beautiful Giving Initiative of your choice). We could play the qualitative game and talk about the women and men who have shared stories of their lives being transformed because they can now see beautiful in themselves and others. I recently traveled to Congo and Rwanda to meet the children and women we work with in those countries. That was a thrill, but perhaps the greatest of all was meeting Bene. He was seven when I met him and he was a selective mute. He stopped speaking at the age of three when he witnessed his Uncle’s murder. Using my education background, and my opportunity from See Beautiful to send him to school each month, I met with Bene, his mother, teacher and director of the school. We worked on play therapy and empowerment activities together. It is the greatest accomplishment to say that Bene is now talking. To everyone. The power of a voice is beautiful.

Do you find it hard to always See Beautiful, especially when this world can be so tough?

Seeing beautiful is actually a really difficult task when done right. It’s easy to see beautiful when all in the world is daisies and rainbows, but we want to empower people to see beautiful when life doesn’t seem beautiful at all – when it’s shitty. I believe in the power of See Beautiful because I have waded through the shit, when the world was really tough, and the biggest lifeline back to rejoining this world was to search for the tiny nuggets of beautiful and rest in that space. I share a lot more about it in my TED Talk here if anyone wants to go down that road.

If you could, in one sentence, tell us the main purpose for this journey, what would it be?

We work to empower people to see beautiful in themselves and others and give to causes creating more beautiful in the world.

How can our readers get more involved with See Beautiful?

We’d LOVE for you to join our community! We’re always dishing out goodies on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Our products are all eco-friendly, fair trade, or handmade, and as I mentioned above, they all give back in incredible ways. We also have applications for See Beautiful Giving Initiatives, so visit our “GIVING” page and see if you or someone you know would be a great fit. Giving is our favorite. It’s what makes us see beautiful the most.

We can not thank Lydia and her team enough for what they do and how much they help. Check out their website and use The Shitty Housewife Promo Code HOUSEWIFE2016 and receive 15% off Store Wide!!! Also follow them on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and sign up to receive their newsletter.

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