Picture Story, an idea inspired by Bobby Hawthorne. Every person has a story. In order to be able to tell other people’s stories, a journalist must be able to tell his own. We asked our new staff take a picture that they hold dear, whether they took it, or someone they knew did and write the story behind the image.

I had originally believed that my self-worth had cost less than it does to make a penny. I had gone through abusive relationships that exercised all types of torture from physical to emotional icy blows to my inner being. Every move that I had made, I was afraid of the cold, spine shivering glares that were clouding my vision of who I was. I had froze my past in my soul, making it who I was, for all of my years of high school, until I had begun to babysit a young girl named Jenna Yelle my senior year.

I had begun seeing parts of myself in this young, eleven-year-old girl. She had covered herself in three sizes too large articles of clothing, coward when she was spoken to, and always denied her own beauty when complimented. My heart had broken in a way that I had never experienced. I was used to seeing my physical appearance shatter in the mirror as I pointed things out about myself that I wish would change. Witnessing a child younger than me do the same thing, I felt as though I was a poor excuse of a hero in a world full of villains.

Now, eight months into working with the best thing that has ever happened to me, I have changed not only the way that she sees herself when she looks at her reflection, but I have also reformed myself.

My love for my own beauty is what I think about first. Young girls all around me are suffering from not believing that they have any worth, when in reality they are like snowflakes: alluring and unique.

My love for others and myself has progressed onto over 300 children through a program that I have started called “Cracked.” I have kids, teens and adults from all over Michigan that come to listen to me speak about how my frosted heart towards myself was cracked and melted by a girl that made me see who I was truly was. If it wasn’t for Jenna Yelle, I would be frozen in my past still, struggling to breathe in the harsh thoughts of others.

I now breathe in the lack of oxygen that the air provides and breathe out the heat my anger has built up for so long. I have inhaled confidence and exhaled judgement because of Jenna Yelle, my warmth in a world full of iced hearts.