I am missing three fingers on my right hand. When the priest asked for the rings at our snowy Colorado wedding, my groom sneered, “Don’t drop it with your freak hand. Actually, never mind, I don’t want a deformed wife.” He turned to leave. A man in the front row—a billionaire CEO—stepped forward. “She lost those fingers to severe frostbite,” the CEO said loudly, “digging my little boy out of an avalanche with her bare hands.” He walked up to the altar, completely ignoring the stunned groom, and gently held my scarred hand. “You see a deformity,” he coldly told my ex, before looking deeply and tenderly into my eyes. “I see the most beautiful woman alive, let me be the man who spends the rest of his life kissing these scars.”

I built my life on the quiet conviction that saving others was the only way to truly save myself. But the greatest threat to my survival wasn’t the collapsing snow …

I am missing three fingers on my right hand. When the priest asked for the rings at our snowy Colorado wedding, my groom sneered, “Don’t drop it with your freak hand. Actually, never mind, I don’t want a deformed wife.” He turned to leave. A man in the front row—a billionaire CEO—stepped forward. “She lost those fingers to severe frostbite,” the CEO said loudly, “digging my little boy out of an avalanche with her bare hands.” He walked up to the altar, completely ignoring the stunned groom, and gently held my scarred hand. “You see a deformity,” he coldly told my ex, before looking deeply and tenderly into my eyes. “I see the most beautiful woman alive, let me be the man who spends the rest of his life kissing these scars.” Read More