The first "Beauty from the Heart" award: Regine Valcin

I started this post and wrote it several different times. I find that I'm inadequate for the task I've assigned myself as editor of this blog.

That task is bestowing the first "Beauty from the Heart" award. The winner is the beautiful and kind Regine Valcin. And I don't even have the words to tell you just how great I think Regine is.

Loved the Sam Edelman spiked shoes!

Regine won't like this, the part where I talk about how pretty she is and how's she's propelled herself to success by following her dreams. It's just the way she was raised by her Haitian immigrant parents. Get an education, work hard, DO. She wouldn't want anyone bragging on her, I can assure you of that!

But I can't help it.

And here's why.

I met Regine a few months back at an event I was hired to photograph, and then again at another event I shot a few weeks ago. At that first meeting I was instantly struck by her beauty and all together fashionable self. But then I settled in to listen to her speak. I watched from a seat in the back as she gathered a whole room of students into her heart and grabbed their complete attention with the very real story of her life, from unemployed college graduate to owner of one of Huntsville, Alabama's most popular upscale salons, Salon Prive.  In three years. And that includes the time it took her to earn another degree.

Regine is in a word, riveting. And I could spend hours telling you all about her life and the things she's accomplished, but what I'd most like to tell you about Regine is that she cares about people. She's funding an orphanage in Haiti. She finds the time to speaks to young people about the importance of staying the course and avoiding the pitfalls can steal a young person's life before they have even begun to live it. She prays privately about the problems people share with her while having their hair styled. She is deeply devoted to her faith, and it shows in everything she does.

She's human like the rest of us, not perfect, and she'd be the first to tell you that. But Regine is a true beauty, with beauty emanating from the only place it really matters in the long run, beauty from the heart.

 ^"Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised."