The Day Misty Let Herself Feel Beautiful

We’d only had Misty for about a week when I took her to get groomed.

She was still feeling things out—hovering behind the others, taking slow steps through doorways, unsure if the safety she’d landed in was real.

That trip to the groomer might’ve been the first time in her life someone handled her gently—not just to clean her up, but to care for her.

When I picked her up, she looked like a different dog.

Trimmed. Clean. Smelling like lavender and uncertainty.

Wrapped in a red bandana like she’d just joined a club she didn’t know she was part of.

She climbed into the front seat without hesitation, but her body language told a different story—like she was still deciding whether this soft life belonged to her.

Then she sat up straight.

I looked over and said it without thinking:

“You’re such a pretty girl.”

She turned and looked at me.

Her tail gave a slow, measured wag.

Not excited—confident.

Like something inside her replied,

“I am a pretty girl. Look at me.”

It was quiet.

But it landed.

Because the truth is, a lot of people don’t know how to receive that kind of affirmation either.

We learn to deflect, to minimize, to joke it off.

Especially when life’s taught us to earn love instead of expect it.

And when someone says something kind—something true—we don’t always trust it.

We don’t always know how to believe it’s ours to keep.

That’s a hard pattern to unlearn.

I know, because I’ve had to do some of that work myself.

Misty didn’t have the words for all that.

But in that moment, she didn’t need them.

She just received it.

She sat there in the passenger seat, wrapped in a little red bandana, fur clean, eyes wide—and let herself feel beautiful.

That car ride wasn’t long.

But it mattered.

She didn’t wag like a dog who needed approval.

She wagged like someone who, for the first time, believed it was true.

And in that one small moment, she didn’t feel like a rescue.

She felt like she belonged.