First things first, I love Audrey Hepburn. She's gorgeous. She's fashionable, yes. But the best thing about her? She is wise.

Recently, I read something about parts of her life that I knew nothing about. I read that she had chronic depression. While I hoped that wasn't true because I'd hate to wish suffering from a mental illness on anyone, I was actually quite empowered. It drew me to a specific quote I knew quite well that had some significance to me.

I remember the night that I had just come back from a bonfire with my campus church, jumped in the shower and started to wind down for the night. As I finished up and brushed my hair, something caught my attention. And it wasn't unusual. As I brushed my hair, I read what my hairbrush had written on it. I loved my hairbrush, and it was a gift to me. It had cute flowers and lettering on it, and the quote read, "Happy girls are the prettiest." I've read this quote before, but it's never actually struck me the way it did this time. I never took the time to think about what the quote meant to me, I just simply brushed my hair and put my hairbrush aside.

I really thought about it. I was slightly confused and slightly upset. Why? Because I wasn't happy. I had struggled with anxiety and depression for quite some time. I still do, but I am able to manage it a little better now. I thought, "So, I'm not pretty?" Obviously, I was missing the point.

I know Audrey wouldn't say this without a deeper meaning. So why was I upset? I thought long and hard about what this quote meant to me specifically, and how I would interpret it. Obviously, it could mean that girls look pretty when they smile. Well, yeah. Here's what I got from it.

Happy girls are the prettiest because they aren't necessarily happy all the time. They are the prettiest because they have gone through things and still smile. They are the prettiest because they will smile with knowledge in the back of their heads that that smile was not always real, and was once not there.

I think the girls that have to fight for their happiness are beautiful too. The fight is not beautiful. The fight is long and hard and ugly. Everyone fights in their own way. But I cannot tell you how beautiful it is and how beautiful it feels when you can look back after a long period of feeling down and say, "Today was a good day."

Through my struggles with depression and anxiety, I have suffered in thinking I am not pretty anymore. "I just need to lighten up," I think. "If I put make-up on and fake smiles, people won't see that I cried a lot the night before." But I know it isn't real. I know for myself I am not happy, and that sometimes my insides don't feel pretty either.

Maybe happy girls are the prettiest. But happiness doesn't come from the outside all the time. I think the prettiest thing is when you smile after not wanting to smile for weeks. When you finally feel truly happy again, even for a moment. Maybe I'm over-thinking a quote on something so simple as a hairbrush, but it's made me realize a lot about what I'm going through and how far I've come. And I feel pretty. I know that I have gone through a lot, but I haven't given up. One day soon, I will say, "I fought this, and I won." And I will feel so happy and so pretty at the same time. "Happy girls are the prettiest," because they didn't get things handed to them, and they can still smile after everything they've been through. I'm glad to consider myself pretty. And I'd like to hope that you consider yourself pretty too.

Audrey, I know you weren't saying I wasn't pretty. I know you were saying I am pretty, and I deserve to be happy, because, after all, happy girls are the prettiest.