Nienie on Ope's!

I knew it!

It was only a matter of time, before you all discovered this girl.

Nienie, was on Oprah this week.

And the world is about to be changed.

I am not making use of hyperbole here.

Nienie changes lives everyday.

I've thought so much about her over the last two years. First with delight at the joyful and deliberate way, in which she mothered her children, loved her husband Christian, and lived her creative life. Then later, after a plane crash had burnt more than 80 percent of her body, with anguish and concern for her recovery, and later still for the outcome of surviving such a battle, and then having to live in a once beautiful body, now painfully scarred.

After many months in an induced coma, and then in agonising rehabilitation, Nienie began to blog again.

Tentalively. Bravely. She began to show us bits of the new Nienie.

First her eyes.

And all the cliches endure here, for her eyes still emanate the beauty and radiance of her soul.

You could see the red, hurt skin that surrounded them, but her soulful stare was still Nienie.

Over time we beagan to see more of her.

The scars were everywhere. All over her young and strong body, which had once effortlessly practised yoga, and hiked the Y. The body that had easily carried four, beautiful young children. The body that had delighted, in so much shared passion with Mr Nielson. We knew that her hands had been burnt to the tendons. Would they ever be able to create the art that Nienie had once loved to make.

And what is it about Nienie that so captures our hearts?

I have thought often about this. Her innocence and purity. Her faith. Her joyfulness. The crystal clear clarity, with with she practises living. So much hope, and love and graciousness in one spirit, is a rare thing in a cynical and permissive age. She embodies a purity of intent that is deeply inspiring.

When my daughter Tiffany died in a car accident twelve years ago, I never imagined that my life could know beauty once more; that I could delight in the world and feel that all was right in it. Worse still, I resented the way in which others saw my suffering as a benchmark which made their own pain more bearable. When friends told me that they had got through something inspired by my endurance, I felt angry and unaccountably hurt, instead of encouraged.

Over time, I have come to see the perfect way in which we may serve one another. The interconnectedness of all life. The way in which our souls are bound together through love, and yes through, Ohr Ain Sof, the Divine Infinite Light of the Creation.

Nienie no longer looks the way she once did. Her beautiful freckles are gone. Her body struggles with pain everyday. And yet miraculously, incredibly, she appears more glorious then ever. Her beauty transcends the physical. It comes from a place of purity, light and grace. She glows.

I hope that you will find her.

And let her inspire you. Nienie will help heal you and if you are willing, and open to her example.. ...She may well change your life....

xxx elle