How To Love Your Face

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When Rell wrote into the How To! podcast with new co-host Carvell Wallace, she asked one not-so-simple question: how can she let go of her shame surrounding her “ugly” eye. Rell was born with a congenital birth defect that affects her eye’s function and its physical appearance. As she’s grown, so too has her self-consciousness.

“I learned from a very early age that looking at my face can make people uncomfortable,” Rell said. “So to avoid that, I’m not likely to look you straight on.”

This avoidance has manifested in some substantial hurdles. Recently, she nearly missed out on a promotion at work because she failed to make enough eye contact during the interview and thus was marked down significantly for her communication skills. Rell’s now at the point where she wants to shed the discomfort she feels when interacting with others.

To help her, Carvell brought Rell together in conversation with Sarah Ruhl, an award-winning playwright, author, essayist, and professor. Her most recent book is Smile: The Story of a Face, which delves into her journey with Bell’s palsy—an idiopathic disorder that causes temporary and permanent facial paralysis.

Sarah offers Rell some wonderful, surprising advice for shedding that shame, bolstering her sense of beauty through the eyes of loved ones, and halting unwanted questions from strangers. This transcript has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Carvell Wallace: Sarah, what is your reaction to hearing Rell’s story? 

Sarah Ruhl: My first reaction is just tears. I relate with so much of it. I think with Bell’s palsy, there’s definitely the feeling of managing other people’s reactions. For me, that was not wanting to smile or laugh because that’s when my face sometimes looked like it was grimacing. Particularly in the early phases. And that gave rise to needing to explain.

It led to a removal from social life, social engagement… a kind of ghosting, and also an inner expressionlessness because I was manifesting an outward lack of expression.

I’m curious if this changed with your career, particularly the public facing part of it. 

Sarah: I retreated. I tried not to… but I think I did. I mean, the most hilarious but sad example is I had just been nominated for a Tony Award for this play In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play), and it was right after I got Bell’s palsy and we had to go to this Vanity Fair thing where they take pictures of all the nominees. I didn’t want to go. My agent said you should go. So I was standing on the red carpet and this phalanx of photographers were telling me to smile. I was really doing my best. And they were like “Aren’t you happy? Can’t you just smile for your Tony Award?” I said, “Actually, I can’t. My face is paralyzed.” They totally didn’t know what to do with me.

Rell: I guess I don’t feel I get a moment to explain it that feels comfortable to me. With interviews, social interactions, blind dates, whatever—do I have to front with this when I have a lot of other interesting things that I would like to share?

I don’t consider this a disability. It’s more of a visual thing that’s happening with my face. I don’t see in 3-D. You don’t want me as your tennis partner. I hold the railing when I go downstairs, I’ve fallen down the stairs before, and my depth perception doesn’t exist. But I feel it’s all minor until others make it major. Then I struggle with how to calibrate to the responses.

Sarah: I think the question you pose is such a deep one in terms of how much you want to foreground your identity. There were times I found an explanation really helped me defuse things. Sometimes it felt stilted but helped the conversation that came next.

Like meeting parents at kindergarten for the first time. I would say, “Just so you know, I might seem unfriendly. I actually am friendly but the left side of my face is paralyzed so it doesn’t seem like I’m friendly all the time.” They would go “Oh, okay,” and we’d move on.

I found that the more I did it, the less I had to explain. I think in a funny way, the explanation was for myself as well. It was like a kind of coming out. We both know you want to ask what’s going on with my face and I don’t want to talk about it. Instead of that being subtext, [talking about it] makes it text and it helps me to move on.

Rell: This is deeply nourishing to have this conversation. But I think one thing that sticks with me is how much is on us, and how much is on others to recalibrate and not quiz me about my face? Can you just have your reaction and move on? Couldn’t this be part of body positivity and honoring differences? Not putting it on me?

Sarah: I totally agree. I think the thing that makes it tricky is the possible misinterpretation of what the face is doing. You were talking about being misinterpreted at your job interview, which enrages me.

It makes me wonder how you, Sarah, recognize the difference between this is a thing I need others to do differently and this is a thing I have to accept and I need to deal with in my own particular way.  

Sarah: For me, it shifts as relationships between the self and others shift. We make the self based on the social self.

I remember I had this production of my play, Passion Play, and my mother was sitting on my Bell’s palsy side. She kept checking in with me nervously and finally whispered, “Are you not pleased?” I said “I’m very pleased. My face can’t move.” She felt so bad because she was my own mother and had the condition herself. Yet she was so conditioned to read my social cues.

So I don’t know. What is the point where you think “just deal with it, I’m not explaining myself,” and when it is helpful to explain. I did feel writing the book was incredibly healing and picking a narrative out of what was happening to me made me much less angry. You talked about mild irritation. For me, it was rage. I’m a fairly mild mannered person so it didn’t manifest outwardly. It was buried. Somehow writing a book made sense of it for me and I’m no longer angry about it. So I do think putting language to it helped.

Rell: I’ve said low grade irritation. But the word I’ve written in my notes is shame. As I’m listening to your journey, one of the things I want to let go of is all the energy spent googling how to fix the situation with the eye. I had surgery as a kid and it may have made things slightly better but didn’t didn’t correct it. [Now I’m looking into things like] a Tetris game you can play to correct it or you can be put in a dark room for two weeks to maybe rewire the brain. I’m weighing the energy spent thinking about fixing this eye and wanting a different path versus being at peace.

I’m really struck, Rell, by your use of the word ‘correct.’ I know that’s what is said—we need to correct this and that. But is there a way in which this is viewed as already correct? You didn’t choose this? You didn’t make this happen. This isn’t a result of some horrible thing you did and now you have to suffer the consequences. You literally were created and born. That’s all you did. So how can you be incorrect? 

Sarah: Beautifully said. With having something that’s chronic, I’ve found that there was always that toggling between accepting myself as I am and the late night googling how to get better. I was so ashamed. I didn’t even know I was ashamed—that’s how buried it was. Because rationally, I thought, why would I be ashamed of this? Yet it was persistent. Not wanting to look in the mirror. Not wanting to look at people. Not wanting to be photographed. Feeling weird that there was something wrong with me for not getting better. I was ashamed until I started talking about it.

After I wrote my book, I was talking to my editor on the phone in the car. My daughter was maybe 12, and was in the backseat listening. And my editor was actually asking, would I classify my book as disability literature, and we were going back and forth, “Was it a disability? Did I identify as such?” And afterwards, I got off the phone and I said, “Oh, that must have been interesting to you, Anna, what did you think?” She said, “Well, mom, I guess I always kind of thought that your face was this beautiful house, that a wall suddenly fell down and crumbled and you kept trying to build it back up brick by brick, and you couldn’t quite. But when I look at you, all I see is my home.”

Oh, my God. 

Sarah: I thought, “Dear God, if she had told me that, maybe I wouldn’t have had to write this book! I would’ve been cured by her complete unconditional love.” But it took talking about it in public for me to receive that love, to know about her love and acceptance.

To hear Sarah and Rell talk more about finding the mirror that matters most, listen to the episode by clicking the player below or subscribing to How To! wherever you get your podcasts.