Robert Hoge was born with a huge tumor between his eyes that distorted his face and deformed legs. Growing up kids taunted him saying he had a face some would say only a mother could love.
“The tumor formed really early during my development,” Hoge told NPR. “So it subsumed my nose and pushed my eyes to the side of my head, like a fish, and made a mess of my face, as you’d expect.”
At one point in his life his own mother branded him as “ugly” saying she even wished that he would “go away or die or something…”
But somehow despite all the pain and adversity life presented Hoge, he managed to come out of it on the other side. Hoge, a political advisor who lives in Brisban, Australia with his wife and two daughters, wrote a memoir titled “Ugly” to inspire others with his story.
Hoge wasn’t left in the hospital, a family vote decided he would be brought home to his four siblings.
“I told the hospital staff I didn’t want my baby,” an excerpt from his mother’s diary read, according to Daily Mail “He is so ugly.”
Eventually, his mom got over her shock and moved onto being concerned over raising a child with serious medical conditions, what that would entail, and how the world would treat him and his siblings.
He said he eventually sympathized with his mother and understood the fear she went through once he became a father.
“Expecting a child is a tornado of emotions, and even with all the evidence to suggest otherwise, I couldn’t shake the concern that my daughter would come out ‘wrong,'” he wrote.
His parents taught him to be honest and open with his feelings and emotions, which he credits with helping him get through life.
“I made that decision when I was 14. By then, I’d had 24 different operations, some quite small and some very, very large,” he told NPR. “And my parents … they said, ‘Well, Robert, you’re almost an adult so you get to choose.’ Pretty tough. Big choice for a dumb 14-year-old boy, too, I can tell you. …”
Hoge had the choice to have further surgeries that would make his eyes closer together but there was a chance that he could go blind if something went wrong.
His brother said he didn’t see the point of going through with the surgery if Hoge wouldn’t even be able to see himself. So he decided against it.
“I have genuine love and affection for the massive changes all of the doctors and nurses who worked on me made to my life. But doctors are tinkerers,” Hodge told NPR. “They’re always in the back shed thinking, ‘If we moved that nose up half an inch, it’d look so much better.’ But I think, you know, thinking about it now, I’m never going to look like Brad Pitt or George Clooney, so I think I should just stick with my rather distinctive face and go from there.”
You can watch Hodge’s TEDxTalk below.
SHARE this with your friends and family.
