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Vitiligo Crusaders | Page 71 | Flawed, yet Unflawed, with Vitiligo

Telisha Gibson, the creator of The Perfectly Flawed Project, considers herself a valuable contributor to this world, and rightly so.

Telisha Gibson

If you are an internet savvy vitiligo fighter, you would know who Telisha Gibson is. Within the community, she is the first to start a vitiligo movement through social media, called The Perfectly Flawed Project. She has appeared in ABC primetime show What would you do? and has been written about in numerous articles in Yahoo!, Grio, and Refinery29.

The 29-year-old special education teaching assistant, freelance photographer, and videographer finds it easier to accept her skin. She loves that she can stand out and be herself. But, just like many other vitiligo crusaders featured in this series, Telisha too had to walk through the road of self-acceptance to be proud of who she is today.

Telisha noticed her first spot at the age of 9. It all started as a spot on her upper back. The NewYorker recalls, “I think as a child I wanted to be like everyone else. It was very difficult being different from my peers. However, I had a really good support system, from my family and friends. So, I never experienced bullying from close peers. However, I did experience people giving me unsolicited advice. I remember being on the train and an older woman telling me that I should not bleach my skin.”

At the age of 29, Telisha is still learning to love and embrace her skin. Some days, she loves it, and other days she wishes she had fewer spots: “Truthfully, when I got sunburned and had to be hospitalized, YES! I didn’t want vitiligo. Some days, I’m having a bad day and the last thing I want is people staring at me because of my vitiligo. But I think I’ve reached a point where I am confident in me. At the end of the day, I am human I have good and bad days. But I will never let my bad days outweigh my good days.”

A quote by Myles Munroe (“You must decide if you are going to rob the world or bless it with the rich, valuable, potent, untapped resources locked away within you.”) helped Telisha see the world differently. Today, she considers herself a valuable contributor to this world. Just like most of us, Telisha too feels that people with vitiligo are underrepresented in popular culture, however, she loves the fact that every day someone within the vitiligo community is knocking down doors and creating new avenues.

Telisha tells us she has taken more of a healthy lifestyle to naturally heal whatever is going on internally with her immune system. Her focus is not reversing her vitiligo, but being healthy. She encourages anyone with vitiligo to embrace not just vitiligo, but their life: “We will all face obstacles, but we cannot allow them to stop us from giving this world all the amazingness we have inside. We are contributors and we have so much to give to the world.”

We salute Telisha’s spirit and are truly honored to have her featured among all vitiligo crusaders.

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