Amalie Jennings never asked to become a symbol of strength, self-acceptance, or defiance. She simply wanted to exist in a world that so often told her she shouldn’t. Her childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood were a long stretch of harsh words, mocking glances, and a war inside her own mind that nearly consumed her. But the universe — in its strangest, most unlikely way — had already placed in her path a boy who would one day become her safe place, her home, and eventually the man who would help her see beauty where pain once lived.