You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know

Heather Sellers is face-blind—that is, she has prosopagnosia, a neurological condition that prevents her from reliably recognizing faces. Growing up she took cues from speech, hairstyle, and gait, but she sometimes kissed a stranger thinking he was her boyfriend or failed to recognize her own parents. She feared she was crazy. Yet it was her mother who made her daughter walk on her knees to spare the carpet and her father who wore panty hose and bras under his clothes. Heather clung to a barely coherent story of a “normal” childhood in order to survive the one she had. That fairy tale unraveled when Heather took her fiancé home to meet her parents and discovered the truth about her family and herself. As she came to trust her own perceptions, she learned that embracing the past as it is allows us to let it go and that even in the worst circumstances, love may be seen and felt.