From her tough and struggling youth to fighting her way to an impressive life with perseverance, Natalie's experience shows us that working hard is the real way to true stability.
Natalie, in her forties, announced she was expecting her third child, her baby bump clearly visible. No one would easily imagine that her childhood was marked by such hardship and struggle.At the age of eleven, she was already helping her mother tend to her fruit stand; the family’s daily meals often consisted of nothing more than a bowl of noodle soup, and she also had to care for her younger sister, who had a disability.Back then, all of Natalie’s clothes were hand-me-downs from relatives. Even in the depths of winter, when her hands were frozen and cracked open to the point of bleeding, she still clutched the icy scale rod to weigh fruit for customers.Fortunately, her grandmother would always clasp her stiff, frozen little hands and repeatedly remind her, “No matter how poor you are, you must never lose your backbone.” It was these words that kept her from losing the inner resilience she possessed, even in the face of those hard times.
At the age of fifteen, Natalie dared to dive into the modeling industry on her own to make a living. With no connections or sponsors, she relied solely on her tenacity to go from one audition to the next. Despite stumbling countless times, she never once complained about the hardships, and through sheer hard work and results, she fought her way to the top as a supermodel.At nineteen, she married a British aristocrat. After marriage, she gave birth to three children in quick succession. In her spare time, she spearheaded a charitable foundation, ventured into design across various fields, and appeared in films and TV shows. Her annual income once ranked among the top on the Forbes Supermodel List, and whenever people spoke of her, they would praise her for living the kind of life others could only dream of.
Just when everyone thought Natalie would settle down and live a life of luxury, she decisively signed the divorce agreement, walking away from what others saw as a perfect life in a wealthy family without a second thought. Her friends and family were all on edge, wondering what the future held for her.
A few years later, the public saw Natalie again, holding hands with the heir to the Louis Vuitton fortune; after her second marriage, she had two more children.Now in her mid-forties, she still walks with her back straight as a board, her demeanor unchanged from that of the young girl who had just established herself on the runway back then; her eldest son has also followed in her footsteps and entered the modeling industry.
From her early days as a young girl struggling to make ends meet on the streets, to where she is today—surrounded by longtime friends like Julianne Moore who are sending her their best wishes, and carrying a new life that was just officially announced—every step she has taken in her life has been a hard-fought journey through all the ups and downs.
In life, there’s no need to constantly rely on others or count on the gifts of fate. Those who spend their lives waiting for a windfall from above will, in the end, rarely hold onto anything of real substance. Only a good life that you’ve built step by step through your own hard work is the true sense of security you can hold in your hands.
Instead of constantly gazing enviously at other people’s lives, it’s better to settle down and focus on living your own life to the fullest.
