When Connie Culp heard a little kid call her a monster because of the shotgun blast that left her face horribly disfigured, she pulled out her driver’s license to show the child what she used to look like. Years later, as the nation’s first face transplant recipient, she’s stepped forward to show the rest of the world what she looks like now.

Culp’s husband, Thomas, shot her in 2004, then turned the gun on himself. He went to prison for seven years. His wife was left clinging to life. The blast shattered her nose, cheeks, the roof of her mouth and an eye. Hundreds of fragments of shotgun pellet and bone splinters were embedded in her face. She needed a tube into her windpipe to breathe. Only her upper eyelids, forehead, lower lip and chin were left.

“Don’t judge people who don’t look the same as you do. Because you never know. One day it might be all taken away.”