Not long ago, Loren Savage stood on her bed and gave her strapping new husband Mark a hug. “My head was up to his chest, but it felt like we were the same height,” she smiles.
“I said, ‘Do you wish I was this tall?’ and he said, ‘No, you take up enough room in the bed!’”
Loren and Mark met four years ago. They married last April in front of 90 family and friends at Te Puna Quarry Gardens in the foothills of the Kaimai Ranges in the Bay of Plenty.
“I always thought, ‘Imagine finding someone brave enough to marry me,’” laughs Loren, 25, who works in a communications and administration role in the Ministry of Social Development’s Hamilton office.
“I tell people I only married Mark so he could help me get things off the top shelf at the supermarket and I even referred to him in my wedding speech as ‘conveniently tall’!”
“It’s something we joke about,” adds Mark. “I love the humour Loren brings into our relationship.”
Mark, a 24-year-old web developer, is a towering 1.88 metres, while Loren is 1.32m.
Mark is a towering 1.88 metres, while Loren is 1.32m.
Despite having average-height parents and an average-height big sister, Loren was born with one of the most common forms of dwarfism, achondroplasia. The gene mutation can be inherited from one or both parents, or spontaneously, as it was for Loren.
“Yes, I have a disability, but I don’t think it disables me and I’m not defined by it,” she declares. “I see it as a gift. I’ve had opportunities in my life and met people along the way I wouldn’t have if I had been born average height.”
Loren was born at Whangarei Hospital, tipping the scales at a bonny 4.3kg. Although she was a big baby, doctors soon noticed her head, arms and legs were disproportionate. Loren’s parents, Karen and Jeff Corbett, were told their precious newborn had achondroplasia.
“The doctors told my parents when I got to school, I’d need a smaller desk,” laughs Loren.
“Things were different in those days.”
Loren was the only little person growing up in Whangarei and because it was pre-internet times, her parents didn’t have access to the support and information available today.
Instead, they left a couple of stools around the house and treated Loren no differently to her sister Tracy, 27. “I don’t recall ever thinking, ‘Why me?’ It was just the way it was.”
The lovebirds’ big day in April.
Before Loren started school, her mum, a teacher, made a book with photos about her first four years. “I remember her taking this homemade clear-file to every classroom so they knew about me before I started and saw I just did normal things.”
Loren says her parents chose her schools carefully, but bullying wasn’t an issue and she was an extrovert who made friends easily. “My parents taught me that if kids said something immature to just get over it,” she recalls.
Every year until she was 13, Loren and her family attended the annual Little People of NZ conference.
“It made it normal,” she tells. “There was no light-bulb moment, like, ‘Oh, I’m a little person.’ I grew up in a loving and supportive family, and I always just knew.”
Loren and Mark met in 2013 during orientation week at the University of Waikato. They became close on the board of the student union and would often talk into the wee hours.
“I’m the first little person Mark has known, but he is the least judgmental and most accepting person I’ve ever met,” says Loren.
Loren and Mark met in 2013 during orientation week at university.
“We talk about everything and we are always on the same page,” adds Mark fondly.
Loren admits if they’re out together, they get the odd stare or double-take.
Someone recently asked Mark if they could “hug his missus” and Loren has caught someone filming her when she was shopping for underwear.
“I try and ignore it, but sometimes I pull a face,” she confesses. “Mark is fiercely protective, but not because I’m a little person – he wants me to feel good about myself because there are so many pressures on women, and how we’re meant to look and act.”
Loren is the media liaison person for the support group Little People of NZ, where she’s a role model for many of its younger members. “Just don’t call me inspirational!’ she laughs.
She recently penned a heartfelt letter to a three-year-old girl with dwarfism to read when she’s older.
In it, she sums up her hope the girl will one day use the attention she receives as a platform for change.
Loren’s letter reads, “This is a chance for you to comfort parents whose newborn has dwarfism, to show them you can be what you want because you are letting nothing stop you. You too have a unique view on the world because the beauty of growing up short is that you are always looking up.”
Smiling across at Loren, Mark declares that with each day, he sees something new to admire about his new wife.
“There is nothing I want to change about Loren,” he asserts. “I love her just the way she is.”
