Beauty in our Scars
Today, I did something to help me move forward. Today, I put a piece of me behind me. Today, I…I wore a dress. Now, to most people this does not mean anything. Heck, I really wore it because I did not want to wear pants. But to the little group that knows, I have a pretty decent mark on my leg from my car accident. It hasn’t healed up, it is not pretty, and kinda funky looking. I’ve been ashamed of it lately with the weather warming up here in Ohio. “I can’t wear shorts! People will see my leg.” It has put quite a damper on my body confidence level lately. Wearing my scars makes me feel…ugly.
Beauty is a concept I struggle with—what it means, why it matters. I struggle because huge chunks of my life have not been beautiful. They have been ugly.
Beauty is a concept I struggle with—what it means, why it matters. I struggle because huge chunks of my life have not been beautiful. They have been ugly.
After today, I realized that no one really cares and I need to go back to my old mindset on life. To see beauty as the grace point between what hurts and what heals, between the shadow of tragedy and the light of joy.
We all have scars, inside and out. However, our scars manifest. We need to not feel ashamed but beautiful. It is beautiful to have survived, lived, really lived, and to have the marks to prove it. It’s not a competition as in “My scar is better than your scar”—but it’s a testament of our inner strength. It takes nothing to wear a snazzy outfit, but to wear our scars like diamonds? Now that is something I will be finding as beautiful. I see scars and I see stories. I see a being who has lived, who has depth, who is a survivor. Living is beautiful. Being a part of this world is beautiful, smile-worthy, despite all of the tears.
Emotional pain is slow to heal, as I have been slow to heal. I blamed myself for so long for things that weren’t my fault. Life stopped being beautiful to me, I stopped feeling beautiful inside, and my smile stopped shining beauty out into the world. I think in order for us to make life beautiful we need to feel our smiles as we feel our frowns. For the past 6months, I only honored only my pain and my sorrow. I lost my smile, less because of the trauma and more because I spent so much time lamenting my scars.
But like today, sometimes all it takes for your life to change is a shift in perspective, one solitary action, one solitary word, and everything is different—an action like putting on a damn dress.
We may hurt, but we will heal—and there’s beauty in our scars.
We all have scars, inside and out. However, our scars manifest. We need to not feel ashamed but beautiful. It is beautiful to have survived, lived, really lived, and to have the marks to prove it. It’s not a competition as in “My scar is better than your scar”—but it’s a testament of our inner strength. It takes nothing to wear a snazzy outfit, but to wear our scars like diamonds? Now that is something I will be finding as beautiful. I see scars and I see stories. I see a being who has lived, who has depth, who is a survivor. Living is beautiful. Being a part of this world is beautiful, smile-worthy, despite all of the tears.
Emotional pain is slow to heal, as I have been slow to heal. I blamed myself for so long for things that weren’t my fault. Life stopped being beautiful to me, I stopped feeling beautiful inside, and my smile stopped shining beauty out into the world. I think in order for us to make life beautiful we need to feel our smiles as we feel our frowns. For the past 6months, I only honored only my pain and my sorrow. I lost my smile, less because of the trauma and more because I spent so much time lamenting my scars.
But like today, sometimes all it takes for your life to change is a shift in perspective, one solitary action, one solitary word, and everything is different—an action like putting on a damn dress.
We may hurt, but we will heal—and there’s beauty in our scars.
Comments