Scars Like Wings

When a wound’s that deep, it’s the healing that hurts.

This is why I don’t need mirrors; I can see my reflection in the eyes of everyone around me. My face always finds me.

It's a good reminder. Everyone has scars. Some are just easier to see.

Funny how when your secret keeper is gone, all those dreams and conversations vanish, too.

There's always beauty in the ashes. Sometimes we just can't see it yet.

Our demons may be smaller, but that doesn't make the fight — or the bravery — any less real.

If you hold on to the old skin, you’ll never heal.

Their stares tell me I’m different, sure, but they reveal an even deeper truth: I’m less.

Moving on doesn't mean forgetting. It just means letting go of the hurt.

I'm just saying maybe look up once in a while, who knows what you're missing.

This week, pay attention to how you talk about yourself. Use words that give you power rather than strip it away.

Words have power because we give them meaning. Hate. Love. Hope. Anger.

But that was another lifetime, one where spontaneous choreographed dances and happy endings seemed not only plausible but likely. At some point, you realize life is not a musical.

He tells us we're having an assessment quiz and gives a boy in the front row a bunch of papers to hand out to the class. When the boy gets close to me, he hesitates, holding the sheets tentatively, like he's offering a bunny carcass to a rabid dog.

It's a good reminder: Everyone has scars. Some are just easier to see.

It's hard watching someone you love in pain. You'd take their hurt in a heartbeat, but you can't. It's their pain.

But the fire made it ugly, like everything it touches - even the memories went up in smoke.

We have to be stronger than the hurt or we miss the whole point.

I want someone to know I'm shooting for a star, even if it's a small one.

When a wound's that deep, it's the healing that hurts.

It's just so strange having your child's birthday without your child. Like this day should somehow not exist anymore. But here it is, the annual reminder of the day I became her mother.

I used to think of my skin as one continuous unit, but mine is more like Sara's bedspread beneath me-- a morbid quilt stitched together. Some pieces are original, some are scarred over, and some are grafted in from other parts of my body after the doctors played epidermal musical chairs.

Cora works the lotion into all my cracks and crevices as the familiar medical/old-lady smell of the oily cream fills the room. My beige compression garments slump like snakeskin on my desk. After a year, they seem more me than the purply-pink swirling scars of my actual body.

Cora's eyes flick from the bagstravaganza to me, her eyebrows pushed together with the same look she gets doing the Sunday crossword. Like if she can just focus hard enough, she can find the solution. But for all Cora's efforts, I'm one puzzle she can't fix.