The following is an excerpt from my book, Stories Our Scars Tell, which shares pieces of my nearly twenty-year journey with self-injury and the slow, sacred work of healing. I hope it reminds you that even the hardest stories can hold hope. Stories Our Scars Tell is available everywhere books are sold.
I examine my scars most closely in the shower. There, under the steady stream of hot water, I give myself permission to gently trace them one by one. I’ve done it so many times I can follow their paths with my eyes closed—a test I give myself on occasion to make sure my brain remembers the truth my body has lived.
I don’t know what I’m looking for exactly, but I notice the changes that are taking place. Marks, once angry and raised, flatten and dull. Their colors shift, from deep reds to dull purples and, sometimes, to white. I flex the muscles, testing the way some lines pull against my skin while others seem to melt into it, and I wonder if I should have taken better care of them when it would have made a difference.
When I look at the scars on this thirty-something body, I can’t help but think of myself at fifteen, standing in a different shower staring at the same skin. That girl believed she was the only one with scars that scared her more than she cared to admit. While she couldn’t have known what was to come, I wish I could go back and tell her then, right at the beginning of it all, that her body was one worth living in.
I thought removing myself from my body as much as humanly possible was the antidote to the shame I carried. My friends called me a robot, a title I wore with satisfaction because it meant I was untouchable. I prided myself on my ability to remain numb and cut off from my physical body in the face of almost anything. Instead, I’ve learned—am learning—that embodiment guides us toward self-compassion. Perhaps that’s what I’m doing when I trace the scars in the shower: reintegrating the private evidence of the story I’ve lived with the public persona I’ve presented to the world. In those moments, cushioned by the rising steam, my body is sacred, and I am seen and safe.
It’s tempting to conflate embodiment—experiencing our bodies as ourselves—with body positivity. The notion that loving your body is a prerequisite to living well in it is pervasive. While it would be nice for all of us to love every inch of our bodies exactly as they are, I don’t know that it should be the end goal. In order to love my body, I still remain separate from it. It remains an object, somehow estranged from my being, that I assess for value and worth.
I often catch myself measuring my body through the lens of morality, labeling parts of it better than others, whatever that means. I look at my unblemished right arm and deem it more acceptable than my scarred left. I feel the lingering ache in my right knee, an old injury from years of volleyball, and think it less valuable than its twin, which bends without complaint. Categorizing my body into good and bad, lovable and unlovable components is to move out of my body and into my brain, where I try to create order out of something I view as needing work. To piecemeal my body is to objectify it.
I’m not interested in trying to mold my body into something it isn’t. I don’t want to spend my time trying to disguise my body, hiding the pieces I’ve deemed as less than. I have no desire to make my body more palatable, for myself or others. My body is not something to accept or reject, to love or to hate. Maybe it’s greedy and, like most things, it’s easier to say than it is to come by, but I want more than that. No, I don’t want to settle for simply loving my body. I want to be my body.
I want the rest of my experience on this earth, whatever time I have left, to be one in which there’s no separation between any part of me, no part placed on a pedestal above any other part. In order to become one with myself and settle into the unity of mind, body, and spirit, I have to be willing to listen to what my body is saying. I’ll never hear her voice if I’m busy abandoning her.
My body is something I have to actively practice inhabiting. Old habits die hard, but on the days when I’m attuned to the physical and am living an embodied life, my mind and spirit are able to rest, no longer forced to do more than their fair share of the work of living. When I listen to the wisdom of my body, to its cues and to its promptings, my perspective shifts. My body isn’t something I’ve ruined or something I’m required to fix. It isn’t a project I’m going to be graded on at the end of all this. When I’m able to live in an embodied way, I recognize my body, in all its forms and with all its strengths and shortcomings, as an image bearer of the divine. The indwelling of God in me beckons me home to myself.
There are still days when it all feels like too much, when I’m self-conscious and hyper-aware of the story my body tells. In those moments, rather than betraying my body by telling her she doesn’t matter, I honor my body by giving her what she needs.
On the days when I don’t care about the scars, I allow myself to forget they exist. On the days when I find my gaze drawn to them, I give myself permission to acknowledge their presence. On the days when I wish they weren’t there, I grant myself enough compassion to spend an extra few minutes hiding them. When I see myself in a video, hand pulled into my sleeve like a turtle in its shell so nothing peeks out, I offer only gentleness to someone healing by living in her body and recognizing that, with all its scars and imperfections, it has always been beloved.
You are worthy of love and grace, from others and yourself. You are enough, here and now. If you’re dealing with self-injury or self-harm, we encourage you to use TWLOHA’s FIND HELP Tool to locate professional help and to read more stories like this one here. If you reside outside of the US, please browse our growing International Resources database. You can also text TWLOHA to 741741 to be connected for free, 24/7 to a trained Crisis Text Line counselor. If it’s encouragement or a listening ear that you need, email our team at [email protected].