Love Your Mark

When I was in my accident in 2000 I came out of the experience with all kinds of scars. Most of my injuries were to my face and head. Being 19 at the time, I was devastated. I was a girl. Girls were supposed to have pretty faces, not scarred ones. It took years for the scars on my face to finally turn an almost natural color from the deep purple they were before. I didn't like when people asked about the accident. Not that I was embarrassed or something to say what happened, but because it always turned into this big conversation. I contemplated surgery early on to "fix" the scar on my chin, but a very nice doctor talked me out of it. He told me to give it time.

Time was just what I needed. I learned the scars, whether on my face, my head, my hip, my chest or my knee, didn't make me. I made me and the scars were just part of my story. They remind me where I've been. Now I get people who that try to rub the "ink" off my chin---it does kind of look like I wrote on myself. When they do so it always brings me back to the accident. But instead of being sad and hurt like I used to feel, I look at it as something I overcame. Instead of complaining about a imperfection I should be embracing life. Something may have cut me down to the bone, but it didn't cut my life short.

This website is all about loving your mark, whether its a scar, a birthmark, a missing eyeball...whatever. So cool. I wish it existed when I thought my life as a girl would no longer be the same. Boy, was I wrong.