If you haven't yet, please go take a look at and support the brave women of The Scar Project. These are professional photos of breast cancer survivors under 40. It's not a walk or a pink ribbon, it's reality and not for the feint of heart. Some people say they see sadness in the eyes of these women. And there's some of that yes, because we do lose a lot of our identity in this process and it can be hard to overcome that. I find myself struggling sometimes with the way I look one week out from surgery, but I also realize that now is not forever. I'll look completely different one year from now and I just have to be patient with the process. That's probably the hardest part for me - patience with myself.
What I see in this project is strength, beauty, courage, wisdom and humanity. It takes a lot of guts to accept the way we look afterwards and show it to others - to show people reality. That’s what I see.
I can accept the way I’m going to look when all of my reconstruction
is over, but I’m also going to embrace everything that makes me feel
beautiful again, including tattoos encompassing my scars. They’re a part
of me now and I intend to make them mine in whatever way I can.
I looked at the pictures of those women and thought how fierce and brave they looked.
ReplyDeleteYou'll be like that too. Strong and amazing and powerful.
I checked it out, and felt odd clicking "like" to it!
ReplyDeleteSupport, eleventy!