the Scars that carry me

As I was moving through my morning ritual of getting up and heading to the washroom to see if I was indeed alive (actually I just needed to go the washroom), I stopped at the bathroom mirror.  I don't know why I choose this morning to stop there and take a good look at me, but I did.  Maybe it was because I had just run an ultra marathon the week before and was now feeling a bit lost as my routine of training had stopped.  Or maybe it was because I recently saw a posting of a womyn on facebook who was breastfeeding her baby; she had only one breast as she found out she had breast cancer while pregnant.  Either one, the emptiness of a goal now finished or the womyn who was crying as she breast fed her baby, could have been why I stopped at the bathroom mirror and decided to really look at me and let my mind go back into the memories of the scars that carry me.

I had breast cancer when I was 29 years old.  My baby boy was about 3 years old and my baby girl was about 1 1/2 years old.  It was a time of great disbelief and sorrow for me and I can't even imagine how it was for my family.  I had a radical mastectomy with my lymph nodes on the right side removed.  I cried when I awoke to see my breast gone, but life goes on. After my breast was taken from me, I went into a clinical trial where I was randomly chosen for a new chemotherapy drug; the side effects were horrible and I cried some more.  I remember asking my mother if I was going to die; she didn't know and I continued to cry.  I felt like I was dying but was saved by my children, my ability to laugh and the support of good friends and family; I stopped crying as much.

I eventually moved past it all and started to live my life. For approximately 7 years I wore a prosthesis where my breast used to be; I was okay with this as I was just happy and so grateful to be alive.  Even though i was comfortable without a breast, a friend of mine who had breast reconstruction convinced me to go for breast reconstruction.  So after being on the list for a year, I was accepted and began that journey which would entail 3 surgeries (2 1/2 years) and so many emotional roller coasters.  My dad died two weeks before my last surgery where they were to make my breasts the same size (they were slightly off which happens).  It was the smallest of my surgeries yet it was the worst for recovering; my tears of sorrow followed me into the surgery and for the months to come.  

As I looked at my body in the bathroom mirror, the memories of my past that I now saw in the scars upon my skin, gently remind me of who I have become.  I didn't always like my body and can trace the dislike to long before I had lost my breast.  I often thought that I was/am fat, that I was/am unattractive and can't stand looking at myself most of the time.  Yes, even as I am in one of the best shapes I have ever been in my life, healthy and alive, I often find myself at odds with my body. 

But here I was, a reflection of where I have been and all that I will be standing in front of a mirror first thing in the morning looking so strong and so very much in love with life.  Scars, no matter where they come from, carry us through life.  They teach us that our beauty isn't in what others perceive but what we ourselves know is a truth.  I am alive because of the scars I carry.  I am also alive because the scars carry me in all that I do.  If you have no scars, then how do you learn to live?

I do not have a perfect body by Society's standards but I do have a body that supports me in all that I do and that means more to me than what Society sees as beautiful.  

Breast cancer showed me that life is worth living.  And although I was okay without it, the reconstruction enhanced it.  Whatever your scars may be today as you look in the mirror, whether they can be seen from the outside or are hidden on the inside, know that without them you wouldn't be living because a scar really is a cut that has healed. 

In good thoughts, 

Miigwech,

Carrianne