The cracks and scars we cannot see
How do you deal with your cracks and scars?
Hello, friend.
If you’re new to this space, welcome! I’m so glad you’re here.
This post is inspired by a piece fellow Substacker, , wrote titled, “Cracked, But Not Broken.” Like me, Beth is a breast cancer survivor and she (as do most survivors) deals with a lot of scars, too. Physical and psychological. Seen and unseen.
Of course, everyone has physical and emotional scars of some sort. Scars come with being human. No one goes through life unscathed. This is why I invite you to share about any sort of scar you have in the comments. It’s okay, helpful even, to talk about our scars.
So, let’s do that. Let’s talk about our cracks and scars.
The cracks and scars we cannot see
Have you ever counted up your physical scars?
I have quite a few of the physical sort — the ones visible to me and others when I show them.
Growing up, I was a tad (okay, very) clumsy. Compared to my siblings, I was the one who got hurt most often. There was the time I ran into the stairs while my sister and I were pretending to be animals — probably horses or dogs — those were our favorites. The gash near my right eye required a bunch of stitches. I don’t know how many, but the inch-long scar is still right there in plain sight.
While riding on the back fender of my oldest sister’s bike (never a good idea) while she was driving it, my foot somehow became entangled in the tire spokes. I must’ve created quite a commotion because one of the neighborhood moms dashed out of her house ready to assist with what I’m sure sounded like a dire emergency. Nothing was broken. My ankle was pretty bruised, though. As was my pride. No scar to speak of, though. (I threw this story in to illustrate my klutziness and bad luck.)
I have a couple chicken pox scars. And the scar from my smallpox vaccination on my upper left arm — the one everyone of my era has. There’s another on my foot from a minor tiff between the aforementioned bike-driving sister and myself.
Fast forwarding a bunch of decades gets me to my cancer scars.
Honest to God, I’ve lost track of how many cancer-related surgeries I’ve had. I don’t say that to garner sympathy, it’s just a fact.
I have the “usual run-of-the-mill” breast cancer scars, including a five-inch mastectomy incision scar on each side of my chest. Then, there are the two smaller ones under each arm from the lymph node removal stuff. There are several tiny ones from my salpingo oophorectomy and hysterectomy. Wait, those are gone because I’ve had DIEP flap surgery which resulted in an, out with the old, in with the new, belly button. Long story. And then, there is my chemo port scar and the drain scars.
Moving on to phase two of cancer scars gets me to the already mentioned DIEP flap surgery scars. In case you don’t know, DIEP flap is a kind of autologous breast reconstruction surgery that involves harvesting fat and tissue from your abdomen and reusing it to create new, more natural looking and feeling breasts. (Again, long story.)
This, of course, means there’s a pretty substantial scar across my abdomen. Along with a couple other near-by revision scars.
Oh, and I can’t forget the scar resulting from Mohs surgery for skin cancer on my face.
Now, you probably see why I’ve lost track.
The whole point of this post, though, is to talk about the scars we cannot see; the ones that are often the deepest scars of all.
The emotional scars we have might be unseen, but they are definitely remembered, revisited, and often never heal — not completely anyway. The scars we cannot see can be far more painful and long lasting.
These are the scars that are harder to talk about, too, don’t you agree?
In addition to the physical scars, cancer left me with some emotional ones as well. Some, I’ve written about. Some, I still might. Some, I never will. The point is, these are the scars that in some ways, are the hardest to deal with. Barring a magic wand, nothing can make them go away.
For example, one emotional scar is knowing the chance of recurrence lingers and always will. Then, there is the psychological impact and ongoing adjustment to life post-bilateral mastectomy. Mastectomies are amputations, after all. You don’t just get over amputations. I still miss my breasts and always will.
And yet, I’m lucky. I had a normal, uneventful childhood. I was never abused, never verbally attacked or bullied, never mocked because I had a disability. I was never discriminated against because of the color of my skin, the part of town I lived in, who my parents were, or how my family worshipped.
Sure, I have emotional scars left by unkind things said and hard things I went through, but I grew up encompassed by middle-class ordinariness.
Adulthood and relationships have been, and remain, positive, too. I count my blessings daily. (By the way, I didn’t need cancer to remind me to do that.)
Cancer, beginning with my mother’s, was the great interrupter of ordinary and forced me to deal with cracks and scars more than anything else has, thus far.
So…
How do you deal with your scars?
Cancer, or no cancer, what helps you cope with your seen and unseen cracks and scars?
This is a fascinating topic in Cancer World. Some women see their cancer-surgery scars as badges of honor — sometimes posting photos of themselves topless on social media. Others choose to get tattoos turning mastectomy scars into something meaningful and beautiful — many posting photos of their tattoos as well.
Kudos to them. Doing those things takes guts. Neither suits me.
My cancer scars are just there — “silent loud speakers.”
Sometimes they bother me. Sometime they don’t. I’m not proud of them, and other than Husband, no one sees them. I’ve yet to dress/undress in front of others in a locker room post mastectomy.
My cancer scars remind me of the song, “Whatever Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger”. I kind of hate that song. I’m not even exactly sure why that phrase rubs me the wrong way.
Perhaps it proves there are indeed invisible scars right there underneath the visible ones, and they are deeper by far.
Did cancer kill me? No. Not yet anyway. Did it make me stronger? Meh… don’t think so. Besides, would answering yes mean I’ve handled cancery things better?
Again, I don’t think so.
While I greatly admire women (and men) who without hesitation show us their physical scars, I’m more inspired by those who “show us” their invisible cracks and scars — the ones no one sees — the ones that feel most personal, cause the most anguish, take the most time to heal, and are hardest to talk about.
This gets us back to Beth’s wonderful piece. Here’s an excerpt that struck a chord for me:
It (Kintsugi) is the ancient and current Japanese art of filling in pottery or statue cracks with a resin and metallic-powder mixture containing gold. The result is an aesthetically pleasing piece of work. This process takes the “ugliness” of a broken object and, with gold to repair it, beautifies it. Therefore, a broken piece of pottery, for example, becomes its own art form.
This art form… has become a metaphor to those who have physical and/or emotional “cracks.” Which is everyone. The philosophy behind Kintsugi is that a shattered being is still valuable — despite the cracks or, with the gold applied, because of its cracks.
Powerful, right?
All of us have cracks. All of us have scars. Yet, all of us remain valuable, not despite the scars and because we’ve filled in (or tried to) the cracks with gold (metaphorically speaking), but we’re valuable at least in part, because of those cracks and scars. Our entirety is of value — not just our “good” or “best” parts.
Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way grateful for anything cancer related, (don’t even get me started on that nonsense) including my cracks and scars, but looking at them through the lens of Kintsugi is intriguing. And maybe even healing.
What do YOU think?
Share about a physical or emotional scar you have.
Which is harder for YOU to deal with, your physical scars or your psychological scars?
Do you ever talk about your scars?
If you liked this post, thank you for sharing it.
I wrote about mastectomy aftermath and emotional healing from cancer, grief, and other trauma in EMERGING: Stories from the Other Side of a Cancer Diagnosis, Loss, and a Pandemic.
Visit my website to learn about all my books.
Thank you for being here with me. I appreciate you.
As always, I see you. I hear you, and I care about what you have to say.
Until next time…
Take care of yourself, and be nice to someone.
Warmly,
Nancy
Hi Nancy,
Thank you so much for referring to my recent article and for quoting part of it. I appreciate the impact my words have had on you.
Thank you for sharing about your physical and emotional scars. Losing one's mom to breast cancer is awful beyond words, and you honestly share about this in your wonderful blog and your beautifully written books. Then getting diagnosed yourself is another horror. I'm saddened by all you've endured.
I know I've written about my physical and emotional scars in the piece you referenced, so I'm going to share about what I didn't capture in that post. Regarding physical scars, my first surgeon was a breast conservationist who loved lumpectomies over mastectomies. When I first was diagnosed, I wanted to keep my breast, so I went with the lumpectomy and radiation -- chemo simultaneously with radiation. But he didn't get clean margins, so I underwent another lumpectomy. Totally disfigured. Then five years later, a scare and another lumpectomy. At that point, with a history of breast cancer and subsequent false alarms, I told him a double mastectomy was in the cards for me. He disagreed, so I fired him. I hired one mastectomy surgeon and two microsurgeons. I got a double mastectomy with DIEP flap reconstruction.
Regarding the many physical scars from my DIEP flap, the one I dislike the most is the one where my original belly button was housed. The new belly button is not nearly as nice as the one I was born with. But I am grateful to be alive, so I try not to think too much about it.
The emotional scars for me, as you know, outweigh the physical ones. Fear of recurrence and body pains, anxiety that sometimes seems unexplained, depression, etc. I'm so lucky, though. I have an awestome psychotherapist who can talk me through anything, and I have a psychiatrist who has me on a medication regimen that allows me to live a full, content life. I do have horrible days, but they are much fewer than the good days. The key has been that I've done the very hard work of assembling a team that can attend to my psychological needs. As in medicine, I've hit a few duds, but I finally found my psyche team.
Thank you for writing this important post. Psychological cracks -- the unseen kind -- fascinate me, too. Thanks again for referring to my post. I appreciate it.
Hi Nancy, I could really use some of that resin to fill in my many cracks and scars! I wish it could also fill in my emotional scars as well. I don't know which of the two disturb me more. The physical scars are a constant reminder of troubling painful times, but the emotional scars are also and run much deeper. I agree with everything you said so I won't repeat all of it but I sometimes feel that my body is one giant scar of one kind or another. Of course it's easier than it was a few yrs back but those scars never fully go away. Not even close. And I honestly don't know how to deal with that at this point.