When I started blogging about The Fine Art of Nakedness and began sharing stories about people journeys with their scars, Jon contacted me. “I don’t have a scar, per se, but does a missing leg count?”
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Mastectomies aren’t pretty. None of us pretended that what we were seeing was something other than it is. Her breasts are no longer there. In their place are large horizontal scars, some sagging skin that was saved for reconstruction, and two drainage tubes.
She cried, she touched, she turned and showed. She made comments both about the severity of her scars as well as how it wasn’t as bad as what she imagined it could be. She turned to her husband and he grabbed the drainage bags and pretended he was squeezing them like air pumps. “You look a little deflated there honey; let me help pump these back up!” We all laughed.
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I stumbled across you today and I am reaching out to see if you can help me. I regret that I didn’t get to see your work on Breast Cancer Survivors as I just heard about it today. You see, I was just diagnosed with breast cancer and will be having surgery this Thursday for a double mastectomy. I am really grieving this loss that I am about to experience. A thought came to me that I should have pictures of myself as I am now… as a reminder of these breasts that have been such a part of me for such a long time.
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Breast cancer survivors are revealing their scars in portraits, and telling their stories of battling cancer at a downtown Boise coffee house and art gallery.
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Damian is officially disabled. You wouldn’t know it to see him, but he has the scars, and the pictures to prove it.
“The muscles in your legs are like sausages,” he tells me. “There are four major muscles in your calves and they are each surrounded by an outer casing that holds the tissues together. My leg muscles were like overstuffed sausages while I was in the Army and their doctors did surgery on both my legs to slice apart the outer casing so that the muscles had room to grow.”
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Having single vision hasn’t been a problem for Angelia. Since she never learned to focus with two eyes she hasn’t really experienced a vision loss; she just learned to get by with what she has. And besides not having good left side peripheral vision the only other time she notices the lack of two-eyed vision is when she is invited to a 3D movie.
But Angelia’s eyes have presented another form of pain for her – rejection.
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She was sitting at a computer at school, working with her classmates on a project. One of her friends standing behind her gave her the startling news, “Hope, your hair…, its gone in the back…”
It is one thing to be a mid-40’s male whose mop is gradually thinning into obscurity, it is quite another when you are a young lady in the 5th grade with gorgeous tresses of hair.
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“I actually had the thought it might be kinda cool to do a few pictures with the stretch marks and imperfections, but have my kids in the pictures with me. Then every time I see those pictures and the stretch marks, I would be reminded of the blessings that I have because of my scars.”
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For years my mom has heard the cruel judgments of callous men when she viewed her face in a mirror or photograph. I’ve been praying that God would silence those words and reveal to my mom how He views her – how I view her.
Her journey of grace has come to a beautiful place of acceptance. When she heard that her church was hosting an art show with the theme of Overcoming, she asked me to help write her story and take a new portrait.
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When you’ve escaped an abusive relationship you vow to yourself that you will never put yourself in that same place again. Wouldn’t life be grand if it had guarantees?
Kristine married for love, but it was to a man who beat her.
Once he broke nearly every bone in her face while three of his friends watched in the background, none of them coming to her aid or telling him to stop. Do you see a pattern?
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I was born with a hemangioma on my forehead. It was a large bump about the size of a quarter- much larger, mom says, than the penny-sized knot I had reported. It was quite noticeable, being red in color and protruding from my forehead. I was pretty self-aware of looking different.
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