Scar tissue

There is that old saying about what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I think that should be elaborated a bit.

William Butler Yates is one of my favorite poets. It’s well known that the love of his life, married someone else.  Ernest Hemingway had a tumultuous love life, was almost killed in TWO plane crashes, and was a known alcoholic.  Frida Kahlo was in pain most of her life due to injures from a car crash.  She also had a rough go at the marriage carousel.  Anne Rice (a personal guilty pleasure) lost her daughter to leukemia and then coincidentally writes best selling vampire books.

For those passionate creative types:

What doesn’t kill you, stimulates creativity and hones skill where there was only talent.

There are the few that will go through life without heartbreak and devastation.  But those of us that have forged through the forest fire that has set our lives ablaze, we are the lucky ones.  We are the humbled. We are the beautifully battered and bruised.  Out of those ashes bloom wonder, strangeness and resourcefulness.

I can show you the places on my heart where it has been broken and then stitched back together.  There is a bit of gold plating to protect this spot.  This? Oh that’s come apart at the seams twice, I had to use tougher thread this time. There is a patch of denim covering up a rip across the middle. Each time my heart has been mended, some repairs taking longer than others, I’ve come away more self aware and so much more the woman I was born to be.

Getting your heart broken is a privilege. Repairing yourself after a heart failure can create a lot of energy that needs to be expelled. Pouring yourself into something you love can be therapeutic and can forge masterpieces.  Write more. Paint more. Create more. While constructing your pain on the outside, you are using gold threads to piece together your insides.

As life goes on and your pain dulls, you stitches will be ready to be removed, leaving you with a pretty pink scar.  I wear my scars with pride.  They remind me how far I’ve come and what I’m really capable of if I ever have to go through that fire again.  I know I’ll rise just like a Phoenix.

Be cautious of people that make your scars itch.  You survived them once, don’t make the same mistakes.  You deserve someone that will kiss the outline of every jagged spot.  You deserve someone that will see the beauty in your damaged but still beating heart.

Turning devastation into creation is something great artists have done since the beginning of time. Remember that the next time you are grappling with a lost love or life’s ordeals. You might be the next Yates, Hemmingway, or Frida.