Marks and etchings upon your skin,
seams across your heart,
fault lines in your bones.

Whether visible or invisible,
fresh or faded…
your scars tell a story,
an embodied memory,
more powerful than words.

They are evidence of
wounds,
trauma,
heartbreak,
pain,
and also,
survival,
healing,
transformation.

Time passes,
but scars collapse it,
transporting you
to the very moment
of the burn,
the gash,
the scrape,
the break,
the rupture.

Just like that
you are back there –
inside the body’s remembering:
with the sharpness of pain
and the swell of emotions,
the result of loss,
betrayal,
fracture,
grief.

But no matter how real it may seem,
it is only a memory –
a shadow,
an echo
of the sharp edges
and rough surfaces
that have formed and shaped you
into who you are now.

And so,
may you see the scars,
trace them with your fingers,
feel the story they tell,
and have compassion for the one
who bears them.

She is not weak
or small
or broken.

Her scars are signs,
arrows that point toward:
resilience,
strength,
tenderness,
beauty
that cannot be performed
or fabricated,
only authentically lived.