Every Beautiful Person Has a Scar
a poem
The scars came in a variety of ways:
ugly words, loss of love, dreams dashed
they affect us in the moments and
change us afterward.
It’s what we do with those scars that
make us beautiful: we heal ourselves
through self-compassion and being
gentle with ourselves, letting us feel
everything and opening up to heal.
Afterward, we often become kinder
gentler with those who also struggle.
It’s in those hard moments that we
choose whether or not to become
beautiful. Whether or not we let
the lessons learned affect what
we will do moving forward.
Will we live deeper, love wider,
use our experience to help
someone who encounters the
same situations in life?
The process is what allows beauty.
This poem is inspired by Joanna Slan’s essay “The Scar” in A Second Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul. In this beautiful essay, Slan tells the story of a woman who has a facial scar that she is looking to get removed through plastic surgery. The surgeon begins to explain to her that all beautiful women have a scar after asking if she is a model.
That line every beautiful woman has a scar has stayed with me. It has lead me to think about how often we have emotional scars, mental scars, and relational scars. Do we allow ourselves to see the beauty in these scars? Do we learn what life had to teach us so that we can pass on? How do we begin to heal? This poem is my response to that question.
