The Beauty of Our Scars

I am one of those people with a tendency to deem a dress ruined or unwearable because it has a microscopic stain on it. It’s not that I think the dress is now ugly but that I am so preoccupied with how perfect and “spotless” it can become without that eye-catching stain, without that discoloration, without that distraction, that I forget to appreciate the current beauty of the dress as it is. Why do I think this way? Toxic perfectionism, that’s why. What I want is to be in a place beyond perfectionism. Where is that you ask? It’s in SELF-ACCEPTANCE.

I could just as easily see how that stain has accessorized that dress, how it has made it unique—how it has gone from a boring and plain dress to an accented one. There is something magical when you come to an accented wall that pleases your eyes and your mind. Why can’t a stained dress be just as soothing and pleasing? The truth is it can. The only change required is a mind shift. A shift from focusing on perfection to focusing on self-love. It is a shift away from valuing the view through another person’s eyes to valuing the view through my own eyes. I understand now that how I am is the way that I am, and I am beautiful.

When I was younger, I loved being different, being unique. I delighted in finding little ways that I differed from everyone else, and I celebrated myself. An example of this is, starting back in my days in Bronx, NY, I realized I liked my painted nails best right at that moment when they were due for a repaint. I liked the jagged edges of paint and the way they decorate each fingernail and my fingers. It was unsightly to others, but I admired them. It was art I could never replicate again, even by repainting and manually reproducing the chipped paint design. But as time passed, and I saw myself through other people’s eyes, I felt uncomfortable with what used to bring me so much joy. Overtime, I stopped painting my nails altogether. I’d rather not paint my nails than have to experience the tension between what was once beautiful in my eyes and what looked unkempt to others. I still cannot say if I no longer wear my artistic nails because I outgrew them of my volition or if I felt pressured to change my aesthetics. But I missed that version of me that loved things her way even when nobody else liked it.

Last month, I painted my own nails, which I haven’t done in a while. And I wore them the way the old me loved to wear them, as seen in the picture within the body of this post. I allowed myself to feel the discomfort of traveling internationally with these fingernails, disheveled as they appeared. I also felt the joy of being my authentic myself, of honoring a part of myself. I took a picture to see my fingernails from the perspective of another. And I realized current me loved the yellow color of my nails, but younger Rosemary would have found the color too akin to the color of vomitus.

This picture mesmerized me because it represents both past and present Rosemary: the one who likes artistic but non-yellow nails, and the one who loves sunny yellow but dislikes messy nails. Two Rosemarys dutifully represented. I felt somehow at peace when I saw this picture, and so I decided to make this post because this picture underscores my underlying mission to seek to embrace my whole self.

I’m realizing that my scars (my failures, my weaknesses, my traumas) were not unsightly discolorations on an otherwise would-be perfect life, but markers that help me navigate the profound journey to my best self, the self beyond perfection, a self that celebrates all parts of me.

My new book, Out of the Cocoon: The Journey to Becoming, is an intimate look at some of my scars and how they make me beautiful and extraordinary. Some family and friends understandably had some concerns about putting so much of myself in this book (but that’s what memoirs are!) and concerns about what people would think of me. A professional in the healing field suggested I consider publishing it anonymously. You’re a doctor, maybe wait until after you are no longer practicing medicine. This thought was definitely tempting. I wrestled with whether or not to publish. I delayed the publication of this book, especially as I subsequently went through a fierce storm in my life. But out of that storm, when I found myself reading my own book for sustenance because the writer of this book seemed to understand my struggles like no one else seemed to, I knew I had to publish this book. I concluded that if I do not have the courage to put my name on this book or to publish it when it could cost me something, then the premise of this book, that our storms, our challenges, can become stepping stones to our best self, would be false, or at least I would be a nonbeliever. I am not ashamed of where I have been because that is how I arrived here, to this beautiful place, to this me that I thank God for. I am a better mother, a better friend, a better sister, a better daughter, a better spouse, and a better Christian because of all that I have experienced.

I hope to inspire you to embrace your scars, to understand that beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder, but that the important beholder is you.

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