Celebrating Scars

how pain grows our capacity to love

When my best friend graduated from college, we went out partying. After all, our Northern California university was voted the biggest party school in the USA. Drinking happened. And on my bike ride home, I crashed into a curb and flew over the handlebars. 

In my entire life before that, starting as a preschooler on a tricycle, I had never attempted to hop a curb.

In college when I mountain biked, it wasn't technical riding that got me giddy. It was the soft bending trails, gentle inclines, sloping views and graceful, curvaceous beauty. Not hopping on rocks or twisting around tight technical turns. 

So why did I attempt to hop the concrete sidewalk? My sister's husband had given me a 26 inch BMX and… I can do this, right? While the Rum & Coke in my bloodstream thought so, gravity thought otherwise. My tire hit the curb, all 165 pounds of my body flew over the handlebars and I landed on my jaw. I got up, climbed back onto my bike seat and rode one block away to where I lived. 

Apparently my arrival was not peaceful because my housemate Carrie came to the door and dropped her jaw. 

I remember thinking, Jeez, that was unfortunate. I really need to go to sleep. 

Carrie looked at me and said, “I’m taking you to the ER. I can see your jaw bone.” 

My jaw was fractured in three places — in the middle of my chin where I’d landed and on both the left and right sides near my ears. No teeth were damaged but my jaw was wired shut for six weeks so it could heal. My weight dropped to 128 lbs.. I lived on smoothies sucked through clenched teeth. 

That was 23 years ago and I’ve never attempted to hop a curb since. 

Has the scar on my chin ever bothered me? I’d be lying if I said it did. Everything is always in perfect order, despite our difficulty in accepting this sometimes very challenging truth. It's simply a choice — how we perceive the screenplay we are projecting in our human experience. 

That bike crash could have delivered much worse outcomes. I didn't lose or even crack any teeth. I didn't crack my brain open. The chin scar helps me remember all those blessings. 

Now for the long bald scar on the top left side of my head. To remove a massive brain tumor, the Neurosurgery team opened my skull from forehead to ear. Do I wish I still had a full head of hair, like before brain surgery? That would be a cosmetic fantasy incomparable to the gift of having a scar that reminds me that I lived through five years of horrid migraines, one of the most high risk surgeries a human can experience, and I overcame a 46 year addiction to food and sugar. 

I love my scar. I ask people to touch it if they want to, because how cool is it to have lived through that? And there's a bump next my left eye, misshapen compared to my non-surgically adapted right side.

To me, these scars make me more lovable. They aren't flaws.

And I dream of a world where we all accept ourselves with as minimal modification as possible. 

Scars are an invitation for us to love ourselves unconditionally. 

Scars are also an invitation to love others just the way they are. And that feels so good! It’s the spirit of Mr. Rogers in the song, It’s You I Like. And Billy Joel’s Just The Way You Are.

In the last year, two of my closest friends have had thyroid surgery. For both of them, it’s been a scary experience calling forth great courage and tender humility. Somehow, I trust that my brain surgery scar and my jaw fracture scar have helped them see how lovable they are, even with scars across their necks. 

Love wants us to choose and embody its power. 

Love wants us to express its Majesty. 

God is Love. God doesn't want us to be a way we are not. God loves us the way we are, and wants us to embrace more of its divine Light so we can feel, live and embody how loved we are, scars and all.

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We are living in a time of horrendous pain in the human experience. We all know someone facing Life-threatening disease.

Pain can be seen as a curse, something awful to resist — or pain can be seen as a gift, here to guide us in greeting and moving through our fear with the one true medicine that heals the root cause of pain. That is Love.

Love Coach Jessica Rios supports people who are ready to greet disease powerfully, who not only want to heal, but to come alive on the other side of it with exponentially more vitality, energy and passion. Here’s what people say about her work.