"As humans, we inevitably experience harm: we feel hurt, we get hurt, and we
hurt others. We free ourselves from this experience not by imagining we can
escape harm but knowing we can heal it--moving from wound to scar--and then
learning to love the scars. This can, of course, be the work of a lifetime.
Luckily, I have long loved scars. When I was four, I accidentally cut my left
eye. As a result, a small scar formed directly under my eye and inside the eye,
where the pupil stayed dilated with a keyhole in it. After I had the eye removed
at twenty-one, a photographer I knew told me she wanted to record people's
scars, so I asked her to photograph me with my empty socket. It may be that at
twenty-one I looked youthful, even radiant, but that one-eyed image of myself is
my favorite photo; in fact it's the only picture of myself where the subject
feels beautiful."
Author, educator, and restorative justice practitioner Leah Seligman shares
more in this powerful piece.
