A collection of quotes from my reading that help me think and feel.

Write from the scars

I thought I’d made peace with her. No name calling or victim blaming here. I did what I needed to do to survive. My head insisted that I knew these things. And yet, bodies are what exist before stories and after stories. Bodies rush in to fill the gaps that our stories leave behind.

Write from the scars, not the wound, I’ve heard. It sounds like a good idea. We should let healing happen before we expose the vulnerable tissues. Healing looks like: Gaping, weeping, bleeding, crusting. A wound becomes a scab; a scab becomes a scar. Closure. Freedom.

But this feels like a cute indulgence now, to say I can tell the difference between a scar and a wound. And to believe that a scar can’t become its own wound. Or to trust that I’m not just picking a scab that I refuse to let heal.

Excerpt from “Proud Flesh” by Catherine Gray, from Roxanne Gay’s Emerging Writer Series