A Scar Means I Survived

I got a message the other day from a friend. It came at just the right time on a tough day. She'd been reading Little Bee by Chris Cleave and a passage reminded her of me. She was referring to my cat attack, but it really reaches me on such a deep level. Goodbye 2010, hello new beginnings!

"On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with em that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived."