SCARS: OUR BODIES ARE HOME TO THE MEMORIES WE CARRY WITH US
“They always say it's the people, not the place, that’s home. Well, you're a person, too. So, the things that you carry with you, that's your home. And that's a scar sometimes. Sometimes it's a traumatic scar, and sometimes it's one that you can look back on and laugh and say, you know, I can still walk—thank goodness.”
— Emma Cronin, Mizzou senior and broadcast journalism major
In many ways, our bodies are our homes. Places come and go, but we are always tied to our bodies. Home is a place where you create memories, and in terms of our bodies, we carry experiences and memories with us physically in the form of scars. In this photo essay, mid-Missouri residents share the stories behind their scars. Whether it was major or minor life experience that resulted in their scars, their bodies have given them strength, allowed them to continue on and continue to serve as a home for them.
After Devereaux had three kids back-to-back, all by C-section, she did not anticipate having to get umbilical hernia repair surgery. The abdominal wall behind the belly button is supposed to close when you are a baby, but hers never closed. And after three C-sections, that wall kept separating further and further, resulting in a painful hernia. As a result, Devereauxhad to have surgery in 2019, in which her abdominal muscles were sewn back together. She said the after-surgery pain was a pain she had never experienced before and that the scar from the umbilical hernia surgery is now more visible than her C-Section scars.
“It's a reminder to me to make the most of every day,” MU photojournalism doctoral candidate and Army veteran Cory MacNeil said.
In 2011, while traveling on an early morning mission during his time serving in Afghanistan, a rocket propelled grenade hit MacNeil’s vehicle, and a piece of shrapnel went through his arm. It hit an artery, which causes severe bleeding, so he was immediately flown to an army hospital in Jalalabad and sent into surgery. The long scar that now spans MacNeil’s arm is from the surgery he had to remove the shrapnel, in which they took a vein out of his inner thigh to serve as a replacement artery.
“I think about how valuable every single day is, and I knew that I kind of made a commitment to myself to live a good life because not everybody got to come back. And, you know, what a shame it would be if I was the one who got to live and then I came back and I was a jerk to people, and I just didn't live the best, you know? So, I feel kind of this obligation—not a guilty obligation, but a positive, motivating obligation to live a good life.”
In July, retired journalist and Montgomery City, Missouri, resident Jeh-neigh Rose Gray had a stroke while riding her horse, Rosie. In an attempt to figure out what caused her stroke, Gray’s neurologist did an echocardiogram of her heart and found a mass on her left ventricle. She went on to have open heart surgery only for her surgeon to discover that the mass was mysteriously gone. She said there was no explanation and that the surgeon called it a mystery. Gray has spent the past few months healing from the stroke and her surgery. She said the thing that has been keeping her going is knowing that she will get to ride Rosie at a dressage show at William Woods University at the end of October, after not being able to ride her for several months.
“I thought that my heart and everything was separate from me," Gray said. "Like there is my brain—my cerebral person—and then there's the rest of it. But now, because it still hurts and because there's scars and because it's intimate to me, the heart is right there. It's right there. Everybody's heart is just right there. It's accessible in a way that I don't feel like it was accessible to me before. It's just right there. It's not something in a drawing. It's not something to be afraid of.”
“Whenever people see that, they’re probably going to think some outrageous shit, like I was fighting a wolf or something,” Pearle Vision lab technician Alex Tanksley said. “But it wasn't anything extravagant—just doing dishes.”
About 10 years ago, when Tanksley was doing the dishes, a glass he was cleaning shattered and cut his right index finger down to the bone. His dad and brother helped him through the situation. Although his brother was panicked, Tanksley said he managed to stay calm and collected. He said he looks at the scar on his finger at some point every day, which sometimes causes him to look back and reflect on that moment.
“Everything carries a story,” Tanksley said. “The body embodies a full memory, every time you go out and experience stuff.”
Mizzou senior and broadcast journalism major Emma Cronin got her scar on her right ankle while jet skiing with friends during the summer of 2020. She said one of her friends thought it would be funny to throw her off the jet ski, but when they did, a rope got caught around her ankle and wrapped so quickly that it caused a severe cut and burn. She said she would have lost too much mobility in her foot if she had gotten stitches, so she had to let it heal naturally.
“I remember talking to my dad one day, and I was like, ‘I think if this thing was ever gone, I wouldn't feel like myself,’” Cronin said. “Like, it's such a part of me now. I used to put scar cream on it and try to make it look better and try to do all those things. And now I'm like, ‘Without it, I wouldn't be me.’ Like it's such a funny part of who I am, and it just shows who I am. Because you know, something bad happens, [and] it's okay. You can bounce back from it.”