Home > Author > Erin Stewart
1 " This is why I don’t need mirrors; I can see my reflection in the eyes of everyone around me. My face always finds me. "
― Erin Stewart , Scars Like Wings
2 " When a wound’s that deep, it’s the healing that hurts. "
3 " Funny how when your secret keeper is gone, all those dreams and conversations vanish, too. "
4 " Their stares tell me I’m different, sure, but they reveal an even deeper truth: I’m less. "
5 " It's a good reminder. Everyone has scars. Some are just easier to see. "
6 " Our demons may be smaller, but that doesn't make the fight — or the bravery — any less real. "
7 " If you hold on to the old skin, you’ll never heal. "
8 " He tells us we're having an assessment quiz and gives a boy in the front row a bunch of papers to hand out to the class. When the boy gets close to me, he hesitates, holding the sheets tentatively, like he's offering a bunny carcass to a rabid dog. "
9 " But that was another lifetime, one where spontaneous choreographed dances and happy endings seemed not only plausible but likely.At some point, you realize life is not a musical. "
10 " It's hard watching someone you love in pain. You'd take their hurt in a heartbeat, but you can't. It's their pain. "
11 " I'm just saying maybe look up once in a while, who knows what you're missing. "
12 " There's always beauty in the ashes. Sometimes we just can't see it yet. "
13 " It's just so strange having your child's birthday without your child. Like this day should somehow not exist anymore. But here it is, the annual reminder of the day I became her mother. "
14 " Cora's eyes flick from the bagstravaganza to me, her eyebrows pushed together with the same look she gets doing the Sunday crossword. Like if she can just focus hard enough, she can find the solution.But for all Cora's efforts, I'm one puzzle she can't fix. "
15 " Cora works the lotion into all my cracks and crevices as the familiar medical/old-lady smell of the oily cream fills the room. My beige compression garments slump like snakeskin on my desk. After a year, they seem more me than the purply-pink swirling scars of my actual body. "
16 " I used to think of my skin as one continuous unit, but mine is more like Sara's bedspread beneath me-- a morbid quilt stitched together. Some pieces are original, some are scarred over, and some are grafted in from other parts of my body after the doctors played epidermal musical chairs. "
17 " When a wound's that deep, it's the healing that hurts. "
18 " Words have power because we give them meaning. Hate. Love. Hope. Anger. "
19 " This week, pay attention to how you talk about yourself. Use words that give you power rather than strip it away. "
20 " I want someone to know I'm shooting for a star, even if it's a small one. "
