(This is Part 4 of my personal series: "The Light I Found In The Dark").
There’s a scar that lives just beneath my ribs. Clean, curved, quiet. Most people don’t notice it. But I do.
Because it reminds me that I almost didn’t get to live the life I’m living now.
I had surgery to remove part of my lung, a procedure that still feels surreal to speak about. One moment I was functioning, working, appearing fine. And then suddenly I wasn’t.
Diagnosis.
Hospital gown.
Anaesthesia.
The strange stillness of a sterile room where everything about your future becomes uncertain.
When I woke up, everything was quiet. Too quiet. There’s a certain clarity that arrives after surgery. Not the spiritual kind people write about in memoirs, but the stark, exhausted kind that whispers:
“You’re not invincible. Time is real. This body is not guaranteed.”
Recovery wasn’t just physical. It brought up everything I had pushed down. The trauma I’d stored in my body, the unspoken grief, the hyper-independence that had calcified into exhaustion.
My chest hurt not just because of the incision but because I’d carried so much, for so long, in silence.
I started asking new questions:
✔️ What does it mean to truly take care of myself?
✔️ What am I willing to stop tolerating?
✔️ If I survive this… what do I want to build?
That scar changed everything.
It was the first time I stopped seeing my body as just a vehicle to push through. I started treating it as sacred. Not perfect.. but powerful. Worthy of rest. Deserving of support. Capable of holding wisdom, memory, and energy.
It was during this season of stillness that I began curating crystals in a new way. Not as accessories. Not for trends. But as energy companions; vessels of grounded support, not spiritual escapism.
My work began shifting. And in some quiet, beautiful way… I began shifting too.
I often think that scar is more than medical. It’s a line between before and after. Between the version of me that survived on autopilot, and the version who now lives on purpose.
If you’ve ever felt betrayed by your body. If you’ve ever faced something bigger than your control. If you’ve ever come out of something altered, quieter, but more awake.. You’re not alone. Our scars may not be visible to everyone. But we know what they mean.
With breath, with softness,
Eileen