When my mum was born, she had a large birthmark that stretched across a lot of her back and side. Nine years later, in the summer of 1969, her parents made the courageous decision to get this birthmark removed. It did not pose any harm or threat to her, but her mum and dad were faced with the decision of whether to remove it and live a happy life featuring a scar in the birthmarks place, or leave the birthmark alone and risk mentally/psychologically damaging teenage years because of potential bullying and teasing if bikinis were to be worn, etc. My mum said that prior to the operation, she didn’t have a care about the birthmark at all. One reason could be that she couldn’t see it, as it covered most of her back, but to her, she wasn’t bothered about it. Not at home, not when she went swimming - she can’t remember anyone ever saying anything negative at all. 

After the procedure was done, she remained in hospital for an entire month, side by side other patients, who all seemed to be getting their tonsils removed instead. Most of her other memories of her time in hospital consist of her parents coming in with strawberries, missing her birthday, being terribly upset at missing the italic pens being handed out at school (!), and more significantly being in the same hospital at the same time as the Ariana Afghan Airlines Flight 701 (the famous Gatwick Airport incident) burn victims. Post operation, my mum was in a lot of pain but funnily enough, her first and most prominent thought was “I bet no one has as many stitches (200+) as me!”, and was incredibly proud of herself. But then I asked her if she felt self conscious about the scar when the birthmark was removed.

“Not self conscious exactly. But it was because it was different. I mean it wasn’t like, ‘oh you’ve got a birth mark and you’ve had it removed and now your back is like perfect and nothing is wrong’ because there was now this great big massive scar across it.” 

She was right. Just because something is seen as an imperfection, gets fixed, and the result is different, doesn’t mean its magically all disappeared now. You often think that when people get surgery, they are automatically ten times better than they were before and everything will look grand. But, there is still going to be a mark, there is still going to be something there, so really, is a massive scar very different from a birthmark? In some ways it could be worse - your birthmark is something you are born with and carry through life, you accept it. The scar is new, foreign, something you have to learn to deal with whether you like it or not. 

But on the other hand, scars both heal and fade and become a lot less obvious. My mum says now, she doesn’t even think about it and often forgets that it is even there. She feels now as if when you think about such a major operation on such a large piece of skin, you think it would’ve/should’ve had more of an affect on her, but it honestly didn’t, and that’s the way it is sometimes. You can barely see it now, and she sure as anything can’t feel it, nor has it held any psychological cloud over her mind for the past 60 years. Scars become a mark of something that was there, something you went through, something you had to deal with - they become a mark of courage and memory. So for that reason, I think 1969 Teresa (with her 200+ stitches!) would still be proud if she had a conversation with 2023 Teresa today.