My name is Emily Riles, and I'm 18, and I have a scar on my neck.
My scar came from a surgery I had when I was in 5th grade.
I have scoliosis, which means my spine isn't straight, and I have what's called an S-curve,
so a normal spine is straight.
I have a curve on top and an opposite curve on the bottom.
The surgery is called a spinal fusion.
They have me lying on a table, and they cut down my back, which is where the scar is,
and opened up my back and basically ate medical interns.
It held me straight, literally pushed my spine into place while the doctors put the rods in
and the screws and the wires and all that stuff to make it stay in place.
I don't know, it's funny when I see other people's backs, I expect to see a scar there,
because that's what I see, but it's just kind of become a part of me.
It's just been with me for a long time.
A lot of people are embarrassed by theirs, but it makes me more distinct.
I mean, it's just, at this point, it's so integrated into my life.
My name is Sienna Woody, and I had surgery to reattach my Achilles tendon about a year and a half ago,
and so now I have an 8-inch scar on the back of my leg.
It's definitely a conversation piece, to say the least, because it is so prominent.
That's one of the first or second things somebody says about me when they meet me.
It's a good conversation starter.
I'm Layla Brooklyn-Omen.
I'm an artist, I've been in a band since I was 12 years old, and that's my dream.
I have one tattoo right here on my forearm, and it says Brooklyn, which is my middle name.
I got it when I was 16 years old with my dad.
I was visiting him over the summer, and it's kind of cool because I don't get to see my dad too often,
maybe once a year tops, so I kind of wanted to get a tattoo that somehow represented him,
and since he gave me the middle name Brooklyn, I thought it would be a cool thing to tattoo on my arm
since I was visiting with him, and he took me for it.
What is interesting about my family situation is that when I was growing up,
I wasn't very close to my father, but what was very interesting is that he was a man who was covered in tattoos.
I'm Todd Hardy, and I teach biology and human anatomy.
My first tattoo, I got when I was about 22 years old.
I was in the teaching program at San Francisco State.
I was trying to find my career, and I wasn't really sure where I was going in a lot of aspects of my life,
both with my professional and my personal life,
but it was around this time when I was 22 that I really determined that I was a gay man and tried to be happy with that.
I believe a lot of us have many trials and tribulations through our life.
We have good times, bad times, difficult challenges and struggles,
and for me in my background, I think it was really important for me to remind myself the journey that I've been through.
It's a good reminder of where I was at in my life and where I am now.
The two complete opposites, like a total 180.
I'm Nicolette, I'm 17.
They kind of occupy a lot of my body, so there's really not many places like it look on my body, and there's not scars.
A few years ago, I was big into self-mutilation, and any part of my body that I disliked, I would cut,
and also just to take a lot of anger out on myself.
I used to do a lot of things to try to hide my scars,
but since I've been through therapeutic programs and stuff, I've learned that it's just a part of my life I have to accept.
They almost tell a story about me and my life.
Each one tells a different story, and it's kind of like a book or a tally of every experience that I've had.
Everything is a lesson that I've learned.
I feel that kind of show how it's kind of an individual part of me.
I was born actually with 12 fingers, and you can see that I have, I got them.
There's two scars on my pinkies where I got them surgically removed when I was 12.
I was among the older campers at the age of 12, and there were some kids who were up on the hill,
heading toward these cliffs that they weren't supposed to be, and that was like a forbidden area.
I pitched myself off the cliff and fell 45 feet and landed on some rocks down below.
My ankles were actually at my head. It was totally mangled.
And I actually remember waking up in the car after we were hit, and Jeff was over here.
We were lying the cars over, and Jeff was lying over here, and he reached for me,
and he tried to grab my arm to hold my hand, and the pain was unbelievable.
I am Amy Missalcone, and I was in a car accident with a drunk driver when I was 24.
But raising my three kids and being married to a man who was in the car with me,
this is a reminder how lucky I am every day that I didn't die.
Pretty lucky. Lucky that it worked.
I got my scar from a heart transplant because my heart wasn't working well
when I was two years old, so I needed to get a new one.
You know, it's mainly just the little kids going,
oh, how come you have marker on your face?
So, you know, just really cute things like that.
Well, obviously I was born with it.
I don't know, it's just something that's become a part of me.
I know that a lot of people, there's a lot of problems with birthmarks.
I mean, a lot of people are insecure about them,
and there's always an issue of getting them removed,
but for me, it's something that's never really bothered me a lot.
It's funny that we're here because it was literally right over there
when it happened, and basically it was during soccer practice,
and it was menlo soccer, and I just started playing for them,
so I was playing pretty much every day, and I think that's what triggered it,
but essentially what happened is I tore my Achilles tendon,
and so I was like right over there, I remember,
I was like running this direction,
and all of a sudden it felt like someone had come up behind me
and kicked me right there, and I just went down immediately,
and I grabbed my leg, and it hurt pretty bad.
I mean, it felt like someone had kicked me really, really hard.
It just put a whole different spin on how I look at the world.
When I was in this knee scooter, I had a cast,
and I would have to have my mom drive me everywhere,
and I would have to have people open doors for me,
and people would have to move out of the way,
and I would just get really, really frustrated with people all the time,
and it was just like, I got really angry, not myself,
but just like, why did this happen to me?
Why did I have to be the one to be put through this?
It was my senior year, and I was really happy with all my friends and everything.
I was just really, really frustrated with myself and the world,
and I'm not a particularly religious person,
but if I had a God, I would be very, very frustrated with that,
you know, with God, and why they would do this to me,
and so initially, when I got my scars,
this is just a reminder of how difficult that series of events was,
and how hard my life was to come,
but now it's kind of like, it's not a reminder of suffering as much as it is,
just a reminder of like, it's something that happened,
and it's something that's definitely a part of me,
and it changed my lifestyle.
I look at exercise and nutrition and things like that very differently.
It was, I mean, not that I could do flour a year,
but other than meeting my wife,
it's the thing that most affected me in making me who I am today.
Yeah, it's weird, but I'd say even more so than my parents.
It was a fundamental shift in who I was.
I was out of school for a year,
physically not going to school because of all the operations
and physical therapy that were required,
so we're perfectly back together again.
But the good news in that was I wasn't much of a student prior to this.
I was very active and kind of sports-oriented in mind.
It wasn't all that great academically,
but having been out of school for that year,
I had a tutor because I was in bed or many beds, hospital beds,
at home or in the hospital,
and I had a tutor that instructed me,
and in the process of that actually came back,
and I ultimately came back to school a year later.
I was strong academically.
I had a combination of the tutoring
and then frankly not being able to do much.
I was still in either a wheelchair or leg braces or a cane for another year.
I was physically unable to do anything,
so not what I used to do about anything else.
I was recovering.
My family, so I was the first one in my family to go to college on either side.
More of my family members to this day, including cousins and nephews and everything,
have gone to jail.
They had to go to college.
They were just not an academic, not even a middle class sort of upbringing.
I was really transformed by this,
which got me to academics, which ultimately got me to Stanford,
and that was another truly transformative part of my life.
So it fully informs who I am.
When I became more comfortable with who I was
and wanted to start living my life as I truly felt I should be authentic and real,
it was at that time where I felt that as my story was unfolding
and I was getting these tattoos is that I wanted it to be more reflective of who I am
and have people kind of maybe get an idea of who I am by what they saw on me.
Oh, these are two of my favorites.
These two M's right here in the stars.
They represent my cat and my dog Max and Mila.
Like you can see here, like this one says,
live in my life like it's golden.
This was a moment where I was sitting, praying,
I was kind of sitting at the gym with my hands folded,
contemplating what was going on,
and I remember listening to this song and that came on,
so I kind of did that one.
The tattoo that probably means the most to me is the one that's on my clavicle
that represents a time where I accepted my condition of becoming an HIV positive man.
When I first was diagnosed, I was told that basically I'm going to go through a process
of the death of my old self and the birth of my new self.
And what that really triggered for me at that time was I put my actual birth date
in Roman numerals and Roman language on this side
and I put the date of my HIV diagnosis on the other side.
So it's kind of like my true birth date and the date that I was diagnosed.
I often find that people say, oh, how many tattoos do you have?
And I've probably been to the tattoo artist probably over 25 or 30 times,
but I still tell people I have one tattoo and it's one entire story
that they're not individual from one another.
So I have no regrets over any tattoo I got.
I realize it's important not to be regretful for things that have happened
because they all formed like who we are.
My tattoo has definitely been part of my journey as an artist
because I sort of got the tattoo before the whole Brooklyn nickname
arise from the fans.
Mainly the fans saw the tattoo and started calling me Brooklyn
and then I realized this is sort of a character that I created.
So my family and friends all call me Layla,
but everybody, when I'm in the music world, it's Brooklyn
and the tattoo sort of sparks the beginning of that.
So it's very much a part of me as an artist.
I sort of want to maintain this larger-than-life sense about my band
and I'm all about bringing back that huge epic sense of rock and roll
where it's more than just music, where it's a lifestyle, where it's a character.
And I think that by having two different names for myself,
I can really divide it and become that larger-than-life character
that I try to be with my band.
It's definitely essential to my outer identity
because I've just been so used to having it.
I don't really remember not having it.
So I wore this actually during the day and then I didn't sleep in it.
Yeah, I think I do still have it in this.
It's like fitting into a wedding dress, right?
Let's see if it really crink it.
So yeah, that's why I'm used to it being tighter normally
because I don't have someone else put it on,
but yeah, that's what I used to have to wear.
It's very nice and straight.
I've never put makeup or considered removing it
because I kind of like how it's kind of cool.
The two most significant injuries,
which is where the scars are, are my femur broke.
It's called a culminated fracture,
which means that the bone separates like that, but it's inside.
And so that required a rod to be put inside the bone
to keep it put it back together.
And that's the hardest bone to break,
because it's your biggest bone.
And the injury that was the hardest to treat was my forearm.
One year later, almost to the day,
definitely I got married.
And it was, you know, a hot day in August,
and yet I had long sleeves,
because I didn't want to expose this scar.
And I made sure that every time I got my hair cut,
I still had, you know, bangs to cover up my forehead.
And that, when I talk about that now,
it sounds funny to talk about,
because I probably feel differently now.
So the accident was the first time that Amy had to deal with
what I thought was real adversity in life.
And her response to the accident was so much filled with
strength and toughness and persistence and courage
that I got to see a sight of her,
but even though I dated her for four years, I'd never really seen before
in the same way.
And it gave me tremendous admiration for a whole set of qualities
that had been unknown about her.
And as at that point, even though I hadn't told her that,
I concluded that I was going to ask her to marry me.
But that accident was actually a real catalyst
in many ways in my relationship.
It changed her.
It changed us.
And when you see the scars, you always think about it.
Certainly through college, I would never go out.
I would never wear shorts now, the kind of favorite shorts.
You know, it was a different time.
I would wear an ace bandage.
I would never go out with my leg unwrapped.
My wife, Jettie, we met my senior year.
It wasn't until my senior year that I got more comfortable.
And she just accepted me, you know, scar and all.
I don't know if she and I have ever talked about this,
but scar and all.
And it's like, she's the one who I remember her encouraging me,
hey, you don't need that, just go without.
I'm sure people have noticed it, are still noticed it today.
But no one's ever asked me about what happened to me.
Sometimes people will notice my scars,
and they're like, oh, where did you get that from?
And it puts me in a really awkward position,
because I don't know what to say,
because sometimes it's not socially acceptable to be like,
oh yeah, by the way, I'm a self-mutilator.
And I used to, you know, it's just like not, it's not right.
I mean, they're part of me, they're part of my body,
I don't regret anything that I do, I don't regret doing them,
they're just, they're like, it's like a tattoo almost.
It's like you get a tattoo and it's something meaningful
and I feel like they have a lot of meaning behind them.
Not necessarily saying that I am proud of being,
I'm proud of like, why I did them,
or what's behind why I did them, but now that they're there,
it's just something that I have to own now.
Wait, no, this isn't me, this is you.
This is the newspaper that I was in when I got my heart transplant.
In the past, Peter Hansen, age two recovers after a heart transplant.
Peter Hansen is one of the three children to recover.
Wait, I don't know what that says.
Received.
Received a heart transplant in 36 hour predi-
period at Stanford Children's Hospital.
Well, I think I feel a little weird because I don't,
I don't see how you could live with no heart.
Well, I feel kind of amazed because I couldn't believe that it actually worked.
I never knew it was possible.
When I see my scars, I feel nostalgic.
Sometimes I laugh, sometimes I kind of cry a little bit inside,
not outside, but I don't hurt anymore.
But it just kind of reminds me of how I got them.
And so I just sort of start to, puts me into a mood of just remembering things.
I use my scars actually in my practice as a psychologist.
So I use them for people.
I work with people who have pretty traumatic loss, really traumatic loss,
loss of children, loss of spouses, loss of parents.
And when I talk about grief, I talk about how, you know, there's times when we're really sad,
and that's like when you skin your knee or when you, you know,
trip over something and it hurts and you might have a black and blue mark.
But then there are times when you experience pain and it is profound and traumatic,
and it leaves a scar.
And that's, and I always point to my arm and I talk about, I don't talk about this story,
you know, that was a profound hurt and a profound wound.
And that will always leave a scar.
So my arm will never look the same.
It'll never function the same because of that injury.
And that's kind of what grief is like.
I mean, my most severe scar is my back surgery.
And I was in the fifth grade, it didn't really scar, you know, scar me that much.
Like losing my brother, like I don't have a scar of that.
So like that's a scar that I feel for my, you know, in my own self,
but it isn't reflected on my body.
I completely, I mean, my brother's my best friend.
I love my little brother, but my older brother was my second half
and I didn't really realize that until he was gone.
In a way, there's physical scars all around me.
I mean, there's pictures of him, you know, there are his rooms right across the hall from mine.
I was at Penn this past weekend visiting his friends.
I mean, I mean, it's happy and sad things at the same time.
You know, when I see a picture of him, I'm happy because I loved him
and he was, you know, a wonderful person,
but at the same time I'm sad because he was gone.
So I don't know if there's necessarily a physical scar on me,
but there's definitely physical scars all around me.
And I mean, I don't know.
I've never really thought about it if, you know, I would need something on my body
to look at and be like, oh, that's right, my brother's dead.
Or, oh yeah, I had to go through that.
But I think, I don't know, I think that there's enough to remind me around me
that I wouldn't need something to look down on my body or feel, you know,
I already feel like it's a part of me that I wouldn't need it to literally be a part of me.
I've blocked out a lot of things in my life that I don't want to remember.
So I believe that for me to always remember things that are important to me,
it's become a significant part of who I am.
But I would say for anybody, like, never regret anything that happens to you,
whether or not it's anything emotional or physical.
So like, let's say you're born with like a giant birthmark on the side of your face,
don't regret it because it's part of you and it makes you who you are, so, yeah.
It's just a part of me now and I'm used to it.
It's sort of like that uniqueness, I guess.
And if I lost that, I guess I'd just have a scar there
and it would kind of just be sad, sort of like, oh, this is what I used to be,
sort of, I used to have a birthmark.
I don't know, it's just that uniqueness about it.
I definitely feel like a total, like, I can take on the world with this scar and people are like,
wow, that's so cool.
And a lot of people actually say, I want that scar.
I'm like, no, you really don't.
Well, I don't really remember.
I don't really think about it that much.
And then as an adult and as a 20-something, 30-something on the ball throughout,
I just kind of received another thing, a problem of maturity, frankly.
I mean, chickstick scars.
Your body will always heal and your emotions, the things you go through,
you might not always get over, you might not always heal from.
Like, what if that had to happen?
I would still be, like, running around like I did before,
like, I don't know, just treating myself very differently.
I'm living my life, I still have what's ever in front of me,
so I can't say that I'm done because something significant could happen
that will trigger me to get another tattoo.
So I might think that I'm done, but deep down I know I'm not done.
So I go forward with these, literally written on my body.
