Don't you think it's our scars that connect us?

On audio books, Hota Kotb, words that matter & my take on both internal and external scars.

I used to spend a lot of time in the car. And I used that time to listen to audiobooks. I’d consume them at fierce speed, listening at 1.5x and getting super invested in the stories. My favorite books to listen to are those read by the author, preferably a public figure that I already know/know of, and are memoirs or letters to themselves, lessons or stories or moments that changed them.

Some of my favorites have included (in no particular order):

• Life Will Be the Death of Me - Chelsea Handler

• I’m Fine... and Other Lies - Whitney Cummings

• Love Warrior - Glennon Doyle

• Forward - Abby Wambach

• Dear Girls - Ali Wong

• Natural Disaster - Ginger Zee

• We’re Going to Need More Wine - Gabrielle Union

• Love that Story - Jonathan Van Ness

• The Daddy Diaries - Andy Cohen

• The Rural Diaries - Hilarie Burton

• Going There - Katie Couric

Now, based on the last 13 months, I’ve spent very, very minimal time in the car, and nearly none of that has been on my own. So I haven’t really done audio books much, and to be honest, I haven’t really read much either.

This season, I am choosing to change that. I’ve traded out scrolling for diamond art, I’ve downloaded new books to my kindle app, and even on short car trips I’ve been listening to Hoda Kotb’s book “I Really Needed This Today.”

I was wondering if it was going to be a book that I could listen to while in motion, or if I’d want to stop every three minutes to capture a quote or write something down, like I did with Love Warrior and The Rural Diaries. So far, I’ve found it’s about 50/50.

One thing I did stop for was to write down was this quote:

“Don’t you think it’s our scars that connect us?”

Hoda was talking about how both the visual scars painting a map on our skin and the internal scars we’ve tried to sew back up inside mean that we have healed and grown stronger.

Now, I love Hoda. I relate to her in a kindred spirit sort of way, even though nearly nothing about our stories are the same. I look up to her, for the way she’s lived her life out loud, the way she’s narrated both wins and losses, and the seemingly genuine face she shares with the world when she absolutely doesn’t have to.

I feel the same way about Katie Couric. Her autobiography moved me to tears more than once - the warmth in her voice describing the hardest and most brave moments of her life felt personal, like we were sitting in together over a cup of coffee, reminiscing and connecting on how we’d gotten to where we were today.

But back to scars.

In the last 2 years, I’ve had 4 semi urgent/emergent surgeries - each leaving a set of scars behind. One on my lower back. Eight on my torso between my chest and my pelvis, and three on and around my left knee. I trace over them often when I’m laying in bed, thinking about the unconscious version of myself on the operating table, having something fixed, removed or replaced, and I feel a type of vulnerability that’s hard to describe. The ones I hate the most are the ones I wish I didn’t have to have… and I also know that in the next few months, I’ll be adding a few more to that same area on my torso - scars that I’d do anything to avoid having to obtain.

Then I think about the emotional scarring, and in a literal fashion, I wonder about emotional scar tissue.

I rub vitamin E oil or lotion into the ACL reconstruction scars on my knee to try to help with the stiffness and the healing, but I can’t do that to the scars in the middle of my heart.

I can drink tea or warm beverages, I can read and write and listen to things that feel safe and soothing, but that scar tissue will always in one way or another be there.

This season, I’ve done a tremendous amount of trauma processing work.

It wasn’t something I wanted to do, or anything I was jumping for joy over, but… it was 100% necessary for my survival.

During this process, I’ve felt so many emotional scars raise, scars that were hidden behind layers of dust and dirt and grime and newer, more painful memories, but they are scars that never fully healed nonetheless. The tissue around them is raw. The pain from them sometimes still hurt like new. And now I’ve been tasked with the challenge of really feeling those things. Of processing them. Of sitting with them, as if they have just happened, and discovering in todays context what they mean or meant to me.

The goal? Finding a way to release them. To rub proverbial vitamin E on them. To feel what I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, at the time they were formed, and to allow adult Amanda to connect with, admit to, name and feel those feelings. All of them.

It’s painful.

It’s far less than ideal.

It’s also the only choice I’ve got.

The problem is that “simply” feeling and releasing them doesn’t magically make the memories or the pain disappear. They still at times feel triggering, full of grief or stinging tears or causing me to pull away or put up walls. They still initiate my depression in a way that I haven’t yet been able to overcome.

And that - that’s the part that scares me.

That was one of the things (on a long list of many) that led me to the deepest darkest place I’ve ever been after we lost Rowan. It’s one of the reasons specifically that I sought out ketamine therapy.

It’s something I’ve been working on, noticing, being aware of, and tracking observations about - but this feeling, this “no other choice” need to be strong enough over and over and over again when the trauma and the grief and the loss and the change has happened INSIDE of your body - it feels cruel.

It feels harmful.

It feels like I’m in search for a new phrase or word entirely.

I can’t change my belief system until a new one comes along that offers me something more real, more alive, and more palpable to hold on to.

So how do I navigate the present moment then?

I’m asking.

How do I manage feeling depressed due to the cards I’ve been dealt and the way they’ve overstretched my tolerance, my pain, my patience, and my dreams, all while putting on a presentable, brave face, and going out into the world (or turning on my camera for zoom)?

I don’t have the answer for this yet. But I swear, it’s the number one most important thing I’m working towards in this moment in time.