Bex Hall

Exploring Creativity

Bex Hall > choose your scar

choose your scar

The thing that’s not really an object

But I see it every day

Photo: Rodrigo Capuski via Getty Images
Mercedes logo shaped scar from liver transplant surgery.

October 22, 2014

As I was being wheeled into surgery for a liver transplant, the surgeon asked me what kind of scar I wanted. Confused, I asked him to clarify. He said he can make the incision in one of two ways. It was my choice. I could either have a Mercedes or a Lexus logo on my abdomen. I could choose my scar.

That’s positive thinking right there. That’s saying this wound will heal. And it did. It took some time. In fact, for many weeks, a small portion refused to mend. It became red and inflamed. I had to keep it clean and care for it to avoid infection. Turned out a stitch hadn’t dissolved properly and, like a burr under a saddle, it rankled and caused pain. Wouldn’t mend.

After the errant stitch disappeared, the wound fully healed. There’s no physical pain now, just a semblance of a Mercedes logo—a three-pointed star I see when I look in the mirror.

This is the 36th story in the Objects as Waypoints Writing Project series.

Photo: Rodrigo Capuski via Getty Images

Ask these questions to gag your inner critic

New perspectives open creative flow

1987. I lovingly created a handmade present for my husband. Calligraphy with dip pen and India ink. Placed in a brushed nickel oval frame. I don’t remember the quote, but it had the contraction for ‘I have’ in it. He pointed out how I misspelled ‘I’ve’ because I forgot to add the ‘e’.

The embarrassment and mortification I felt at such a simple oversight has stayed with me. It added to the mistaken belief that everything I create must be perfect.

And that’s nothing but a load of manure.

This is something I’ve struggled with. The inner critic.

The 100 Day Project asks us this week to consider the voice or feeling that arises and tries to kill creativity. When it really gets my attention, what is it saying?

Think of all the negative things you tell yourself and that’s what I hear too. I’ve read it’s important to picture your inner critic, (IC), as some kind of demon. To put a face or shape to it.  I’ve heard that creative blocks are nothing but resistance. Procrastination isn’t laziness, it’s fear. Or avoiding creative work may be caused by anxiety.

A bunch of labels and an equal amount of solutions: a course, a workshop, vision exercises. 

Yet here we are, still fighting with the IC. I dug deeper this morning and asked WHY? WHY does the IC even exist?

Those things I mentioned earlier—fear, resistance, anxiety, sure, yes, of course. That’s part of it, but where did these emotions originate?

The answer may be trauma. Past trauma. That’s the concept I’m considering right now.

Wouldn’t it be utterly fantastic if we could snap our fingers and every past horrible, no good, awful event or circumstance we ever experienced simply disappeared?

That’s sorcery and not going to happen.

So what do we do instead? We apply salve to an open wound, slap a band-aid on it and hope for healing.

What if instead we processed that grief? Acknowledged it? 

Would that help silence the inner critic?

Who am I?

I asked the question this morning you see in the photo. “Who am I if I’m not the person I’ve been in a habit of being?”

After some thought, I find I don’t know the answer.

I’ve been in the habit of accepting who I am as the way it is and the way it will always be. No room for change. No room for living without the ache of the pain from the past. I’ve become comfortable with this habit. I’ve let the IC dominate nearly every creative thing I attempt.

My reactions to the IC have been to shut down, ignore, block, hide, and avoid all creativity.

What if there’s a better way to deal? New ways to react? Healthier habits to choose and practice?

What if we ask different questions and dig deeper?

Endless cycle

Last I checked, no one is holding a gun to my head demanding I beat myself up for past mistakes. My family nor my friends benefit from my self-punishment. 

So I ask this question, in a different way: “Who am I if I’m not actively engaged in dancing with my past pain?”

Who am I, part 2?

The answer I came up with:

I’m a freer, spirited being. Lighter than air, able to write all the words and paint all the pictures. I’m a person being who I’m meant to be. I’m a person, being.

I rather like that answer.

I am

P.S. In the first version of the question I painted, I misspelled the ‘I’ve’ by leaving off the ‘e’. When I noticed the mistake half an hour later, I laughed out loud. Then went back and added the ‘e’ with a flourish and a smile.

P.P.S. I do not claim to know the answers. This is all a big experiment. But when some thing, some idea floats to the surface and it offers some encouragement, maybe a new way to look at things, then in the spirit of it reaching someone who might need it, I share this with the hope it lands where it’s needed.

Second chances and the power of kindness

How one message helped save my life

Don’t ever give up - the power of kindness

In 2014, I found a message at just the right moment and it helped save my life.

This is an essay about second chances and the power of kindness. Also an excerpt from a book I’m writing called “Choose Your Scar; Grow From There: A Memoir”

I don’t have much time left to live, if you want to call my existence living.

Months have passed on the waiting lists at Cleveland Clinic and the University of Kentucky, waiting for a match for a new liver. Mine is nearly dead.

There have been two possibilities so far. Two phone calls. Two times we scrambled and raced only to be turned away. One liver wasn’t viable and I don’t remember the reason for the second rejection.

But I do remember the five hour, middle of the night drive home from Cleveland, the floor of my side of the car a damp white cloud of wadded tissues.

Frequent visits to the clinic are mandatory to determine rank on the waiting list based on many factors like lab results from blood work. Every trip sucks life from my unsteady body.

I am ready to stop it all. The endless needle pokes. The blood transfusions; I’ve had 67 so far. The thin, backless gowns. The constant struggle to be warm. The not knowing.

In the restroom at the clinic I stare in the mirror.

My skin is a weird yellow from the jaundice, my face gaunt. Through eyes now bloodshot I see wispy hair combed over to hide bald patches on a dry scalp. I have never looked uglier.

As tears fall I say out loud, “This must be how it ends for me, this is it,” to the stranger who stares back.

I am never going to get the call. There will never be a match. My hope is gone.

I lean over and splash water on my face. When I open my eyes I see it. A rock. Right there on the sink. A rock where no rock should be. It’s painted blue and has white cut-out letters attached to its surface. My mind takes a minute for the words to register.

Don’t ever give up.

Time comes to a standstill. Who left this here? No one else is in the restroom. I pick it up. There are no words written on the back. I look around and see no other rocks. I stare at it in the palm of my hand.

Don’t ever give up.

Even though my brain is foggy, I grasp the magnitude of this magic. This divine providence. The message is not lost on me. The timing impeccable. Somewhere deep within my unreliable body, a dam explodes and every cell floods with warmth. A tingle of hope goosebumps my flesh.

I stash the newfound treasure in my jacket pocket and walk with a lighter step back to the waiting room.

To this day I have no idea who took the time to put a message on a rock then leave it in a restroom at the University of Kentucky Transplant Center.

But I’ve kept this rock as a reminder of a stranger’s kindness and how it nudged me toward the path to keep living. A simple but powerful reminder that good things will happen. And they did. I received a liver transplant later that year.

I never gave up.

I keep this rock in sight in my studio

A few years after my surgery I read about a woman in Massachusetts, Megan Murphy, who wrote inspirational messages on rocks and anonymously placed them here and there in her community for people to find.

She spoke about how one message at just the right moment can change someone’s entire day, outlook, life.

Yes. Yes, it can.

I joined The Kindness Rocks Project™️ as a way to give back, but really, the act of creating art on rocks gave back to me. Gave me back the spark to create. I began thinking of others instead of focusing on my troubles. I was still healing and actually, I still am.

It’s been almost seven years now, and even though the skin on my abdomen has rebuilt, the scar reminds me I’m still a work in progress. Slowly weaving myself back together. Just like my body didn’t give up on itself, I’m not giving up on me either.

From The Kindness Rocks Project website
Image from The Kindness Rocks Project website