Carrying Our Battle Scars with a Swagger

Clarissa Pinkola Estes encourage women to make a 'scapecoat' that represents all the wounds, scars, insults and trauma they have endured through their life.  To somehow record all the times when they have made poor choices or felt overwhelmed and without hope. She expected women to want to destroy this symbol of so much pain and shame but she discovered that, instead, women want to keep them as 'proof of the endurance, the failures and the victories'. She hung her own scapecoat in her hallway and whenever she walked past it she found herself:

'Admiring the ovarios of the woman who could wear such a coat and still be walking foursquare, singing, creating, and wagging her tail'

 Clarissa Pinkola Estes is highlighting a choice here - to hunch over and protect our old wounds or to acknowledge them as part of our rich history and walk with a swagger.  I would ask you to add a liberal dose of compassion to either of those choices - it is important to honour our pain.