Slowly, with those things, the sharp edges of it wore down.

The scars did not vanish, exactly.

They simply stopped being open wounds, and became, over time, something calmer and even, in an odd way, precious: proof of survival.

Evidence, on my own body, of a thing I lived through and walked out of.

I do not hide them, and I do not dwell on them.

They are simply part of the record now, of a life that has balanced its accounts.

I want to add one thing, for any woman reading this who is still in the middle of her own hard season, because I would have needed to hear it, and no one told me.