THIS LABEL MAKES ME SQUIRM

7 Replies

Posted by Mike Foster:

Confession: For a long time I didn’t want to post this photo.

Was it that these two words strip away all the political correctness and fake piousness?

Was it the words “Fuck Up?” The cutting? The blood? Actually, it was none of that obvious stuff that made me uncomfortable.

This photo made me squirm and look away because it revealed a brutally honest expression of a label…a label that too many of us believe about ourselves.

In all it’s blatant rawness it represents a bitter truth that you and I struggle with. A label that myself and too many of my friends have accepted about who we are.

No matter what we do and no matter how hard we try, grace never seems to cover what we have carved into our souls.

And that is why I want to look away. The photo hits too close to home.

But I also believe if we bravely share our stories together, we can all discover the liberation of who we truly really are. And that we are not alone. And that these nasty little labels lie.

We need to be reminded together that we are passionately loved and accepted. We don’t have to prove anything or defend ourselves anymore. For what we did or didn’t do. We are who we are…we are a glorious and unashamed second chance in the making.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE OTHER LABELS LIE PHOTOS.


  • http://twitter.com/Vichanes Vicki Hanes

    Difficult and painful and messy.  But that defines life on this side sometimes.  Just in case anyone is wondering, even “good girls” the ones who have remained chaste, are polite, have never been drunk nor high, look in the mirror and say the exact same thing.  Often the only time our language gets “impolite” is when we talk to ourselves about ourselves.

  • Violetstar4ever

    POWERFUL!!!

  • http://twitter.com/tamaracorine Tamara Taylor

    When I was a teenager, I once carved ‘fuck up’ onto my stomach with a razor blade.
    This image hits home.

    But, it also reminds me that there is hope. I have ‘love’ tattooed on my left forearm now – a place that once bore the crudely carved word ‘loser’.

  • http://www.mohan37.com/ mohan37

    sometimes the things we’d never admit to saying out loud are exactly the things we secretly say to ourselves.

  • Ingrid

    Dang. So powerful.

  • http://www.facebook.com/gccave Gloria Cave

    I’m thankful you said that because so many times I compare my stories to such as these and look at it as less because the population I want to work with once I graduate with my social work degree has been to hell and back in half my lifetime and have known every possible label and  violation possible. I, by myself, cannot identify with these victims (of human trafficking), but my heart is for them and my anger burns for their cause. But my only label has been the goody two shoes, the quiet one. Probably the most painful label I ever felt was “invisible”. I still tell myself to suck it up when I read such powerful stories as this, but I am thankful for your post.

  • http://twitter.com/AshleyASmith ash

     Tamara, thank you for being so courageous. Your story is beautiful.