Coming to terms with looking different

I can’t find the mental image I hold of myself in the mirror.

House of Mirrors at the Garden of Unearthly Delights, Adelaide

An audio version of this post (by me) is available below:

Last year, I had a baby and cancer at the same time, and turned 40. Now, when I look in the mirror, I think, “Who the fuck is that?” I keep waiting for my previous appearance to return… but I’m beginning to accept that it probably won’t. That this is what I look like now. It’s raised some complicated questions around appearance and identity that I’m still figuring out.

A raised eyebrow (not that you’d know)

I lost a lot of hair thanks to chemotherapy and classic postnatal shedding. (Yep, the official word is ‘shedding’ – *shudder*.) I now have about an inch of regrowth that sticks up like I’ve been electrocuted. It’s gray. I’ve been wearing thick headbands to keep it down. Not as a style choice so much as a necessity, so I don’t look like a mad clown. I was growing out my gray before I got sick anyway – I like gray hair – but this regrowth is all kinds of mad colours and textures. Still, at least it is growing back. My eyebrows, on the other hand, are a different story.

My mum used to call them my “Elizabeth Taylor eyebrows”. They were big, bold, badass and I was proud of them. Does that sound shallow? I don’t care. They were a proper feature – something I was known for. Now they’re falling out. What’s left is wispy, thin, and sad. My eyelashes are going too.

Remember how, in school, someone would occasionally slink in with one eyebrow, the other having been shaved off during a sleepover? It changed their whole face. That’s what I feel like – as if someone shaved both of mine off while I slept (and also drew a penis on my forehead with permanent marker, obvs).

I’m also heavier than I was before 2024. Some of it’s postpartum weight and some of it’s still swelling post-surgery to remove my tumour and reverse my stoma. I haven’t been able to exercise properly and likely won’t be physically “right” again for years – if ever. One thing’s definitely permanent, though: my scars. I have five across my abdomen. One, where the stoma was, is especially large; it looks like a gunshot wound.

The scars I don’t mind. The rest I’m struggling with. Not so much because I don’t like the way I look, but because – to me – I look different.

Reflections

We all carry a mental image of ourselves. Whether or not it’s accurate doesn’t matter. It’s why certain photos feel more “us” than others. I know what I used to look like. I carry that image around. But I can’t find it in the mirror anymore. I don’t know how much of my disquiet around that is about vanity and how much is about identity.

Someone asked, after I got the all-clear, if I was angry with my body. NO! I bellowed. I am fucking delighted with my body. It kept my baby alive while trying to fight a tumour the size of a grapefruit. It funnelled all the good stuff to Billy, (that’s the name of my baby, not my tumour – he was called Dennis) for as long as it possibly could, forcing me to sleep for about six months, until it could do no more. Only then did I go into labour – only after Billy was safe did my body collapse completely and whimper, “What the hell is happening? Over to you.”

I’m not religious, but what our bodies do – how they fight and heal – is a miracle. There’s no other word for it. I feel that in my bones.

I want to adore my body. It did all that, it’s half my mum, half my dad – both now passed – and it made Billy, who is my heart. He is my entire heart. So, how can I look in the mirror and feel unsure about what I see? How can I be grateful and yet disappointed at the same time? And how do I navigate that contradiction with grace?

Reinvention

These changes are mostly ones that I had little control over, so I’ve decided to wrest back some control. To take action. To bring back some of what made me look like me – and to either accept or accentuate what’s different.

I’m going to get my eyebrows microbladed back in. (That means getting them semi-permanently tattooed, by the way. I’m just hoping that I don’t come out looking pure Bert from Sesame Street.) I’m keeping the gray hair. I like the colours and I’ll live with the chaotic regrowth while I wait to see what it becomes.

I’m getting more tattoos. Not just because I want them, but because I see it as reclaiming my skin. I want to mark my skin in ways that I choose rather than by medical necessity. I want to honour the parts of me branded by cancer through art.

I’m also finally booking physio (I know! Why haven’t I done this before? Honestly, it’s down to a weird deep dark sense that I don’t ‘deserve’ some stuff, that it’s ‘not for me’ – which will definitely be the subject of another post soon). And I’m looking into fitness classes and some alternative medicines to top up the medical medicines (you know what I mean) tailored for someone in my situation.

I can’t keep waiting to wake up and see my old face and body again and I can’t keep punishing myself for feeling strange about the new one.

Just One More Thing

It’s not vanity to want to look and feel good. It’s not shallow to want to recognise yourself in the mirror. Especially when your body has changed in ways beyond your control. I don’t have all of the answers – I’m figuring this out in real time – but if you’re standing in front of your reflection and not recognising the person looking back at you, for whatever reason… you’re absolutely not alone.

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*Exceedingly modest reminder that I have written eight bestselling mental-health books which have been translated into dozens of languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.