Scar Cover-Up Tattoos That Helped People Make Peace With The Past

Most people get tattoos because they’re trendy and cool. Others do it because they want to make some sort of social or political statement. But there are some that get tattoos over their scars. Sometimes it’s to to cover them up, but sometimes it’s to highlight and enhance their scars.

Just take a look at these folks who got tattoos to deal with their trauma, scars and bad memories and reclaim their power.

Masking The Pain

Rachel fell from a trampoline at gym practice in high school during her sophomore year. She underwent eight months of surgery to remove scar tissue and dead muscle that “had distorted my forearm.” The scars on her arm were “unsightly and ugly.” But at 18, Rachel got an eastern bluebird tattoo to turn her scar into something pretty.

A Flower At A Time

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Lindsay felt like her “body didn’t belong to me” after her grandpa sexually abused her. She started cutting her ribs, breasts, and thighs. Eventually, she stopped and got a tattoo of a blooming peony on her sternum and ribs, and in the process took “my body back, one flower at a time.”

The Meaning Of Strength

Holly had two titanium rods on both sides of her spine and two-thirds of her vertebrate fused into a large bone. She ended up with 2-½-foot scar down the middle of her back. So she got the word “strength” tattooed next to her scar. “The “S”

is a tracing of my actually spine from an X-ray before my surgery,” which took courage to recover.

From The Ashes

Reddit user Jessplays got the watercolor Phoenix by Kurt Jacobsen at Perfection Dermagraphics in Des Plaines, IL to cover the forearm scars from self-harm. The scars were nearly 14 years old and Jess wanted “to cover it with a tattoo for half my life.” After years of debating, Jess finally did it and is “so happy!”