What do you make of your visible difference?

A child being born with a strawberry mark aka haemangioma or vascular tumour is often a big concern for parents. Already before the child can talk or walk there’s anxiety rising about what effect this will have on the child and how others will treat them. Most will look for options to get them medically removed to prevent stigma and prejudice. ??

I had a couple on my head, as well as another type of vascular malformation commonly called a port-wine stain down my face and neck, which again never bothered me or others as I was growing up. I didn't notice them and no one I knew had them so I felt pretty special and it was magical having the strawberry marks as one was raised and shaped like a real strawberry! ??

My parents/family didn't show or talk about them as anything I should be worried about so I never picked up any anxiety from them about them either. I think this helped me to accept them as something special rather than something I should be ashamed about and need to remove. ??

Normally common haemangiomas are innocent and innocuous, they don’t harm us. However, at age 11 I became very ill with a very rare and well-hidden haemangioma which had been seated in my face since birth and decided to severely haemorrhage. This meant I had to spend months in hospital laid down, so to avoid soreness surgeons took the ones off the back of my head during one of my early lifesaving operations. ??

I was a little disappointed that they had to be removed but I didn’t miss them once they were gone.

As for the large area of the skin on my face-coloured purple/blue aka a port-wine stain, I decided to have laser treatment in my teens when I was old enough to understand the procedure and able to give informed consent for it to be done. Once it had healed and as time has gone by the mark has faded considerably but is conspicuous when I'm ill or doing vigorous exercise, spend too much time in the sun/heat, or I spend too much time bent over and blood rushes to my face/head.

I hope this helps others to cope with having a visible difference or caring for someone who has. If you have a story to tell about how you or someone you cared for have coped with having a visible difference, I would love to share your experience on my new show Resilience Reef. Schedule your free 20-minute call to find out more?https://lnkd.in/gw9QdZYD?or pm me ?? ??

Karen is an advanced practitioner, specialising in mental health and behavioural change for over 20 years and uses a combination of Hypnosis, Mindfulness, CBT, NLP & health coaching in her work. Interested in finding out more https://www.hypnotherapy.training/hypnotherapy-NLP-&-coaching