The funny thing about facial reconstruction is that it doesn’t just rebuild your face.
It forces you to rebuild everything around it.
Your self-image.
Your routines.
Your relationships.
Your sense of identity.
For me, recovery hasn’t been just a series of surgeries—it’s been a slow, nonlinear redesign of the life I want to live inside this new version of myself.
Healing in Phases
Facial reconstruction isn’t a one-and-done process. It happens in layers.
One surgery, then another.
Tissue expansion. Skin grafting. Bone work. Detours. Setbacks. More waiting.
And each time, you think:
Maybe this one will make me feel like me again.
But there is no single turning point.
No day you wake up and feel complete.
So instead of chasing some final version of myself, I started asking:
What kind of life do I want to build with the version I have right now?
Iterating on Identity
In many ways, recovery has felt a lot like design work.
Messy sketches. Multiple drafts. Testing things that don’t quite work. Reworking them.
It’s not about getting back to “normal”—it’s about creating something intentional in its place.
There are parts of me I’ve chosen to preserve.
Parts I’ve had to let go of.
And parts I’m still discovering for the first time.
Some days, that feels empowering.
Other days, it feels like grief.
But the longer I sit with it, the more I realize: I get to decide what stays, what changes, and what comes next.
The Power of Redesign
When you lose something as central as your face, the instinct is to try to recreate what you had before.
But what if that’s not the goal?
What if the goal is to build something that fits not who you were, but who you are becoming?
That’s how I’ve started to see reconstruction—not just physically, but in every area of life.
I’m not rebuilding for the past.
I’m designing for the future.
And honestly, I like the woman I’m becoming.
