This is Jennifer('s friend)

I came across this story in a paper by Jennifer Armstrong, an art therapist at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, in Exhibition Brochure for Ted Meyers. I've raved about Ted Meyers' work before, but if you haven't seen it, go to www.tedmeyers.com .


"I once met a woman who had a faint, half-inch-long scar on her temple, the actual result of an unmemorable childhood accident. But early on her young memory had stepped in to create a story to make sense of the mark on her face, and she had believed for virtually her entire childhood and even young adulthood that the scar was the result of a construction crane falling on her head. When she was confronted as an adult by the quite logical argument that such a catastrophic event couldn’t be reconciled with the size and location of the scar, she asked her mother and found out that the scar-producing injury occurred when she was a toddler, when she tripped and fell on a toy. In a moment, the history of her life was significantly revised. Yet the psychological impact of the scar had a lasting effect: this person grew up with the internal sense that she was a survivor of great fortitude and luck, able to recover from the crushing impact of a crane. As an adult, her internalized identity as a survivor enabled her to go through two potentially catastrophic health crises, and recover with an almost unheard of rapidity and vigor."