‘Trauma Doesn’t Always Have to be Ugly. It Can be Beautiful. Decorative’: Tattoos as a Form of Power and Healing

By Mariama Wurie

People always have so much to say. ‘You know those will never go away?’ ‘You’re going to hate those when you’re older.’ ‘I can’t believe you’d get something that lasts forever…’

I hope my tattoos do last forever. They were hella expensive and they unlocked a part of me that I thought I’d never hold again. They made me love myself and feel beautiful. They helped me find the person that I was after losing the essence I once had. Tattoo is not a revolutionary art; it’s been around for thousands of years. But they started my revolution.

I got my first tattoo on a warm summer day. I had thought about it before but never really knew what I wanted and thus didn’t think a tattoo was worth the ‘commitment’. That day, however, I just woke up and knew. I had been staring at a simple line drawing of a woman built of flora, eyeing every detail, impressed by the way a line drawing is created: one single stroke without lifting the pen.

Long COVID. Anxiety. Depression. Childhood trauma. Life had caught up with me and for the first time, I was too tired to outrun its bad parts. I always got piercings as a marker of a life challenge: nose piercing instead of quitting university; nipple piercing instead of staying in a failing relationship; septum instead of letting a racist win. The pain reminded me that just because something hurts now, doesn’t mean it will forever. The stain that trauma leaves doesn’t always have to be ugly. It can be beautiful. Decorative. A work of art.

So that day, instead of getting a piercing, I decided to finally get that line drawing. One brush stroke that would always find its ending, to confirm that the pain in my life was not here for long. I found a Black tattoo artist in a Black studio and went on my own to do the single most life-changing act of my late 20s. And oddly enough, what I felt during that first session wasn’t pain (it didn’t hurt that much) or regret (the experience was so affirming; I will never forget listening to old school R&B and feeling tender, careful hands trace lines of ink into the back of my calf). What I did feel was air. For the first time in a long time, I felt myself breathe.

I didn’t realise that for the last six months, I had been holding my breath. Waiting for the next bad thing to happen. Tensing my body to withstand the impact of that unknown challenge, hoping that I would end up on my feet. But in that moment, I was breathing, filling my lungs with fresh air and emptying out months of despair. Breathing out the kid in me that would have never done this and ‘broken the rules’. Breathing out the girl that was so mad and angry at the world that she didn’t know how to go on.

This time, I had traded a tattoo for wanting to leave. If a tattoo was going to stay on me forever, then maybe I would stay too. My tattoo gave me hope again. A small sliver that means so much in a dark world that is devoid of anything. She became something I wanted to take care of. Aftercare. Moisturiser. Checking in to make sure she wasn’t infected. And the care didn’t stop when she healed.

The same thing happened with my second tattoo, and third, fourth and so on. The breathing. The after care. The only difference: I wasn’t going for new tattoos anymore because my life was falling apart (though it still was). I was going because I wanted markers of my life coming together. Naked women around the fire to mark the happiness of Brussels with my best friend. A mushroom man to remind me of the best dog-sitting gig of my life. A matching tattoo with my sister to etch the fact that she’ll always love me into my soft skin.

All are reminders of life. That I am still here. For the first time in years, I can look in the mirror and see my body as a powerhouse, something that is fully my own, that it is not a connection of individual parts marked by the anger of a parent’s hand. Neither the fear of a man holding me down nor the tearing of surgical equipment stealing a piece that will never return.

My body is whole. She is here. She is me.

I own her. And no one else can change that.