I let the bandages from my six-hour surgery stay on longer than I should have. Days passed. More than a week. Through showers, trips to the store, and walks around the neighborhood, the flimsy, dull white strips were barely hanging on.

Nine months earlier, I had been diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer. I was shown scans of tumors along my chest wall and told that the disease had spread to my lymph nodes. I spent months drunk with nausea from chemotherapy. My hair melted from my scalp, my nails blackened, my skin dulled, and my mouth filled with sores. After all of that, now I had to face what was underneath these bandages?

I took a breath. After a light tug and a snap of the tape, I saw it. What was once a pillowy, 36D mound on my right side was now only skin lying in the folds of my rib cage. I felt like my waning vanity and the torn pieces of my womanhood lay within those creases of folded skin. I spent days quietly mourning the loss—no more cute, fitted blouses or V-neck shirts. No more me.

On top of that, I also had eyebrows and lashes that didn’t fully grow back in, thinning hair on the top of my head, and permanent scars on my sides and chest from the invasive port and drains. I felt like a pile of shattered shards sitting over in a lonely corner with no value and no purpose. The tears fell and I lamented, “This is all that remains.”

Being in a community of breast cancer survivors, thrivers, and fighters, I hear stories. Funny ones. Inspiring ones. Made-for-TV-movie ones. I would hear heart-breaking ones about women who faced the door of cancer and sadly succumbed to the fight. Their families gutted, children heartbroken, and friends lost. Then it hit me: How dare I despise the scars of a battle I won?

There is a Japanese tradition called Kintsugi which is the art of taking broken pieces of pottery and putting them back together using gold. Instead of glue or cement, this fine metal is melted down and used to fill in the cracks, restoring an object back to wholeness. It is built on the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections you can create something even stronger and more beautiful. Breakage and repair are simply parts of the history of an object instead of something to despise. So, a broken plate or a shattered teacup is not discarded. It is put back together with dignity. Those golden veins that line it tell the story of how it overcame being a shattered mess to become a thing of beauty.

It reminds me that I should not despise the aftermath of my journey. I may bear scars, but I should embrace them. I had gotten caught up in the loss and not realized the gain, the beauty from ashes. These days, I am taking the time to reflect—and even rejoice—in all that remains. I still have value and beauty. As a matter of fact, I am even more of an original.

On the five-year anniversary of my breast surgery, my 16-year-old daughter came into my bedroom and laid her head on my chest. Before I knew it, she was weeping. I asked her what was wrong. She lifted her head and I saw that her face was wet but she was smiling. “I am happy, mama,” she said. “I am so grateful that you are still here.”

I survived Stage III breast cancer and have a multitude of physical and mental scars, but LOOK at all that remains: my strength, my health, and my joy.