Healing metaphors

One of the things I learned in medical school that struck me to the core was the difference between healing and regeneration. Regeneration is when your body returns seamlessly to its preinjury state. By just looking at someone you can't tell anything happened. A bit of skin scraped off your knee will regenerate. But scar formation is another matter. Scars are a new tissue formed when injury is too substantial for regeneration. Another fact: scars require constant energy and nutrients to be maintained. This explains why Vitamin C deficiency causes old wounds to open up. At sea without fresh food the wounds of sailors would open up and terrify the afflicted as well as those who watched. It must have seemed a judgement from on high--a living hell revisiting all old wounds at once.

The images here are about healing, how we might think about creating something new to fill in an injured place. They are about making do and celebrating what is. They are about what Rumi says in his poem, Childhood Friends:
"Don't turn your head. Keep looking
at the bandaged place. That's were
the light enters you."