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"Do you think Marianne Williamson has had cosmetic surgery?” I asked my anesthesiologist, right before the lights went out.
The next thing I knew, a nurse who looked about twelve was pouring me into the car. I didn’t feel good, but I knew I’d feel worse if I saw myself in a mirror.
Thank God Herb has a poker face—because mine looked like I’d been hit by a truck.
When I told my Pilates students I’d be off for a month, they assumed hip surgery. I almost let them believe it. Admitting the truth felt… less noble.
Monica, my yogi-like aesthetician, balked when I confessed during my last facial. “My God, Tina! Why? You don’t need it. We’re all going to die anyway. And whatever you do, don’t let them touch your lips!”
They touched my lips.
By day four, I looked less like a woman on a spiritual path and more like a blowfish who’d lost a bar fight. Swollen from fat transfers, crusty from the CO₂ laser—the color of a burnt toad.
Her words echoed: 'We’re all going to die anyway.'
I wanted to float above it all, serene and enlightened. Instead, I obsessed over ice packs, arnica, and whether I’d ever sip from a straw again.
But slowly, things shifted.
A bruise faded. A crust fell away. The swelling eased enough for me to glimpse a stranger who looked vaguely like me.
And with each tiny change, I felt both foolish and grateful: foolish for thinking I could bypass the messiness of healing, and grateful for the reminder that transformation — cosmetic or spiritual — rarely feels great while it’s happening.
Maybe being “evolved” isn’t about pretending we’re above vanity, but about giving ourselves compassion when we look like a burnt toad—and trusting that beauty, inside or out, is evolutionary.
I promise to write a blog with pictures and all the details, but not now, while I'm still in this messy middle.
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