Christina Helena:  Are You Too Ugly For Love - video Dailymotion

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What's the story that your scars tell?

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00:00You have to marry me. Who's gonna love you now that you have a 13-inch scar

00:04across your body? Now before you judge him for what he said, hear me out. I was

00:1119 years old and one night I get a sharp pain in my chest. I fall to the ground

00:19and I can hear this voice.

00:24You're sick.

00:26Dying.

00:28And if you don't do something about it, you're going to die.

00:33The next day I'm in my family practitioner's office, Dr. Martin.

00:39Nothing is wrong with you, Christina. Your heart is fine. Your lungs are fine.

00:47The chest pain you have is acid reflux. Take this medication. It will help you.

00:53Dr. Martin, I still have the pain. Something is seriously wrong with me.

00:59I don't have acid reflux. My boyfriend at the time, Alessandro, had mentioned to me,

01:05Cree, baby, why haven't any of the doctors ordered a CAT scan?

01:10Call the police, Dr. Martin, because I'm not leaving your office without a CAT scan.

01:16An hour later, Dr. Martin and I are negotiating and we negotiated down to an

01:20ultrasound and an upper GI. Two days later, I'm in a hospital across town

01:26about to start the upper GI and a nurse runs in. Dr. Martin called, we need a CAT

01:33scan, Christina, immediately.

01:37Three hours later, Dr. Martin called my parents to say, Christina has pancreatic

01:46cancer and six months to live.

01:52Three weeks later, I become one of the youngest pancreatic cancer survivors in

01:58the world. I had a Whipple surgery, which entails the removal of five of my organs

02:05completely or partially. I was in the hospital for another three weeks and

02:12then I was released with a 13-inch scar across my body and I thought the hardest

02:18part was over. I was in the cutest relationship at the time with Alessandro.

02:24I mean the cutest relationship you could possibly be in at 20 years old. It was

02:29pretty difficult for him to watch me face cancer and he thought the best way

02:35of never losing me again was to get married. I'm now 20, having an identity

02:42crisis and I was like, oh no, not right now. He got upset and scared and he said,

02:55but Cree, you have to marry me. Who's gonna love you now that you have a

03:0113-inch scar across your body? Now before you judge him for what he said, hear me

03:10out because I agree with you. It's shitty. In that moment, I actually thought about

03:18it. Who is going to love me with a 13-inch scar across my body?

03:28I left. I didn't leave Alessandro because of what he said. I left Alessandro

03:35because a part of me believed what he said and that scared me. It scared me to

03:42see my responsibility and my opinion of myself. So I ran away as fast as I could

03:48from the person, the thing that showed me my true self. And here's one of the

03:53hardest truths I learned about having scars. That forgiving those who carve

03:59them holds us accountable to forgiving ourselves for believing them. And it came

04:05down to this for me. I had to take responsibility for my inner voice. Every

04:10single day I had a choice to either be constructive or destructive with my

04:16thoughts, my actions, my opinions of myself. This was all birthed out of one

04:22non-negotiable that I had. I didn't want to be the woman who thought her 13-inch

04:26scar was ugly. And even though I didn't believe it was ugly a hundred percent, I

04:31didn't believe that it wasn't a hundred percent. My 13-inch scar is the sexiest

04:38thing about me. And whatever it is that you are ashamed of, it can become the

04:42sexiest thing about you. And I'm not saying that what happened to cause this

04:47scar is sexy. Ugh, hell no. But who you become because of it? That's sexy. Your soul is sexy.

Christina Helena: Are You Too Ugly For Love

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