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In & Out Again: An Implant tale

Embracing your mistakes for the growth & lessons that they’ve brought you along the way.

 

Time to get something off of my chest- pun intended. I’m ready to bare it all.


But, before we jump into this together, let me state two things as a mini disclaimer:


Firstly, before anyone who has breast implants gets their knickers in a knot, let me clarify that if you have breast implants and you love them - I’m so ridiculously happy for you!! Truly and seriously, I am!! I one hundred percent believe that you should do that makes YOU feel incredible and makes you feel fully aligned with yourself. Your journey is yours alone and I have nothing but respect for everyones individual paths. That being said, it just so happens that the thing that I was trying to fix by getting implants was not my cup size… it was something much, much deeper and it took me a lot of inner work to discover that truth. Now that this journey has come full circle for me, it feels aligned to share the lesson that I learned along the way.


Secondly, the awkward fact is that entire sixteen years that I had breast implants, I never publicly acknowledged that I had them. You know what’s so bizarre though? I always felt some strange outer pressure to acknowledge the surgery. Why?! Who feels the need to talk about something so private?! Maybe, it was all the whispering that I heard went on behind my back. No… not maybe… that was definitely it. As a self proclaimed goody-goody and truly honest-by-nature gal, it gave me such an odd feeling… like I was carrying about a burdensome and deceitful lie by not shouting from the roof tops: “Yes, you nosey goobers, I got breast implants!” My hands were tied. As an extremely modest and private person by nature, the last thing I was going to do was talk about my breasts with anyone who wasn’t in my inner circle.


Now, fast forward a solid sixteen years (ek!) and here we are making a complete 180:


I am talking openly for the very first time about my experience with breast implants.


Why now? Why not never? Because to put it simply, I never desired to speak about my ordeal before nor did I have any real reason to.


As it is however, the personal narrative around my implant tale has changed. As I sit and reflect on the journey, now nearly a year to the day from my explant surgery, I can see it all so differently. I no longer feel shame or embarrassment around my decisions. Conversely, I now feel so much power around the whole journey, holding compassion and acceptance for all the personal growth that the experiences I had having them implanted, explanted and all of the years in-between.


Turns out, the older I get, the less I care about wearing masks for the world, and carrying the burden of upholding others’ expectations or opinions.


Insert a deep sigh of relief here.


More notably, the older I get the more I understand and embrace the truth of what a brief whisper our time here on this planet is. I don’t intend to waste another moment of my time hiding or not being my true myself.


I desire deeply to show up authentically and un-filtered in every aspect of my life to help others know that they aren’t alone in their struggles, and help normalize the beautifully imperfect mess of being alive. I can’t help anyone learn from my journey from the grave. So why not bare it all before I’m nothing but bones & dust?


From that warm place of centered alignment, I desire to be raw and honest about my experience. Sharing my journey, the demons that I slayed along the way, and speaking honestly about the entire experience is now something that I desire to do from a place of love... love for myself, love for others walking a similar path, and love for women fighting the same monsters.


Also, there is hope. Hope that in sharing my story, I can keep an incredible young girl, like my own daughter for instance, from having to subject herself to the physical risk that I did just to learn the same exact lesson. That being said, I’d be an idiot not to share my journey.


So, to start, let’s clear up the old rumors.


Yes, I had breast implants! *fake shocked faces and gasps all around*.


Ready for the real kicker?


I hated those implants every second of every day from the moment I got them until I finally had them removed. It was terrible. I could list all of the reasons why I hated them, but it would take me a really long time. Another blog post perhaps...


Constant physical discomfort aside, I was shocked and utterly crestfallen to discover immediately after surgery that they didn’t make me feel more perfect; they actually heightened my insecurities, dramatically increased my anxiety, and made me feel less attractive because I was no longer comfortable in my own skin.


I felt like an alien in my own body and it was absolute torture.


Ironic isn’t it?


For those of you who might have noticed that I turned the title of this blog post about breast implants into a Hobbit reference… you’d think that in my nerdy core, I would have known better. Unfortunately, the perfection-driven twenty year old baby version of me thought that bigger boobs were the answer to achieving happiness by appeasing the monster within.


Now allow me to introduce you to the demon that haunted me for far too long: perfection.


From an early age, perfectionism was something that I used to pride myself on. “I’m such a perfectionist!” I would tout, grinning from ear-to-ear as I turned in brilliant work. Unfortunately, that label that I’d so strongly attached to myself to not only hurt me for many years, but also much deeper and for much longer than I realized.


Naturally, as I was approaching marriage at the fresh baby age of twenty, I kept check on how “perfect” every detail of my life stacked up.


Perfect tan- you betcha.

Man of my dreams- check.

Graduating with honors- of course.

Job at my dream career place fresh out of college- fo sho!

Perfect wedding venue- absolutely.


Then I just needed the perfect dress and then I found it!


However, as I tried on my wedding dress that fateful morning, something happened that would both haunt and define me for years to come.


The woman at the shop began intrusively making comments about my body. I remember standing there in my wedding dress, in what should have been a beautiful moment, and having those happy feelings ripped from my young, giddy hands. I was left standing in front of the mirror feeling defeated and pathetic because this sales associate (a grown woman mind you) jabbered on.. and on… and on, y’all … about how tiny my chest was. She concluded that I should, “alter the top- take it in a great deal AND wear special lingerie to try to fill-in the top… at least a fraction. Then maybe get some inserts too to help fake a womanly figure and not look so childish….”


Adult Carrie would have had words with this woman, let me tell you… but young Carrie was too fragile and dependent on outer approval to do anything but meekly surrender to the disapproval.


I remember all the joy being stripped away from that iconic moment I my life and standing there feeling like I was simply not enough. Like I wasn’t attractive enough… I wasn’t ‘womanly’ enough… I wasn’t perfect enough…like something about me was less than ideal... and that made me less than happy.


If I didn’t look like a woman, did I even deserve to get married to such an incredible man? I wondered.


Simply put, my inner demon/trauma was triggered as fuck and I immediately began sourcing ways to turn this “failure” into a piece of perfection. Because as I saw it then, if I wasn’t perfect, then what was the point in being at all?


Note: It has taken me years of therapy, and quite a bit of inner work with incredible coaches to begin to understand where my trauma came from, how deeply that trauma affected me, and how it resulted in my endless quest for perfection. (Then of course, most importantly, how to begin to heal it!)



My heart breaks so deeply for that girl who thought that perfection was everything. I have so much compassion for her now. Perfection, in all its illusion and bullshit, was the demon that haunted me for far too long. I digress…


So, I did the only thing a true perfectionist would do. I set out to “solve the problem” and underwent an elective, invasive surgery at the tender young age of twenty to do it.


Fast forward four months later: post implant surgery.


I knew immediately that I’d made a tremendous mistake. Unfortunately for me, it wasn’t the kind of mistake you could go back to Target to return. I spent every dime I had (and didn’t have) getting those gosh darn implants.


So when I came out of that surgery and had my Ron Burgundy moment- “I immediately regret this decision.” I was royally screwed.


I spent the following fifteen years trying to constantly cover them up (a modest girl with implants is still modest) and suffering quietly as I waited to check off all the boxes that I needed to have them removed.


Firstly, I wanted to make sure I was done having children so that I could continue to breastfeed if we continued to grow our family. I was so happy to discover that I even could breastfeed my babies with the implants. I worried that having a second surgery would jeopardize that precious gift.


Secondly, and mostly, I needed to find my surgeon I knew that as desperate as I was to rid my body of the implants, I was not going to rush the process by settling for a surgeon who wasn’t meant to be mine. I’d made that mistake before (don’t even get me started) and I wasn’t going to make it a second time.


Thirdly, your girl had a lot of money save up just to toss away again on my chest again.


So I waited and waited.


Knowing with certainty that our little family was finally complete in 2019, I began my search and I came up empty handed. There were only a handful of explant surgeons at the time and none remotely near our state. Still on a mission and eager to get them out, I set up a video consultation with a doctor that I’d been recommended by a friend. If he was the right one, it was worth a flight or two. She raved about him and I excitedly hoped he was my answer. Two months later I was finally on my very long awaited, and expensive, zoom call with him. I knew within the first two minutes of our call that he was a pompous ass and that he was most definitely NOT my surgeon. I ended the most expensive twenty minutes of my life in tears and with empty hands.


My impatience and deep desire to have the implants out told me just to act anyway- my friend approved of this guy and after all, did it matter who took them out? However, something deep inside of me shouted: “STOP! Yes it matters! Trust… trust in the path waiting to unfold… the right surgeon will come… in the right time and in the right way. Trust, Carrie.”


Disappointed, yet trusting the alien feeling shouting at me inside, I set my search on the back burner and continued on living life.


What I didn’t realize at the time was that the alien feeling I heard speaking to me was in fact my intuition. I hadn’t listened to my intuition in so many years that I didn’t even recognize it for what it was.


I did have faith, however. So even as the inner voice fell silent, I continued trusting that when the time was right, God and the universe would provide me with the perfect answer to my explant prayers. And so, I waited.


I remember vividly the day that my intuition spoke to me again. Years after that terrible video consultation I was on vacation with my husband. I sat enjoying the morning by sipping coffee on the patio outside, listening to a podcast of another woman’s explant experience. When it was over, I felt/heard this big inner knowing speak to me again. “It’s time.”


I can’t explain how comforting that knowing was or happy it made me. After all of the years of silence she was back and speaking to me again… this time with good news. My eyes bubbled with warm happy tears of relief at hearing this voice again. I had no idea who the surgeon was, or where he or she would be, but I knew without a doubt that when we returned stateside, I was going to return to that illusive search and finally receive my answer. I just knew it. The excitement and peace that knowing brought me were beyond words.


The next week when we got home I excitedly, and a bit apprehensively, typed those same keywords into the search engine. Then, for the first time in a decade, I was met with the answer to my long awaited prayer. My perfect surgeon in every way and in perfect timing. The bonus gift/icing on the cake from the universe was that: he was close by in my favorite city- Charleston.


Of course there were still obstacles to overcome… when could I meet him for a consult and how much would the operation be? I silenced the worries with the confidence of my knowing: "It's time, she told me so."


Turns out, those little worries most easily worked themselves out. When I called to schedule a consult, I explained that I was from out of town but would be in the city over the course of a specific week that summer (during our family vacation). With this information in hand they graciously worked me into a little spot to be seen (that previously didn't exist). It was all … aligning.


The perfect alignment of each and every tiny piece of this story increasingly brought me more peace and joy every step of the way.


It dawned on me at some point on this journey that the more faith I had, the more I let go and simply trusted, the more things just unfolded for me… easily and effortlessly. It felt like God was rewarding me for trusting him with blind faith.


I can’t express enough how significant of a change in my life this has been- having faith, stepping back and letting God and the universe direct my path. More on that later…


Back to the consult.


I snuck out of the house one morning on our family vacation a couple of months later (still "hiding" my implants from everyone , even my own family) to meet with him for our initial consultation.


At this point I was still working on strengthening my trust muscle, so the entire time leading up to meeting this new doctor, I had to battle my ego’s worries and musings over how this one wouldn’t work out either.


Thankfully, the moment that I met him, I was relieved to feel a peaceful knowing sweep over me: it’s time AND it’s him. I’d finally been brought my surgeon and all of the small details of that experience were so divinely perfect that there was no piece of it that was not by design. It was magically beautiful.


During our first meeting, he asked me why I wanted my implants removed. I told him without hesitation that from the moment I got them, I knew instantly that I’d made a tremendous mistake. He confided in me that there are only two types of women in his experience who get their implants removed: the ones like me who immediately regret their choice, and the ones who suffer negative physical reactions to the foreign objects in their body. I absolutely wasn’t alone. Knowing that brought me comfort.


The final nervous moment was when I was handed the estimate. It had been so many years since my initial surgery, I knew prices had gone up. I also knew what the other guy had quoted me (years prior) so I prayed I could afford it. I nervously looked down at the paper and y’all - it was HALF of what I’d been quoted the first time from the pompous jerk.


Sprinkles on top of the icing on the cake. THANK YOU UNIVERSE!



I booked the earliest date that he had available.



My beautiful mother & me at dinner the night before my surgery. I was nervous AF and not a good date that night - I"m so sorry mom!

Six months later, my sweet angel of a mother and I returned to Charleston for my explant surgery.


I braced for the worst.


After my implant surgery, my body had been in so much excruciating pain that I couldn’t get out of bed for two weeks. I am not exaggerating. When I finally did get out of bed I was on so much medication to control the pain it was unreal. It was absolutely terrible.

Last known photo of me with the implants still INSIDE of my body. I bought a beautiful bag in a yolo "what if I die" moment. I returned it two weeks later.

The explant surgery I was preparing to undergo was technically more invasive… I also requested a mini-lift after all my breastfeeding and here I was years older.


I truly braced for the worst and was met by absolute grace with the best.






I didn’t even need to take a Tylenol afterwards- what kind of beautiful witchcraft is that?



Welcome to could nine: God and the universe brought me the perfect surgeon, in perfect time, well within my budget and that my explant surgery had gone beautifully.

Two weeks later, I was on a call with my coach.


“I wish I’d never done it- the whole thing. Getting implants was dangerous and stupid. Look at all the money that I threw away and all of the physical trauma that I put my delicate body through- needlessly. I risked my life- twice- just to discover that a bigger cup size wasn’t what I was desperately searching for all along.” I sobbed.


Of course, I’m always the first person to kick myself. Even though my long awaited, and prayed for, surgery had gone more beautifully than I could have possibly imagined, I had to harp on the fact that “I’d failed once again” by not learning the lessons in what I deemed was “a better way.”


Thankfully, being the patient goddess that she is however, my coach responded with a simple question that flipped my perspective on the entire sixteen year experience.


“But would you have known?” She asked.


“What do you mean?” I prodded.


“If you hadn’t of had the surgery, wouldn’t you always have wondered if that was still the answer? Why can’t that be exactly what you had to go through to understand for yourself that perfection isn’t the goal- or even real.


What if this was the journey that you chose and this was the exact experience that you needed to have to discover the answer for yourself.”



I’m not sure what it is about having someone lovingly hold a mirror up to your face to show you what you’ve been missing all along that just really helps it to sink in deeply… but in that moment, I felt the shift.


I embraced the truth that the universe taught me the lessons that I needed to learn in the way that I was meant to learn them…on this planet and in this time. I could beat myself up all day for being a young naive baby who made a mistake, or I could simply embrace all of the beauty in the journey.


I’m still here. I’m healthy. I’m wiser for it. I learned how to fully love and respect my body for the incredible gift it is through the journey of self healing that I’ve been on. I was gifted the opportunity to unpack and shed the demons that haunted me for so long… burn them all to ash and birth anew. And now I have the absolute gift of sharing this journey with other women who might be contemplating a sacred-vessel altering surgery.



For those women:

If you’re considering getting breast implants, or some other sacred-vessel altering surgery, I’d advise you to first, do this: pause and reflect.


Pause:

Give yourself the space to step back from the decision to take a long, hard, deep, and loving look at yourself in the mirror and ask from a rooted place: Why?


Reflect:

Why do you want the surgery? "Because I'll look hotter" isn't deep enough... keep going. If you stop at the top layer, you haven't gone nearly far enough. Dig back on each and every single layer until you get to the core answer. Only when you fully understand your why, and can make an aligned choice from a place of absolute self-love, not from a space of darkness. Then the next move is yours and yours alone.


I hope that by sharing my journey, any woman who is facing a similar decision will have the gift of this wisdom: only make those vessel-altering decisions from a place of deep self love and respect.


If you’re attempting to “fix” or “perfect” anything from a place of lack, you’ll be gravely disappointed in the result.


A choice anchored in Darkness & Lack won’t thrive.

Heal first.

Then, if you still desire to change something and and would absolutely love yourself entirely whether you did it or not, then you’re ready to make a decision.

What is rooted in Light & Love will blossom.



xo-carrie


No longer feeling like an alien in my own vessel: Happy AF

P.S. If you're wondering, what I think about being back in my skin one year post opp- I'm over the moon.


I absolutely adore my breasts because not only are they the beautiful, perky, squishy boobies of my dreams, but for the first time in years they are MINE. And God how I love being back in my own skin again, fully, truly, 100% authentically me.


My doctor was a saint and a magician (my boobs are just one cup size smaller than they were wish those massive water bags if you can believe that. How? IDK straight magic. ). His entire staff are absolute angels and I'm happy to share his information with anyone who would like it here: Meet Dr. Crantford


P.P.S My coach/therapist/angel guide on earth is Gervase Kolmos and I am most happy to connect you with her as well through the link here: Meet Gervase




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Hello gorgeous soul & welcome!


I'm so happy that you're here. Once you catch up on the blog and snag a copy of my latest novel, be sure to connect with me on Instagram so that we can stay in touch.

xo Carrie

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