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Tattoos

 Tattoos

I have over twenty-five tattoos. Which sounds impressive until you remember that in the 80s and early 90's, tattoos weren’t trendy accessories. They weren’t tiny infinity symbols behind your ear or your Grandma’s dainty rose on her ankle. Back then, tattoos were… a statement.

My first one was thirty-five years ago. I went to a place I knew nothing about, told no one, and came home four hours later unable to move my arm. It felt like a swarm of bees was throwing a rave on my skin, and I thought: Weird. I love this.

I chose my Irish family coat of arms. At eighteen, nothing felt more important than my last name, my heritage, my story. (Now? I’d probably pick a coffee cup. Growth looks different at different ages.)

I came home reeking of rubbing alcohol, with a bandage the size of a beach towel on my skinny arm. My parents reacted in stereo: one in shock, the other in tears. Not exactly the triumphant reveal I had imagined. Still, I knew: this was the start. My skin would be my canvas, my map, my scrapbook.

My secret: I hid my tattoos for almost three decades. Long sleeves in the summer. Buttoned-up shirts even on casual walks. Not because I was ashamed of them, but because I thought I had to be Mr. Rogers in public- respectable, cardigan-level clean. Tattoos, I believed, made me look like trouble. Or worse: human.

It makes me sad to think about now- all those years sweating through August just so no one could see who I really was.

Back then, tattoos meant “less than.” Now? Everyone has one. I’ve seen grandmas with butterflies, grandpas with Bible verses, soccer moms with half-sleeves. Tattoos went from “You’re a rebel” to “You’re in line at Starbucks.”

These days, I don’t hide them anymore. At the beach, on walks with my kids- I let them show. I look at my arms and see my life written out in ink: my children, Erin, the reminders I needed when I was falling apart, the prayers I didn’t know how to say out loud.

The truth? 

Tattoos are just one way of telling the world your story. Some people write theirs on their skin. Some whisper it in therapy. Some carry it silently in their bodies. But all of us are tattooed- ink or no ink. We are marked by love and loss, by choices and chances, by what we’ve survived.

To me, the question isn’t whether you’re carrying your story. 

You are. 

The question is whether you’re brave enough to let it show.


"You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ… written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts."

- 2 Corinthians 3:2–3 


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