Because of her extensive scars from a gas explosion 15 years ago, Andrea Grant was told by her doctors that she wouldn’t be able to carry a baby past 4 months. However, now she’s a mom to a 4-year-old daughter Jada, and is now pregnant with a baby boy. Now at 37 weeks, Grant plans on carrying her second child to term, reports Madame Noire.
Though she kept herself covered during her first pregnancy, this time, Grant found the courage to bare her scars in an amazing maternity photo shoot.
“I learned to love myself unconditionally, because I am a queen”
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The photos are beautiful, perfectly capturing how Grant is just glowing with happiness and pride. Since she posted the photos on social media a week ago, they’ve gone viral, racking over 25,000 likes on Facebook and over 20,000 on Instagram.
“I really didn’t think that was the response that was going to happen, but I’m honored,” she told Action News Jax.
On the next page: how Grant got her scars and how she found confidence afterwards.
On August 14, 2001, Grant, then 8, and her brother, then 11, came home from school to a house smelling like gas. “My brother and I smelled gas, yet at that age didn’t understand what to do,” she writes in her profile in the Burn Survivor Resource Community. “We just proceeded with our regular routine.”
Once they turned on the light in the kitchen, the kitchen and the living room instantly blew up. Thankfully, the explosion knocked down a wall that allowed Grant and her brother to escape. Though they survived, they didn’t walk away unscathed. In fact, far from it. 80% of Grant’s body was covered in second and third degree burns (TW: graphic content).
“Life is worth living with scars”
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The siblings were airlifted to Texas, and after painful months of surgery and rehabilitation, they survived and flourished. “With God and her strong mother, Andrea has blossomed to a beautiful young lady with confidence you wouldn’t believe,” reads Grant’s profile on Beyond Scars, an organization she founded to encourage young burn survivors. As she captioned one photo, “Life is worth living with scars.”
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