Toronto writer Kate Gies' memoir helped her learn to love her body — read an excerpt now

Toronto writer and educator Kate Gies likes to think that her memoir It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished is the book she needed growing up. 

In poignant vignettes, she recounts her experiences as a young girl born without an ear and the 14 surgeries she underwent before the age of 13 to craft the appearance of an outer ear.

"This book started as a way for me to make sense of myself and my body," she told CBC Books in an email. "The missing ear was something I carried a lot of shame about and I realized as I wrote that the shame came not from the missing ear itself, but how the world I lived in reacted to it, interpreting it as something tragic that needed to be fixed."

"Writing the book became a way to take the 'problem' of the missing ear out of my body, and push back on a society that deems facial difference as something deviant."

Gies teaches at George Brown College. Her writing has been published in The Malahat Review, The Humber Literary Review, Hobart, Minola Review and The Conium Review. She was also longlisted for the 2018 CBC Nonfiction Prize. It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished is her first book 

"Writing this book gave me a pathway to having a loving (albeit far from perfect) relationship with my body. To interrogate what was done to it, and, most importantly, to stop feeling the need to explain or apologize for it."

It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished will be released on Feb. 4, 2025. You can read an excerpt below. 

I sat on the toilet in the girls' bathroom. First day back at school and I couldn't get myself to the classroom. The bandage was itchy. I snuck my finger underneath and scraped against the skin. When I pulled it out, it smelled like old pillows and feet. The morning bell rattled through the school and I wondered if I could live within the walls of this little bathroom stall, forever hidden.

I wondered if I could live within the walls of this little bathroom stall, forever hidden.

Moments later in front of the bathroom mirror, a reflection. Blue circles hung from the eyes. Her skin was pale, almost see-through. Dark blond hair sprouted like dirty fountain water from the top of the white mess of bandage wrapped around her head like a boxing helmet. I said to her, "You're ugly." She mouthed it back. I turned on the tap and stuck my hands in the sink. The water ran cold, then warm, then hot. The burn soothed me. My fingers became puffy and red.

Outside my eighth-grade homeroom, my stomach squeezed and released like a greasy sponge. I moved toward the classroom door and heard muffled sounds through layers of bandage: the drone of the teacher making announcements, chair squeaks, students murmuring. I pinched and twisted the skin on my forearm until pink flowers bloomed.

Gotta go in now. It felt impossible, and yet my hands pushed on the classroom door. I entered into a world of desks and eyes. Mostly eyes, peeled and greedy. My footsteps smashed hollow echoes through the hush. I slumped into my seat and focused on the beige speckled floor. When I looked up, no one met my gaze or looked in my direction except to steal glances at the thing on my head when they thought I didn't notice. Then I caught eyes with Jason. The smartest boy in the class. The one with the wheat hair. I tried a small smile. He shook his head, and his lips moved in a series of small directions. A word mouthed to me. "Freak."

***

It didn't occur to me until many years later that most of my classmates had likely never seen a kid bandaged up like me. I'd had a whole life of seeing child bodies cut and wrapped, appendages missing, parts displaced. It didn't occur to me that perhaps the disgust my classmates directed at me was tangled fear at the realization that things could happen to the bodies of kids, that things could happen to their own bodies. That none of us could ever be truly safe.

It didn't occur to me that perhaps the disgust my classmates directed at me was tangled fear at the realization that things could happen to the bodies of kids, that things could happen to their own bodies.

***

My bladder screamed as I raced through the crowds in the darkened street, searching for a bathroom. I went up side streets and down alleyways until, finally, I saw a door labelled "Women." It opened with a groan. Inside were rows of toilets with no stalls. My feet sank into an inch of yellow-brown water that sheeted the entire floor. I swished through the soiled swamp to find a toilet, but all of them were smeared black. I was losing time. Then I felt it: warmth on my inner thighs.

I woke to myself wetting the bed. The warmth cooled quickly and my underwear stuck to my skin like a slug. I jumped up and ran to the bathroom, the sting of urine meeting wind on my legs.

"Kate, is that you?" I heard my mom ask from her bedroom.

"Yep."

"Did it happen again?"

"Yep."

"Okay. Do you need any help?"

"Nope."

In the bathroom, I stripped off my nightie, peeled away the underwear, and sat on the toilet. The plastic seat squeaked as I adjusted my body. I closed my eyes and took in the smell of urine on skin. It was the smell of Brussels sprouts, rusty chains, rotting fruit. It was the smell of garbage.

Years later, a writing teacher will say she doesn't think it's a good idea for me to write about the months I intermittently wet the bed when I was 13. "People will think you had some deep emotional issues," she'll say.

***

One lunch hour, while still bandaged, I slipped around to the side of the school near the kindergarten area to avoid my classmates, who were doing their best to avoid me, too. A worm was drying on the concrete border that separated the school from the yard. I picked it up. It tried to burrow itself into the lines and folds of my hand, its body gluey and awkward. I felt a tug on my coat and looked down to see a boy, no older than four.

"You gonna eat that?" he asked.

"Ew, no!" I said, and dropped the worm into the grass.

"Does it hurt?"

"Does what hurt?"

He pointed a short finger at my bandaged head.

"Not really."

"Looks like it hurts. Why are you wearing that?"

I shrugged.

"Were you in a car wreck?"

"No."

"A bad haircut?"

"No."

"Then why?"

"I don't know, to make me normal, I guess."

"Well, you don't look normal."

This struck me as funny. All of these surgeries to make me normal were making me anything but.

"No," I said, giggling. "I'm not normal."

Excerpted from It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished by Kate Gies. Copyright © 2025 by Kate Gies. Shared with permission of Simon & Schuster Canada, Inc. All Rights Reserved.