Black and purple tattoo of an awareness ribbon with the words Stay Strong and Breathe On, placed on the side of the ribs.

Purple ribbon with Stay Strong script on ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A purple awareness ribbon is outlined in black with loose, sketchy strokes, and the words Stay Strong and Breathe On are written across it in black script lettering. Small letters reading AATG sit at the top of the ribbon, and swirling black lines extend outward from the ribbon's loops. The purple shading is applied unevenly over the black linework, and the photograph is taken straight on against a plain, lightly lit background.

Lettering Ribs Awareness ribbon Ribbon Script Stay strong Swirl Lettering

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit, sit, the barrier will not lift until the clerk finishes his tea, so you have time for it. You want the story of the ribbon. Everyone on this side has heard it, but they always tell it wrong, putting the soldiers in the wrong place.

Keep reading

Long ago there was a seamstress called Teodora who lived in the last house before the bridge. Her husband Anton hauled salt up from the pans, and the salt got into his chest the way damp gets into a wall. Every morning she sewed a strip of violet silk and stitched two lines across it in her best hand, Stay Strong and Breathe On, and beneath them the letters of the carter who brought her thread, A.A.T.G., because he had never once asked to be paid. Anton tied it at his collar when he walked the long road to the coast.

The swirls were her own idea. She said the ribbon had to look like wind, because wind was the only thing that crossed that bridge without a stamp. One winter the road closed and he did not come back on the day he promised. Teodora walked down to the water each evening with a lantern and held it up so the river would know which way was home.

When the thaw opened the crossing, a guard found the silk folded in Anton's coat and asked what it was for. The old salt-man had kept breathing for eleven more years, and that was all the guard needed to hear. He let the ribbon through unopened, the way you let a good breath out. Now stamp your papers, and mind the step, which is still slippery with that same river.