Sometimes, starting fresh means wiping the slate clean—and that’s exactly what Kayla Stewart chose to do.
The 28-year-old from California went viral in July after sharing a TikTok revealing her body post-tattoo removal. Over four years, Stewart had 30 tattoos taken off her arms, marking a deeply personal transformation.
Her removal journey began in May 2021, just months after she had added 22 new tattoos to the 11 she already had. Stewart tells PEOPLE that many of those additions happened during the pandemic, when she started seeing a man she met in Venice. He was a line artist exploring tattooing as a new medium.
“He was also in recovery from addiction — but not long after we met, he relapsed. I didn’t really know how to navigate that situation,” Stewart recalls. “I just wanted to help, but I didn’t have any experience with addiction, and I’d never been around it before.”
Looking back, she says she now recognizes how “vulnerable” she was and how easily she was “taken advantage of” during that time. “He’d do anything to practice, and I became the person he practiced on,” she explains. “It’s hard to describe the mental and physical toll that took.”
For Stewart, the tattoos came to represent trauma—something she felt trapped carrying on her body. The decision to remove them became a powerful part of her healing. “Emotionally, I feel free and liberated now that they’re gone,” she says. “I truly felt like I was walking around with scars—mainly on my arms, which were hard to hide unless I wore long sleeves. And I did—almost every day—for my own sanity and to protect them from the sun.”
Stewart tells PEOPLE the aftermath of each tattoo removal session was grueling. “The week after each session was the most brutal,” she says. Her advice for others going through a similar process: maintain a healthy diet, exercise regularly, and limit alcohol intake. The lymphatic system plays a crucial role in flushing ink particles from the body.
Now that her tattoos are gone, Stewart says she’s “blown away” by the results—and has no plans to revisit ink again. “I will absolutely never get tattoos again,” she says firmly.
As part of her emotional recovery, Stewart also went through eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy (EMDR), specifically targeting the sound of a tattoo machine. “I definitely had an aversion to tattoos in general for about two years,” she says. “But thanks to the therapy I’ve been fortunate to do, I can now appreciate and love them—for other people, just not for me.”
As for the public’s response to her story, Stewart says the support has been overwhelming. “Everyone’s been incredibly supportive and understanding,” she says. And perhaps most meaningfully, her story has become a source of inspiration. “It’s nice to know it’s given other people hope.”
