What a week. I listened in shock at the chaos, damage and injury happening in our nation’s capitol. After 911 and 2020, I thought I’d seen the worst. I was so wrong.
Living through such a crazy, scary, turbulent year, I feel so many feelings. Sad. Mad. Confused. Afraid. Alone. Frustrated. Isolated and silenced behind a mask. Watching and waiting for it to all be over, only to see more difficulty and damage all around me.
New Year. New Word.
Many things seem to have broken this year. I had several pieces broken while on display outside my studio. Some were minor. But some were major damage and so overwhelmed me, I had to put them on a shelf, on their sides, where they lay ‘dead’ for many weeks. I didn’t know if I’d be able to repair them and sell them. Or if they’d always be scarred and damaged.
I was feeling the same, so I looked to find a way, a word to help me move step by step into a new year. I know I can’t fix a pandemic, the violence and destruction in my city’s downtown or our nation’s capitol. I didn’t even think I could fix my own damaged art pieces.
I searched for the opposite of all the words that described this year: damaged, broken, sad, isolated. From those came one word: Heal.
Working to heal.
So this week, I walked in my studio and faced my broken birds and leaf. I let myself breathe out my anger and fear. Then I gently took down one piece, looked at the damage and got out some tools.
One by one, I looked and touched and sighed. I assessed the damage. I sanded and cleaned gently. I glued what I could and waited. When there was nothing left to glue, I gently sanded some more. I mixed paint to match each chipped and broken bird and dabbed and wiped and waited some more. If the color held, I glazed and waited overnight.
In the light, after days of work, I saw no cracks. Beaks had slightly new angles. Wings chipped were now smooth. One leaf stem was gone and would never be the same, but my work had formed a piece that was whole in a new way.
Broken and reformed.
When I look around this last year at all that’s broken and all that we’ve endured, I see that we have also adapted. Of course we are changed by everything that’s happened to us and around us. So many things we could have never imagined fell apart.
The definition of the word Heal(verb): to make free from injury; to make sound or whole; to make well again; to cause (an undesirable condition) to be overcome; to patch up or correct; to restore to original purity or integrity.
In the words of William Powell, “The troubles...have not been forgotten, but they had been healed.”
So this year, I will work to mend, recover, rally, overcome and reform.
And find ways to help us all come back together to heal our hearts and our souls.
No comments:
Post a Comment