A friend of mine sent me a quote once that said “Hurt an artist and you will see masterpieces of what you’ve done”.
The grieving process…a heart broken. There are no ways to avoid the uncomfortable parts of your life changing, of love lost. There are no quick fixes, no work arounds. You have to feel all of it to come out on the other side.
I remember the paralyzing pain I felt in the beginning- like the hurt was never going to feel better. I laid in the fetal position- my body curled into itself, slept too little on some nights and too long on others- wondering if all the heartache was mine. I didn’t eat. I cried in Target, in the car, sitting at my desk…everything was attached to a memory. It was like I was in mourning. Grieving. It felt like a death, I never saw coming. Learning to live in the absence of that love felt impossible, like somehow I would never be myself again.
And then I took slow steps, trying to rebuild what had been broken. The plans for my life changed and it required me to try and find hopefulness in the space that it created for a new life, a new plan, and maybe even greater love. I wrote daily. For weeks I wrote letters that I never sent, journal entries that would become an unfiltered timeline of my healing, and poetry that made me thoughtfully construct my feelings into sentences that I could make sense of. I wrote and I read and I photographed everything that I was feeling. I needed to feel all of it to find some sort of light. During a time that I felt so disconnected and lost from who I am, I found joy and happiness in the moments that I was able to create something that felt good from the things that hurt so damn bad.
As artists that is what we do.. we create “masterpieces” from the things that hurt us, that shape us, that force our growth.
I created these images with Janelle over 12 months. Each shoot created in a different part of the grieving process. Our initial shoot was inspired by my own journal entries. The darkest part of the series- the initial hurt. She wore black. She grieved. She laid in the fetal position on the chilly November ground. She mourned with me.
The second - inspired by lines from Rupi Kaur, “I wonder if flowers will grow here” and Beau Taplin, “You will grow back over and over no matter how badly you have been destroyed.” It was still so raw and I was trying to accept the loss. I felt vulnerable and unsure but I wanted to feel hopeful “that flowers could grow here” despite it all.
The final piece was shot outside, in the sun, in the light. Janelle wore white and a crown and she looked strong. She looked the way I was beginning to feel.
“I survived what I thought would break me”
