Beauty from the Pile of Broken Pieces
- journeysgriefcoach
- Aug 8
- 2 min read
Life can be seen in a multitude of visual representations… a tapestry, with each thread placed creating a beautiful picture. Some see life as a road with stops along the way noting significant mile markers of their lived experience. Some see life as a rollercoaster, a marathon, or sometimes a maze to conquer. I have come to see life as a mosaic, a compilation of pieces of my life that come together to create a picture of who I am.
The reason I like this representation is partly because I believe each experience holds a force to mold and shape us. I also am fond of this because a mosaic can be broken, and some experiences break us. Death can be one of those experiences… it has been for me.
My first experience with catastrophic loss was the death of my husband. The moment he took his last breath, I felt my life shatter, the pieces of my life that formed my life story fell to the ground in hundreds of broken pieces. I remember looking at myself in the mirror a few hours after his death and not recognizing myself. I said out loud, “I am a widow.” I felt completely ungrounded. The pieces of my life that formed my mosaic, defining my personhood were in a pile on the ground in sharp and disfigured shapes. I was undone. The light that once shined on my life was dimmed, and the pile of the remnants of my vibrant life were now in shadowed hues.
I became acquainted with grief and learned the importance of mourning. Grief and mourning are not the same… grief is all we feel on the inside while mourning is what we do on the outside to process and interact with grief. As I learned how to mourn, I built a “toolbox” I could utilize when a part of my grief was ready to be dealt with. Each of those broken pieces of my life needed to be mourned. Through my mourning, I spent time examining, evaluating, deciding what place each broken piece had in my new mosaic. Some took places that weren’t close to their placement in my original mosaic, and some pieces no longer had a place in the rebuilt artwork of my life. And I discovered that was OK.
I have been a griever for over 8 years, and there are still broken pieces that make themselves known through a painful stick in my being. It is a long process to examine each broken piece of a life shattered by death, in fact in never really ends. But I have found I am better equipped to nurse those painful wounds inflicted from a hidden shard. The newly unearthed broken pieces find their place among the brand-new tiles and the resituated broken ones or are placed aside if they don’t fit.
I am proud of my new mosaic… the broken pieces joined with new parts added from continuing to live after loss. I am wholly aware this mosaic is just as fragile as the original… and it is a picture I never imagined. It has proven to be quite beautiful… beauty from the pile of broken pieces.
Becky What you have written is so True..for me its been 9 years and still there are broken remnants that raise to the surface buried deep ..sort of like a deep inbedded splinter . I acknowledge it grieve and work through it ......love you..and Blessings on helping others go through the grieving Process..
I appreciate your honesty and the distinction between grief & mourning.