This sculpture is called “Melancholy”and was created by Albert György and it is on display in Geneva, Switzerland.

This piece of art is so powerful, I honestly don’t need to write anything.
But, I will…because this is a blog and blogs are for words and words help me heal.

I think this sculpture gives us a beautiful and painful visual of what grief actually feels like. This is what I feel like. I feel like there is a gigantic hole inside of me where there once was a full and complete person. At Christian’s service, I spoke about our wedding vows and how we talk about “two becoming one”. We were married 17 years and it wasn’t until his death that I fully understood what that meant. I feel like half of me is missing without him.

But, here is the real message or idea I want to get to - I am grieving, I am sad…but I am not broken.

Our society has so many terms that we use that allude to the idea that we are “broken”. We say things like “I am broken,” “I am heartbroken,” “this has shattered me,” etc… We may FEEL this way (I often feel this way) but the TRUTH is, we are never broken. We are really really sad or mad or grief stricken or depressed, but never broken.

What I’ve come to discover is that when I use a term like “broken” or “shattered” or “crumble”, it makes me feel weak and afraid. I don’t want to break. I don’t want to live with the idea that I could break. These terms make us fearful of our feelings and fearful of fully feeling our feelings. (whew - that’s a mouthful!) They also make us feel like we need to be fixed, like something is wrong with us. Nothing is wrong with us - we are just sad.

So I stand in the firm belief that I am not broken and I don’t need to be fixed…I am sadder than I’ve ever been, I am grieving the loss of my best friend, and I have a hole inside of me where he once was BUT I am not broken. I will survive. You will survive whatever you are going through. We don’t need to be afraid of these hard feelings, they won’t break us - if we let them, they will make us stronger and more beautiful. Scars make us beautiful.