Journey Through Grief
In 2018, with support from a grant through the Staunton Farm Foundation, local art as healing practitioner, Kiyomi Knox, invited community members to attend four broken bowl workshops as a way to approach the topics of grief, loss, and trauma.
Their pieces were then photographed and displayed in an exhibit held at Center of Life in Hazelwood for Mental Health Awareness Month along with poetry and paintings from other community artists.
We, as a society, often tell people that, "It's ok to not be ok." Just as often, though, we will quickly push people to feeling better because we are uncomfortable with their feelings. This is in contrast to allowing space to really acknowledge the experience with the full spectrum of feelings it may offer.
Through the Japanese process of kintsugi, participants were able to spend some time giving space to those feelings and experiences. In our workshops, we spent time discussing grief and acknowledging that it isn't something we "get over" but instead is something we learn to live with. We also spend time giving honor to our bodies, represented by the bowls, for carrying us through these hardships. We then give opportunity for people to break their bowls, representing the trauma and/or loss. We discuss that once we go through these losses, we can’t look like and be exactly who we were before. The bowl gives us an opportunity to process this as well as make something new.
Sometimes we find that there will be pieces that will never fit back into the places they were before, and that it’s ok to let these go. We will also find that sometimes right when we think we have everything back together, it all falls apart again. And that’s how healing works sometimes. Grief comes and goes like waves. Rebuilding the bowl gives us the opportunity to give intentional space to grieve with all the feelings it brings and process it in a physical and visual way.
