Picking Up The Pieces

In September of 2019 I had a freak accident. I fell and hit my head on a large boulder. The impact knocked me out of consciousness and fractured my skull. It resulted in a Level Three concussion and internal brain bleeding. A traumatic brain injury left me broken and it took 6 months to put the pieces back together to resemble some sort of normalcy. Two years in I still have unique difficulties. There is so much we do not know about the brain and although I went to countless specialists, all they could tell me was to be patient and rest as my brain, the most important organ in the human body, my internal operating system, healed and rebuilt itself.

There are two things that do not come naturally for me: patience and rest. I am a high functioning, multi-tasking, overachieving, woman who loves caffeine and parties. My life has multiple personalities. During the day I play businesswoman in heels working in high end textile sales to the Interior Design trade. Evenings and weekends I am on the fringe as a self-expressive fiber artist and amateur performer.

When my brain was damaged, I couldn’t do shit. I could barely make a sandwich. Since the brain controls emotion and cognitive function, I was a frustrated, confused blur and continued to try to do more than I could. Not only was my head broken, but I was also emotional and mentally broken. It was time to give in and put my daytime heels and creative practice in temporary but extended storage.

March 2020 was 6 months post-accident, and I was ready to get back to life, but an infectious disease took over the globe and we were all forced to our homes to shelter in place. I had already been sheltering in place for 6 months. This forced activity seemed to go against the seasons. I fell in fall and recovered by hibernating through the Winter. Then Spring came. It was time to blossom, but we had to go back to hibernation.

The world was now broken and dying and trying to recover through forced rest and patience; two things that do not come naturally for the world or the people in it. Since March 2020 we have been plagued by infectious disease, political unrest, and racial turbulence and countless other incidents that shattered the illusion of safety. If we were lucky enough to be whole prior to this last year, the collective trauma has fractured each of us in our own very personal ways.

It is now June 2021. Science is winning and the race to vaccinate has played its numbers game. We can come out of hiding and open our arms and lives again. Traffic has resumed, the parks and restaurants are full. Life has blossomed this spring and we can go through the seasons correctly now and hopefully forever.

How do we put ourselves back together after the biggest public health crisis in a century? This question will define our recovery as we inch closer to a post pandemic world. As we emerge, we begin to gather the pieces of our psyches and work through the trauma to become whole again. We will become a new version of ourselves. Heels are back out by day and sewing practice out by night, but it is different now. We have scars and my brain, although much better, continues to react differently even two years later. A woman of many scars, I believe that what does not kill you makes you stronger.

"My scars remind me that I did indeed survive my deepest wounds. That in itself is an accomplishment. And they bring to mind something else, too. They remind me that the damage life has inflicted on me has, in many places, left me stronger and more resilient. What hurt me in the past has actually made me better equipped to face the present.” ― Steve Goodier

To help navigate the process of repairing what was broken in these two very hard years, I am creating a series of life-sized abstract portraits. As a fiber artist, I use collected small fragments of fabric and arrange them methodically after I cut them down to the smallest detail, reinventing their original meaning in the process. Through this arrangement, I study the connectivity between color, space, and negative space. These small scrap pieces are nothing until they are collected and mended to form the life-sized fragmented body. We cannot go back to being solid and whole, but it does not mean that we must be broken forever. Every day we are becoming.

Through this work, I invite the viewer to reflect on the meaning of change and how it defines who we are individually and collectively for better and for worse. My hope is through this journey, we may come together to realize that we are all a little broken. If we have compassion for each other and focus on our common and collective healing instead of our differences, perhaps we can become a better version of the world we would like to see.