If you were to ask me to list my talents, drawing wouldn’t even make it on there. Don’t get me wrong, I can easily draw you a picture with my words, but with a pencil? I’m hopeless. But something strange happened the other day as I sat down to do the homework I was given from a workshop I’m taking: I felt compelled to draw instead. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I told myself, ‘you don’t know how to draw!’ But my need was so strong and it wouldn’t be silenced. So I got up, grabbed a pencil and paper and then sat down to let my heart do the work.
This is a picture of my heart. Like most, it is made up of many different components; “puzzle pieces “, if you will. It started out full, whole, complete. But complex trauma took away vital pieces of my heart; leaving dark, empty spaces where love should have been. For awhile, I allowed myself to believe that I couldn’t give to others, or to myself, with a broken heart. That somehow I was less than because my heart was full of holes. I’m moving past that now, trying to heal from the inside out. Because I’m learning that we’re all living in this world with parts missing from our hearts-it’s what makes us human. But through connection, through giving and receiving-both with others and within ourselves, we have the ability to fill those holes with something new, something restorative; something even more beautiful than they were when they started out.