The Shape of Healing

Many things in life leave holes in our hearts. Grief, loneliness, trauma, fear, and countless experiences can leave us feeling fragmented, disconnected, or less than whole. Healing does not necessarily mean filling those spaces or returning to who we once were. Sometimes it means learning to hold them differently, allowing beauty and possibility to grow around the places where we have been wounded.
The heart in this installation bears its absences openly. Circular spaces are missing, while delicate veins of gold trace their way through its surface—a reminder that even our broken places can become part of something beautiful. In the spirit of kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, we need not hide or erase our wounds. They can become part of our story, marked by resilience, tenderness, and transformation.
Arms of many shapes, sizes, and appearances reach toward these hearts, each offering a golden mirrored circle. These reflections represent that which helps us heal: hope, love, joy, compassion, understanding, connection, and belonging. They remind us that healing rarely happens in isolation. So much of what restores us comes through one another—in the kindness we offer, the care we receive, and the simple act of being seen.
The mirrored circles also invite us to see ourselves in this exchange. As we offer something to another, we become part of their healing; as we receive from others, we are reminded of our own capacity to become whole in new ways.
I believe healing isn't about having a heart without holes. It is about discovering that even the spaces where we feel most incomplete can become places where love, light, and one another find their way in.