In my hands I held this precious gift of healing. As I gently pulled the perfectly molded piece of clay from the kiln, I watched as it shattered, bits and pieces of myself, falling to the ground.
The last few months have been a whirlwind of broken hopes and dreams as my husband and I decided to end our relationship and filed for divorce. The pain of betrayal follows me everywhere. All that is important to me, keeping me grounded… disappears. Each day, I awake alone.
Constant pain and doubt creeps into my soul. I seem to have crawled inside myself closing the doors to others. Is there really a place where I can get past the pain of resentment, of betrayal?
The joy I found in my work as a teacher no longer had meaning. The really weird part is the face in the mirror is unfamiliar as I tried to grasp “who am I?”
Tears fall as I take in the mess that is me. The shattered, broken pottery is a very, surreal moment for me as I realize that everything I thought I was… is gone.
And then I felt a caressing hand on my shoulder. My pottery teacher and mentor saw my state of collapse. Gently and with kind eyes, he gathered my beautifully molded and now broken hand-crafted bowl in his hands. He led me outside as I looked up and felt the cleansing of sunlight in my face. Together we kneeled down on the soft grass and started to dig deeper and deeper. With the scent of freshly sowed dirt on our grimy hands we gathered all the broken pieces of myself and buried the remainders of my shattered being. For the first time in the last five months, I felt a sense of sheer renewal.
In that one defining moment, I never looked back. I let it all go, allowing myself to heal, drawing from the strength of others as I learned to move forward and find true happiness.
In the midst of shattered dreams, your tomorrows disappear. Today I can look back and see it for what it is… the chance to change, to grow, to love again. I am forever grateful to my mentor who knelt beside me that fateful day and showed me the way back to who I was meant to be.
Today, I smile more than I ever have! I now recognize the face in the mirror and beside me I have found the man who has kissed my soul with true love as we await the birth of our second baby boy.
