Art in the Eye of the Grief Beholder

Many things change after profound loss. I now look at and experience art in both incredibly beautiful and reflectively heartbreaking ways. Sometimes I experience both at the same time.

This is a piece of photography by Cori Storb, a lovely soul I got to meet. I lost my breath when I first saw it. It spoke to both Ryan and I. I saw the peaceful solitude of the desert, the alluring radiance in the horizon and the eerie, yet comfortable glow in her abdomen area. I associate this glow with the unmistakable joy of carrying a baby coupled with the immense pain of losing the promise of his or her future.

You are a Brave Light, now entitled You are a Brave Mama, By Cori Storb Photography.

I saw that the title of the piece is “You are a Brave Light.” Indeed we are…all of us are. It takes bravery to carry a child through pregnancy or other means. It takes bravery to carry ourselves. It is so brave to love.

Before I lost Oak I would have warmly appreciated a piece like this, and moved on. Now, I can’t look away. It reflects a spiritual experience so powerful, it can only be felt. I explained to Cori that a common phrase in the baby loss community is “You are a Brave Mama,” and it reflects multiple meanings. It is a phrase so close to her title that it gave us both chills.

This is an excerpt from Cori Storb’s story of the image:

We’ve all been on fire, we’ve all been in the dirt, and we are all falling through space. For your whole life you have been falling, and you have been burning. A million things have died and transferred their lives into your body so you can keep breathing. So you can keep feeling and seeing and loving and dancing. Your body makes heat, you are an animal, you are a star scrap, a brand new radiant shape. You are so unfathomably beautiful.

Art truly is in the eye of the beholder. And as the grief beholder, your experiences mold and shape you to take another different, often achingly indescribable look.

After I left she changed the title to “You are a Brave Mama.”