Letters, Announcements, Love & Hope
A Fragmentary Retrospective & Future Outreach
It began with a dream. A dream where survivors came together to help heal themselves and one another. I saw these survivors taking plates and smashing them on the ground. After they smashed the plates, the pieces all came together to form one mosaic piece. This was the beginning of Fragmentary: A Mosaic Project.
When I woke up (because this was a literal dream), I immediately contacted the executive director of Unspoken Voices, Kilomarie Granda and told her about it. I explained how if you imagine taking a plate and you smash it but if you put the pieces back together then it’s fixed right? Wrong. The plate is no longer what it used to be, it has changed. The cracks and scars will remain forever. Now picture the plate as a person. If you break a person but you apologize will that person be the same? No. Every interaction all of us have with one another changes people, and if you break that person the scars will remain.
Do these scars make a person less of a person? Less beautiful? Less worthy of love? No. They are still a whole person. Just changed. I took these ideas with Kilomarie Granda and we decided this event had to happen. We wanted to provide this healing opportunity for all who felt broken. Our first steps was to do a trial run for ourselves.
There were 5 of us at the trial run for Fragmentary. We had talked about the event, gathered materials, and all believed we knew exactly how it was going to work out. For me, it was nothing like I pictured. As I stared at my plate, thinking about what broke me , the subject matter was easy to come up with. I was sexually assaulted 3 times in under a year, all by people I knew. One of them was by my boyfriend at the time and another was by a close friend. Coming up with the words to describe these events seemed nearly impossible. It felt like writing down my true feelings would make everything all the more real. Once I started writing, I couldn’t stop. I wrote down everything I thought and was feeling. All of the guilt I felt even while knowing it wasn’t my fault. Once my plate was done, I was ready to smash it. With the first swing of the hammer I took back the power those men took from me. I broke what had broken me. And once I was done, I felt a giant weight lift off my shoulders.
Fast forward to Slut Walk, Twin Cities 2018. Unspoken Voices arrived with plates, our mosaic boards, sharpies, and everything else we needed to host this healing event. We were expecting less than 50 people would want to participate. We exceeded that number within the first hour.
As I looked around Father Hennepin Park I saw hundreds of individuals in different stages of the project. I saw different stages of healing. There were people staring at their plate much like I was when I did the trial run. Staring and trying to decide what to write and how. I saw a mix of emotions during this stage. Rage, anger, tears falling from their faces. And I saw all of these again while they smashed their plates. One participant swung the hammer so hard it broke the cement block under their plate. After participants smashed their plate you could see the relief on a lot of their faces. Looking at the broken shards in the tub. It was incredible to see the healing happen right in front of your eyes.
The final part of creating the mosaic was amazing to see unfold as well. After participants smashed the plate then they added their shards to a communal mosaic. People took this approach differently. Some remained to themselves as they integrated their pieces with others and some bonded over the experience. I heard several people tell their stories to strangers while they added their own pieces. It was a great day for healing.
Once the mosaic was completed, we took it on tour. We shared the origin story and how it felt to be at the creation of this spectacular event. We were fortunate that some of the participants came to see the final product and they all thanked us for the healing opportunity. Some words that we have heard to describe the piece of art are wonderful, powerful, important, and we’ve heard that it is difficult to put into words what people thought while looking at the piece.
Sincerely,
With peace,
Ashlee Bednar, (Unspoken Voices Assistant Chair)
This mosaic honors the lives and voices of hundreds of survivors from intersecting, marginalized, and historically silenced communities coming together to say~
“We are advocates, mediators, counselors, healers, teachers, and peacemakers. Society may view us as broken but we refuse to be confined by the labels that society has placed upon us.
We are change-makers, both because of, and in spite of, what has happened to us. We are dreamers, choosing to believe in the impossible. We are fighters and advocates, coming together to share our collective, amplified, and intersecting narratives to help inform and empower positive systemic change.
Some may call us “broken”. Maybe we are. Or maybe we are perfectly built to withstand the traumas that we have endured at genetic, historical, socio-ecological, and systemic levels. Together, we share our collective goal of connecting humanity to hope through healing.”
With love,
KiloMarie Granda (Unspoken Voices Founding/Executive Director)
Fragmentary: A Mosaic Project has been showcased at several events and festivals including 2019 Twin Cities Pride. The narratives and voices of this collective dream will continue to be honored throughout 2020 as part of our focus on healing individual trauma through community empowerment.
Unspoken Voices is honored to share Fragmentary at the 2020 MN Safe Harbor Conference. We are honored to support the mission of those coming together to facilitate positive systems reform and restoration. To learn more about the conference, check out the link listed above. We also encourage you to learn more about the organizations at the forefront of this movement.
Minnesota Department of Health
