Break to build

Collage with acrylic & paper made in a linen canvas 40 x 51 cm. 

The painting is an invitation to reflect on what happens when we die, and perhaps, more importantly, on what happens to us while we are still alive. What do we leave behind when we evolve/change/die? What remains of the person we once were, and who do we become in the process?

You carry within you the traces of everything you have lived through. Every experience, every wound, every relationship, every belief and every choice leaves a mark. But are you simply the sum of those marks and fragments, or are you something more? Perhaps you are also what you have chosen to build from them, the person you have created from everything that has happened to you.

At some point, you have to ask yourself what parts of you are still worth carrying. What parts of your past continue to travel with you, even though they are heavy, painful, or no longer belong to who you are becoming? Sometimes you hold on to things simply because they are familiar. You hold on to the past because it feels safer than the uncertainty of the future, even when the past is no longer good for you.

But why should what is familiar always feel better than what is unknown? Who taught you to fear what you cannot yet understand? Who convinced you that it is better to remain with what you know than to risk discovering something new?

Today, you have the opportunity to build yourself again. You can open the suitcase of your life and decide what deserves to come with you and what must finally be left behind. You can choose the beliefs that define you and release those that limit you. You can begin to separate your own voice from everything you have inherited from your grandparents, your parents, your country, your culture, your family and the world around you.

Perhaps growing means having the courage to say goodbye to parts of yourself that were never truly yours.

Perhaps it means tearing out page after page of a sacred book, a book that has been cherished by many, but whose words no longer speak to you. It means accepting that something can be sacred to others and still not belong in your story. It means having the courage to choose your own path, even when others do not understand your choice.

Today, you can decide what you want to carry forward. You can take only what truly defines you, even when letting go hurts. You can leave behind the expectations, fears, beliefs and inherited stories that keep you from becoming who you are.

Take only yourself with you. Begin the journey with yourself, carrying nothing that you have not consciously chosen. And perhaps, in order to truly become yourself, you first have to dare to let the old version of you die.

Today, I invite you to destroy yourself, so that you can build yourself again.