A Wandering Widow Post
Pain has no place in the evolution of you-
just as wild roots, tangled around a flower,
will one day suffocate its growth; so too
will unresolved pain living in the earth of you.
-April Green
You guys! I recently had the most amazing thing happen. I visited a grief museum, where they were excited to meet a grief blogger! (That’s me, in case you weren’t sure.) There is an actual museum dedicated to grief AND they were excited to meet me? What the what?
Let me back up a bit. On my way out of Croatia I had a lengthy layover in Zagreb, so left the airport to go exploring. As usual, I had no plan and just let my feet take me where they wanted to go. I kept seeing signs for the Museum of Broken Relationships. I was intrigued, but not enough to seek it out and just kept meandering through town.
After coffee and the most delicious chocolate croissant I’ve ever eaten, I hit up the Croatian Naïve Art Museum and fell in love with the art I found there. I’ve never seen anything like it, and you know how I feel about art. This stuff was incredible. The depth and colors of oil behind glass are something I can’t describe appropriately, but if you like art you need to see it. (The Dragan Gazi and Mijo Kovacic pieces were my favorites. So dreamy!)
And yet somehow I ended up at the grief museum anyway since it was right across the street. Fate? Maybe. This place is amazing. It started as a traveling exhibit but now has a permanent home in Zagreb’s Old Town. According to their website, at its core, the Museum is an ever-growing collection of items, each a memento of a relationship past, accompanied by a personal, yet anonymous story of its contributor. Unlike ‘destructive’ self-help instructions for recovery from grief and loss, the Museum offers the chance to overcome an emotional collapse through creativity – by contributing to its universal collection.
Letting Go
So people submit “relics” of broken relationships along with a short story about it, as a way to help let go. What a concept! You know my thoughts on conventional grief recovery guidance, (although will always champion GOOD grief counseling) so maybe that’s why the Museum resonated so strongly with me. And there must be something to it because they continue to receive submissions from all over the world. I blog about widowhood since that’s what I know, but these broken relationships are as diverse as we are. Missed connections. Divorce. Broken parent-child relationships. Affairs. Siblings. Lost friendships. Anything goes.
We all hold on to the pain of loss. Many of us bury that deep and let it fester like a cancer. Some of us learn to shine a light on that pain and take away its power to control us. Letting go doesn’t mean forgetting the person you loved. It means freeing yourself from the pain so that you can start living again. If you’re ever in Zagreb, put this on your list of must-see places. (They have a cafe as well, so take your time.) And if you want to send in your own submission, you can find the information here.
XOXO,
The Wandering Widow
Live Now. Dream Big. Love Fierce.
Click here to see my Zagreb photo album.