I drew this figure and called it “Beauty of a Broken Man” before an event occurred that would unmistakably change the course of the life of the person I drew.

For much of my working life I have been attentive to the more hidden somatics we carry, the subtle ways the body remembers what the mind would rather not. But this experience was different. It brought the visible and the invisible into the same frame.

We speak of being broken as though it is a flaw. As though something clean has been shattered and must be repaired. But breaking is not always visible. It happens in the body. In the mind. In the quiet interior places no one else can see.

Emotional and physical wounds leave different traces, yet both shape the architecture of who we become.

Brokenness does not remove our beauty, it deepens it.