Megan Hatch

Portland, Oregon

These images are from a body of work titled "yes - and." It was born of a question: how do we do this? The images are bound together with a thin golden line as if by kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold. The resulting diptychs become vessels meant to hold our hurt and our hope. There is healing to be found in holding multiple truths in our awareness at the same time. By doing so, we get to practice wholeness. With practice, we find our way.

We're told to lean in, only to find ourselves constantly leaning down

to pick up the pieces.

Losing ground, falling down.

The days are a cycling blur of need and numb, numb and need.

Paved paths lead to swift dead ends.

We cannot justify our way out of this.

It's time for an abolition of the means

and the end of meanness.

Yes, and healing is happening.

We're here, we fear, yet we won't keep getting used to it.

We fall in, call in,

reach out and sometimes shout

with joy.

We mend the cracks with the gold we have, and that we are,

so that we can carry water

and each other.