The Beauty of the In-Between
A Threshold Season for Healing
There’s something quietly profound about this moment in the year.
Not quite spring. Not yet summer. A threshold season. A hush.
Liminal space.
The kind of space we tend to rush through, eager to bloom or bask. But I’ve come to see the in-between not as empty, but as sacred. A quiet cradle for mending. A gentle place where something begins to gather before it takes shape.
Over the past few years life, grief has broken me open in ways I never expected. For a long time, I didn’t paint, I didn’t draw. My brushes sat still and ideas felt like strangers to me. It was an empty space I couldn’t cross or fill. I was in this in-between space when I learned something unexpected: I have a literal hole in my heart.
A physical reflection of the ache I carried. It was frightening to me, but strangely it also filled me with awe. It was a message, a symbol of both absence and becoming.
This new knowledge turned me back toward the act of creating, not in spite of the brokenness, but because of it. Something in me was gathering, not loudly, not quickly. Gently. The way gold gathers in the cracks of a bowl being mended. The words came to me softly:
“You are not less because you’ve been broken. You are more.”
These words have begun to root themselves in my soul and in my imagination. They have slowly made their way into my hands and into tender brushstrokes, mending the cracks. Becoming a new body of work. A collection:
The Healing Heart.
Each piece in this collection begins with that golden thread of Kintsugi, not literally, but always in spirit. I’ve long been drawn to this ancient art form, where repair is not hidden but honored.
Years ago, I saw a broken tea bowl whose cracks were repaired with gold. I was transfixed. It felt like a kind of remembering to me. A way of seeing beauty not in spite of the cracks, but because of them.
My new body of work is still unfolding. It’s currently in the process of becoming four art prints from my paintings of broken porcelain hearts. Each repaired (embellished by hand) with gold leaf, each carrying a pattern reflecting the seasons of life: blooming, fading, resting, returning. These aren’t intended to be just images, I intend them to be quiet prayers in color.
In the quiet where the pieces lay, gold begins to gather. Not to hide the break, but to say - you are still whole.– Karen Armstrong
If you find yourself in a season of in-between, not quite one thing, and not yet another, I hope you’ll give yourself the grace to pause. To mend. To let beauty return slowly. To let your brokeness become whole, and filled with golden repair.
We’re not meant to rush our healing.
And we’re never really creating alone.
My new body of work holds something very personal to me, and I felt called to share it not only as art, but as invitation to a slower, more tender way of being with beauty and with one another.
A Circle.
If this resonates with you, I’ve made a quiet little corner, a free space called the Healing Heart Collectors Circle, where I’m sharing more of this process, and the small, sacred things that come with it. It’s there if you ever feel called to step inside. I would be honored to have you join me there.
🌿 Learn more about The Healing Heart Collectors Circle
Thank you, please share if you feel someone else would enjoy this post -
With heart,
Karen
Karen Armstrong Studio
For the Seasonally Inspired Heart. @karenarmstrongstudio @theartfulseason