ARTIST STATEMENT
“So, how many kids do you have?” An innocent question clawing at my invisible grief. Do I count my dead son? The one who died inside me? Or just the living two? What do I say? Someone is going to feel deep sadness and embarrassment at my answer. Will it be me or the one who couldn’t see my ever-churning pain flowing just under the surface(?) I could tell them, then they would see, but it’s almost too horrible to speak it. I am deeply lonely, but not alone, though I can’t spot a bereavement parent by looking Twenty one thousand stillborn babies each year- a quarter to a half of them preventable. Preventable infant deaths, too. And mothers dying. The worst rates in the developed world, attacking women of color especially hard, because of course it is. Hundreds of thousand and millions of bereaved moms, parents, and families, carting around unimagined and unobserved pain. Another silent and invisible injustice, because we don’t see those who are no longer here. Red for blood, white for milk, blue for tears.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Rev. Marcie Brozyna (she/her) is a PCUSA minister, who studied Art and Art History at Rosemont College in suburban Philadelphia, eventually working there as an adjunct professor of Sociology. Marcie currently lives in the foothills of the gorgeous Adirondack Mountains with her husband, kids, cat, and a toad named Frog. Marcie describes herself as sentimental, pragmatic, and philosophic- qualities she draws on daily as a hospital chaplain, professor, friend, wife, artist and mother. Marcie continues to steal what time she can to slowly make her art and feed her soul.
© Marcie Brozyna