By: Sherry Burkhard
“I feel so alone.”
“I am overwhelmed and don’t know where we need to begin to find a path toward healing.”
“No one understands what our family is going through.” “Where is God in my struggle?”
These are all common statements from individuals and families faced with mental health and addiction issues. Mosaics of Mercy, a nonprofit organization in the North Houston area, looked for the common thread running through all of them. What we identified was the need for connection in these shared experiences of feeling isolated, overwhelmed, confused, and alone.
To answer this connection problem, Mosaics of Mercy created a “hub” around three main components. We provide education to establish connections to knowledge about mental health and addiction. We assist in navigation to initiate connections to mental health resources. We cultivate to allow for connections to God, creativity, and community.
For the cultivate spoke of the hub, we incorporate a creative program called Beauty In Brokenness (c). In this program, participants create a mosaic heart while being led through ten steps of analogies that parallel life experiences. These analogies apply to every one of us as human beings. The mosaic process is a hands-on method that Mosaics of Mercy uses to break the stigma that our culture and even ourselves often associate with brokenness of any kind, but especially around the topics of mental illness and addiction.
In the program, each mosaic is considered a symbol of an individual, perfectly imperfect life designed by our Creator. Looking at each heart, you see that all encounter brokenness in some shape or form. In our sessions, we talk about broken pieces, the choices we can make when they occur, where we lose perspective, and the beauty revealed in the process. The experience imparts that we are not alone in our struggles and that sharing them allows for healing both for ourselves and others.
We have the privilege of leading our Beauty In Brokenness (c) program at Serenity Light once a month. When in treatment, there is no better time to be reminded that there is purpose and beauty in all that we encounter on our life journey, even if it does not look like what we expected or planned. Each participant starts a heart, finishes a heart that someone else started, and leaves with a completed heart to keep a tangible reminder of these analogies with them as they walk out their path toward healing.
Mosaics of Mercy is made up of real people committed to sharing their personal stories of hope and healing to benefit others. But the touching part of our organization is to have front row seats to the courage and freedom individuals and families show when they boldly face and surrender brokenness. There is no greater honor than to see lives that once considered their broken pieces things to be discarded, embrace those pieces and allow beauty to be created from them.
We are thankful Serenity Light gives us the opportunity to connect with individuals in the treatment setting. We believe that the mosaic sessions will provide a perspective that lasts long after someone walks out the doors of treatment. We hope that it sparks a movement for each person to impact lives, their own, and someone else’s…one heart at a time.
As our CEO, Heather’s main calling is to stay true to the vision of the organization, which is saving lives and striving to redefine statistics by raising the standard of care with evolving treatment methods. Heather studied psychology at LSU and both the main and Clear Lake campuses of the University of Houston, and she is a certified IASIS provider and CPI instructor. She’s been helping people in recovery since 2011. Heather’s motto to live by is “I am not what I’ve done; I am what I’ve overcome.”