Careful — Erica Engfer Pizza

Several years ago, a friendship that meant the world to me fell apart. It unraveled slowly and without much explanation, leaving me devastated. It was, in every sense, the hardest breakup of my life. It took years to work through the confusion and anger before I finally reached a place of acceptance.

Six months ago, she was suddenly and tragically killed in an accident. She was gone. I lost her all over again. There is a profound strangeness in mourning someone you once considered family from a distance.

Loss is relentless. Losing someone you have already lost is a complex, jarring experience. Grieving from afar is difficult, and accepting the finality of a person you had already said goodbye to is unsettling. In the wake of her death, I realized I was still carrying a weight of hurt and anger that no longer had a place in my heart. Now, there is only room for forgiveness and the memory of our friendship.

This work, Careful, honors that friendship and the complexity of loss. If you see me, I invite you to ask why I chose these bird forms; the story is too significant for me to simply write down. Birds have appeared in my work for years. To me, they represent a connection to the heavens, embodying hope, peace, and transformation.

In this piece, I hope you find symbolic representations of connection, heartbreak, nesting, and community. More than anything, I hope you choose to surround yourself with people who support you and make you feel that you matter.