Midwest Broken Mirror Project

The way we learn to see our bodies often starts younger than we realize.

Natalie’s Midwest Broken Mirror portrait is now displayed inside HOYT Library Public Libraries of Saginaw as part of our Mental Health Awareness Month installation.

Natalie’s story reflects on how comments about our bodies can shape self-image from a very young age, and how learning to value her body for what it could do instead of how it looked changed the way she saw herself.

Because of that, we felt Hoyt Library was a meaningful place for her story to live this month — a shared community space where young people and families are constantly learning, growing, and forming the ways they see themselves and others.

Tonight, to close Sexual Assault Awareness Month, the Midwest Broken Mirror Project brought our survivor stories into a space centered on conversation, community, and visibility at Old Town Distillery by Wonder during the Underground Railroad, Inc. Advocacy Cocktail Hour.

Surrounded by portraits, conversation, and community, people gathered to practice something many still struggle with: talking openly about sexual violence.

Seeing those stories heard, reflected on, and included in events working to create change in our community is exactly why this project exists.

One of the clearest things we’re seeing in our Midwest Body Image Survey:

People aren’t trying to love their bodies.

They’re tired of thinking about them.

The hyper-awareness.
The fixation.
The adjusting.
The mental noise.

What people want is space.

Space to move through their day without their body being the main character in every moment.

That’s a very different goal than what most of the conversation is selling.

----> Survey Link: https://forms.gle/3DyrAsqnhJ1cdn4f8

SPACES THAT HOLD THESE STORIES: Jade Esthetics 🌿✨

There’s a certain level of trust required to let someone care for your body, not just physically, but without judgment.

That’s what makes a space like this meaningful.

This month, Jade Esthetics is holding Becca’s story: a story about how trauma and purity culture can shape the way someone experiences their body, often leading to disconnection, shame, or the need to control it.

For Becca, that disconnect lasted for years. It wasn’t until she experienced a different cultural relationship to bodies—one without the same layers of judgment—that she began to see herself differently and reconnect.

Her story lives here intentionally.

Because healing doesn’t only happen in clinical spaces, it happens in everyday places where people are already learning how to care for their bodies in new ways.

Liza's work at Jade Esthetics is rooted in care, trust, and education—making this space more than fitting.

It makes it part of the story.

Thank you for choosing to hold this work.