This is a picture that I made years ago. It is called bitterness. I made a series of pictures and called it the Double Soul Project. The concept was inspired from a passage I once read in the Bible, were was written about having a double soul. Which actually means that your true soul is being covered by another soul, and therefore your true identity is not being shown. 

In the picture you see in the mirror a bitter looking woman. She looks at her younger self who is crying and in pain. I believe that bitterness comes out of pain. When you cannot let go of that pain it can turn into  bitterness. What I later saw in the picture were two different perspectives. On one side the bitter woman looks at her younger self in the mirror, who is trapped in her pain. This is what the older woman sees when she looks at herself. Always seeing the pain from her past and when looking in the mirror always being reminded of it. She does not see her self in the present, but sees herself in the past. 

On the other hand you can look at the younger woman, who is in pain and the reflection she sees in the mirror is her future self. If she lets her pain be turned into bitterness. At least this is what I see in it. Maybe someone else sees something totally different.

However my believe is that pain and bitterness are connected. If one soul is in bitterness and covers the true soul who is in pain, you have a double soul. You are then not living out of you true self. When the bitterness would be released, there would be space for the pain to come to the surface. Or maybe giving space to the pain already releases the bitterness. 

The pain is attached to the true soul and person. And when we give space to our pain, allow us to grief, cry or whatever we need to do to give our pain space and permission to exist. Our soul gets free and there is no need to hold onto bitterness as a guard to protect us from our hurt. When we release all that covers our pain, our soul can be free. And we have a chance to heal.