After a rare cancer diagnosis disrupted her sense of certainty, Jill Gassman Zullo began to create—not to make sense of it, but because memories that had been buried so deep
they rose.
Wounds she thought were stitched together split open.
What followed wasn’t just about illness. It was about the layered, unfinished pieces of a life shaped by chaos, trauma, faith, love, silence, and contradiction. Through a blend of visual art and poetry, she gives shape to a story that resists order, resolution, or explanation.
Beautifully Broken—Art Edition is a visual and poetic companion to the original Broken Beautifully. A collection of paintings and poems that came from the same place but speak in a different voice.
These are not illustrations.
They are conversations—
between color and memory,
between the body and what it carries
between grief and grace.
With emotional honesty and artistic intimacy, Jill invites readers into the parts we’re usually told to keep quiet—or are too afraid to say out loud.
The thoughts that linger.
The mess beneath the narrative.
The truths that refuse to behave.
The stories we never fully resolve.
For anyone who has lived through trauma, illness, or loss—and found themselves changed in ways they couldn’t explain—this Art Edition offers:
Permission.
To name what surfaced.
To hold what shifted.
To live with what remains.
