My partner held me last night as PTSD racked my body. I awoke in the middle of the night sobbing. There were no thoughts. No remembered nightmares. Just sobbing. Sobbing and fear, loneliness, rejection, pain. While they held me they whispered, "It's okay. You are safe." As I held back the screams that attempted to escape my body for fear of waking and scaring my children I thought, "I am not okay. This is not okay. I am never safe." All the while knowing they were right. I wa

"Perfectionism is not a way to avoid shame. Perfectionism is a form of shame. Where we struggle with perfectionism, we struggle with shame." Brené Brown Recently my blog was weaponized. That phrasing might sound odd to someone who has never experienced abuse. Abusers find ways to take beloved, or even mundane, things and use them as weapons against their victims. Specific blog posts were suggested as reasons why I was behaving poorly as a parent and my time with my children s

Becoming the Hero, Written Series Once a month I do an art workshop at the local domestic and sexual violence crisis center. It is the crisis center that helped me as I decided to leave my abusive marriage. I am incredibly fortunate to be able to return as a survivor and share empathy, understanding, and some skills that help me navigate life after abuse. I take some of my pieces and share my process of healing through art; inviting the workshop members to find the tools that

Becoming the Hero, Written Series Do you know what it's like not to own your own body? To have family members and a family friend violate your body before you had even an inkling of what sex was? To have urges and desires brought forth that adults tried to drown in shame without ever understanding why you were bad? To have young boys use your body to explore their own budding masculinity and have it terrify you? To be tackled, kissed, groped, chased, and then quickly discarde

Becoming the Hero, Written Series I remember my doodles from childhood and wish beyond almost anything that I still had some of them. My art wasn't nurtured and I ended up ashamed of it. For several decades I longed to try again yet lacked the courage. Thankfully, that changed. While my visual art is where I am most raw, I cannot always live in that space. If you know me, you know I was also born with the gift of gab. I'm not shy with my opinions or ideas. My thirst for knowl

PTSD has hit hard within the last week or so. I'm not ready to paint. Sometimes when an episode hits I can't paint. Painting seems to be my final step in healing. Thankfully, my emotions let me sketch. I may not feel 100%, yet I do feel some relief purging these. These sketches needed to be released from my body. Wanting to be "Invisible," "Confusion," and "Nothing" are the symptoms du jour. New additions to the "Aftermath" series. #ptsd #ptsdrecovery #healingthroughart #hero

Poetry is not my forte. However, while trying to heal and process my experiences, sometimes poem like strings of words are what comes out. They're not eloquent. They're not pretty. They are real. This spoken piece was written a couple years ago while on vacation in California. I got in the car with my cousin to drive to the airport and it was screaming in my head. I asked if she minded if I used my phone's voice recorder to take down what was trying to tear my brain apart. I

My friend says my paintings scare her. My response: "How do you think they make me feel? I live with this." *TRIGGER WARNING. Sexual Assault, Rape, Domestic Violence, PTSD. ** I've deleted and rewritten this post several times. In my head and physically. There really are no words to eloquently express how I'm feeling and what I'm thinking. A string of expletives, while closer, would still be lacking. Hence, the paintings. Even they aren't enough. I've seen many depictions of

There's a line from the movie Shrek that has stuck with me from my first viewing. Probably because everyone quoted it over and over. "Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers... You get it? We both have layers." I agree with Shrek's self observation, and Donkey's reaction: "You know, not everybody likes onions." While I have never enjoyed thinking of myself as an onion, that was an eye opener for me. Humans are not one dimensional. We have this weird desire to classify e

"If you have been brutally broken, but still have the courage to be gentle with others then you deserve a love deeper than the ocean itself." Nikita Gill I spent at least a solid year alone on the shore before even touching my toe to the water. Waded in but kept close enough to the shore that my feet still touched the ground and I could escape at a moment's notice. Playing in the waves and learning their ebb and flow. My head going under only when I chose for it to do so. Wat

"You need to grow thicker skin." Oh, the amount of times I've heard that. It's just about the most insensitive, yet necessary, advice out there. I don't take issue with the message, at least not the way I've come to incorporate it in my life. It's vital to survival in this world. The delivery is usually done harshly and without validating what the other person is going through emotionally. Asking someone to deny or hide what they are experiencing can be harmful and demoralizi