Soul Mosaic

So it is time to begin sharing the story of my young adult. And every fiber in my body both recoils from that task and welcomes it with relief. Unlike looking back at my childhood, looking back at this part of my life hurt too much.

Drenched in self-judgment, self-rejection, loathing, and shame, I not only couldn’t look back there…I WOULDN’T. And so for a lifetime, I remained “split off” from a part that deserved so much better.

I’d “lost” a whole section of my life. I had taken my young adult and thrown her in a box, and abandoned her in the back of the closet. I’d had the ability to revisit her anytime — the journals, timelines, paintings, and maps — but I had brushed it off as unnecessary. No. Unworthy.

Now, I was driven to it even as I wasn’t sure anymore what was even in that box. Who had I been? What was I feeling and thinking? What REALLY happened during those years?

I finally understood that despite all the healing and progress I’d made over the years, I was still not whole. If I wanted to go forward in my life, I had to take the time to go back…to ALL the places. ESPECIALLY the despised ones. It hurt too much not to. If I wanted to be whole, I had to open that box. But when I did, I encountered another dilemma…confusion. Again, I had no words, and I wasn’t sure why. I felt blocked from understanding it.

So, I went back to what I know best when I can’t find words or untangle the emotions. Art.

I started sketching what I felt.

It was starting to come clear, so I zeroed in on that desk and painted it.

I realize now that my loss for words was because that part of me was just shattered fragments. And that is what trauma is – broken pieces of you. It leaves you with the splintered shards of what was once whole. And that’s why you get stuck and don’t know what to say.

When that’s what you have to work with, how do you heal and find understanding?

I realized from my painting that the only way through this is to empty out all the pieces and look at each one. One at a time. See what the shapes are. What truths they contain. Only then will the patterns start to form. And from patterns, truth eventually emerges.

So, there is no rushing this part. There is only one piece at a time, get re-acquainted with “younger me.” Sit with each journal entry. Feel it. Look at the photos, think about why I painted what I did. And gradually, start to write the rest of the story.

This entry was posted on November 16, 2025 at 9:00 am and is filed under Memoir - sexual abuse trauma recovery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.