There are times of relative ease in my work with my therapist. Almost placid. Moments of rest and regrouping. The months after Mom’s death were not this. And I will simply say that I am grateful for the support of my husband and son, friends, and the wisdom of my therapist. This is not a journey to undertake alone.
The sessions were frequent and intense, with Yoga breathing, cognitive behavioral therapy, and EMDR, a process I’ll talk more about later. Suffice it to say, it is a method to help release and finish processing trauma that was put away raw, alive, and unhealed. An understatement.
And there was painting. Lots of painting. The only journaling I could do was to jot down the things we covered in the sessions, any insights from them, and all the questions that needed answers. Essentially, that unsealed pit of long-hidden emotions was in the driver’s seat, revealing to us what the next work was.
And on this day, the mental wrestling of “Should I? Shouldn’t I?” came to a stop. We dove in, and it unloaded….
Eventually, those fog banks in my psyche concentrated themselves into a dense wall of black, looming ominously on the horizon. And all those aching, unidentified emotions were tightened into such a Gordian knot that only bold action stood a chance to untangle it. But…which thread to pull first?
And as a side note — I was also trying to hold all this at bay while I continued to work and manage the tasks of life. But there was no longer any stuffing them back behind any dam. They were out and letting me know there was more coming. So in my private moments, I painted, and tried to make sense of what was happening. And I learned that the longer you wait to begin, the tighter the knot binds itself together.
So, my choice was simple.
Do I spend the rest of my life avoiding “whatever it was,” forcing a smile, using “mind over matter” to pretend all was fine, and ignoring any evidence to the contrary?
In my first “baseline reading,” I spoke of emotional flashbacks. But, another fairly frequent “trauma companion” is nightmares. I’ll share more about them later, but as part of this “baseline,” I will give some background here.
While decades of therapy have healed much, nightmares still show up fairly often. Having dealt with them for years, I am *almost* used to them — at least most of the time. And generally, I shed their emotional upsets pretty quickly. In fact, in some of my recent ones, I even show up more as a fighter now than as that victim from the past. So, I guess that is progress.
But sometimes a nightmare will come along that can still blindside me with an emotional knock-out punch. That’s an indication that there is something I still need to work on because nightmares reveal where the heart is still bleeding.
The Trigger: Trip Planning
Yesterday I set up travel plans for us to go to visit our son in Savannah to celebrate my 70th birthday. Now it should be a short story — decide to go, settle the dates, make travel and hotel reservations, and then go and have a wonderful time. Yes. Maybe for many, that is the way it works. But…
For years I have struggled to “ask,” whether it be for help, for something I want, for some I need. It’s taken years but I am getting better at it. Yet even when I can now ask, I still struggle to feel I “deserve.”
So it was no small thing for me to say that I wanted this trip for my birthday. In fact, it was a major victory. I wasn’t interested in presents or big parties, just being with my immediate family — my treasure in life. But about that whole “I deserve” thing….
The alarm hasn’t yet gone off, but I am awake. I’ve been so since about 5:30, like many mornings. The oblivion of sleep, its escape from reality, at least on the nights I have no nightmares, is over. While my regular blanket keeps me groggy and warm, the weight of the other blanket starts pressing me into the mattress. It is the heavy sensation of feeling scared, hopeless, and like I have done something wrong and will soon be in trouble. I neither want to stay in bed nor get up. I wish I could just sleep in oblivion all day. Getting up means facing another day of writing, struggling to live with the pain it releases, and holding the chaos I feel inside.
I get up anyway, because by now, in my 7th decade, I know that this is part of my life, my existence, at least for the time being. Even as I felt great last night, felt ready to take on the world, yet again, this morning, the black cloud was there to greet me when my eyes opened and consciousness returned. But life has taught me that, like the weather, everything eventually changes. You just have to wait long enough. So for now, I just focus on my “routine.”
The routine. It is something I had to create after I retired from teaching at Raleigh’s North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. When I was working, I didn’t have time to feel all of this. I had to get up, get moving, battle traffic, and then revel in the last job of my life — which was my total joy.
So let’s get something straight right now – because I am a direct person, all my friends know that, and I prefer to be clear. This is not a book about a person’s journey from harm to forgiveness. If you are looking for a tome on the blessings of forgiving your abuser or how to achieve it, I recommend you look elsewhere.
My journey is about healing…restoring my soul from a lifetime of trauma and pain that was inflicted on me, and that I have carried way too long. And just to be clear, to me, forgiveness and healing are not the same things. They may both come about, or not, but they are not the same thing, and for me, both are not required. So first and foremost, I write to heal.
If I am to be totally honest, I don’t give a shit about forgiveness anymore…about whether it comes or not. In fact, the next person who tells me that I must forgive because it is the only way to happiness, or repeats that all-too-often quoted trope, that withholding forgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die, I will tell you to just keep on walking. Unless I am in a bad mood, in which case I may say it slightly differently.
Painting by author – Author as an infant on hood of her father’s car
Driven to paint
Before I share below a sampling of the visual elements I am using in my book, I thought I would share the “WHY” I not only used them, but HAD to use them.
Rebuilding my life
The book incorporates the story not only of the abuse I endured, but also of my journey from my parents’ house—the depression and despair—to my rebuilding, and my creating of a meaningful life.
Even after the initial crises of my escape and recovery with the help of good therapists and friends, I would return for rounds of therapy off and on throughout adulthood. Given all of the life lessons I had missed out on during my early phases of life, I looked at it as “preventive maintenance.” Why “wing something” when I wasn’t sure how to handle it and risk messing it up, then have to fix it? Better to learn as I went along.
The traumas of life
This approach worked well, and I thought I had finally put the past to rest…until midlife. Menopause hit. My husband almost died. The dog did die. My son left for college. All at once. But even worse, those new traumas blasted open a well of trapped emotions I never realized were even there. Like opening Pandora’s box, it unleashed a flood of unresolved depression, anxiety, flashbacks, nightmares…severe PTSD. At the time, I had no idea what was going on. Desperate and having major anxiety, I began working with a skilled trauma specialist who was and remains a godsend in my life.
This was fortunate because, in addition to everything that I was dealing with, I also began navigating the last chapters of my parents’ lives and their deaths. It was then that I realized just how much work I still had to do.
The past comes calling to claim its due
Those first decades of adulthood had been about building a life. Now, it was about returning to the past to address the well of unfinished business and unresolved pain that had come forward to claim its due. It had patiently waited a lifetime…my son came first all those years. But now, it was time for me…and that long-suffering child.
However, I had no tools to reach the pain, to know how much was there, or to express it. I only knew its presence through the agony of body memories and nightmares. That was when I made the discovery that art heals.
This blog shares excerpts of my draft memoir — working title: “I Thrive.” While not graphic, it will discuss aspects of the sexual, physical, and emotional abuse I endured and my journey back to healing…and thriving.
Photo by author, circa 1959-1960
To be the illustration
Memoir expert and author Marion Roach Smith described the genre of memoir this way:
“Memoir is not about you. It’s about something and you are its illustration.”
Another author, Trish Lockard, added that this genre is not just a recounting of things that happened to you because, after all — “Stuff happens to everybody.” Instead, memoir captures one’s reflections about an event when enough time has passed for a change, a transformation, to take place. Those insights gained over time through effort are the gift to the reader—the takeaway.
To only write a list of everything done to you in life without the reflections is like dumping a pile of ingredients on the counter and calling it a cake. It is only a cake when that pile of ingredients has gone through the crucible of a hot oven and been transformed into the real takeaway — dessert. Only then does it have “purpose and meaning.”
I loved how one author, whose name I cannot find, summed it up:
“Don’t just confess. Digest.”
Digestion is change and makes something useful…nutritious. It gives back. And digestion is the unfinished business of my life.
After seven decades of silence, it is time for me to look back, digest the raw material of my life, and obtain the nutrition— the insights that give it meaning. It is not: “Look at what was done to me” so much as the answers to the questions: “Because of what was done, what am I doing with it? What does it mean?” So, my life will be the illustration of that “something” that might have meaning and nutrition for all.
28 years of abuse…and building a “beautiful mosaic”
As promised, here is the second half of my rules for this memoir. These will be right at the front of the book so the reader is also clear about what I have in mind.
Caveats, cautions, and purpose
Before departing on this journey, here are 7 key points:
In one respect, I wish I could go back in time to 1955-1957 and be a fly on the wall in this apartment. But maybe it’s better I can’t. Whatever went on at 57 xxxx Avenue is something I will never know because I can’t remember…consciously. But boy my body does.
A Humorous Twist on the Old Masters’ painting style
“The Old Masters with a TV Twist” – Painted by the author
The need for stress reducers during intense writing
There is no question that writing a memoir about abuse …frankly, about anything serious in one’s life if you are emotionally open and honest, can get intense. It takes energy to face it, feel it, process it, and extract the meaning behind the events. So, in order to maintain a healthy outlook it is important to have some activity for a “tension-breaker.” For me, that is art — both looking at good art as well as creating my own oil paintings.
The Old Masters paintings
I happen to love the Old Masters – whether the styles and color tones of the Northern Renaissance, such as Rembrandt, Albrecht Durer, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, or Hieronymous Bosch; or the Italian Renaissance painters and sculptors. I have a lot of books on the various artists or on the time period.
Giving the Old Masters a “modern” twist
Recently I decided to have some fun with the topic and created the above painting – The Old Masters With a TV Twist. I love the idea of throwing in some current-day object(s) to give a modern twist to the classical still-life painting approach! So there will be more of these coming along!
BTW, if you want to know more about the “Old Masters” – here you go:
For anyone who might enjoy watching the progress of my paintings from blank canvas to finished “masterpiece” please check out my Facebook page: Paintings of Light and Hope:
Photo link by author
You can also view my art progress on Instagram (if you’re not on Facebook)
Soul Mosaic 