How do you talk about abuse?

 

I just did an interview with Outside Magazine for their podcast, "The Daily Rally". I love this podcast. It's right up my ally. It is "short stories of resilience". That is what they say on the podcast. It's about how nature heals us. It's beautiful moving stories about people in all sorts of challenging situations finding healing from being with our beautiful Mother Earth. I cry almost every time I listen to it. Above are some of my notes for the interview. I haven't talked about abuse that much publicly. I'm just starting to do this. I want to. It's my story. It's my life story. It is what has shaped who I am. It is the reason I am so passionate about healing. It's the reason I've worked in mental health for over a decade. It's the reason I am estranged from my entire family. 

God, abuse is so hard. I wrote into the podcast because they allow anyone to nominate people in their lives (including yourself) if you have a story of a challenge and how the Earth was healing for you. First, I nominated my friend Erica, because she's an amazing woman, who I look up to and she has been through some really hard things. She just wrote a beautiful book called "Medicine and Miracles in the High Desert, My Life Among the Navajo People." Then, I nominated mountain biker, Kyle Warner because he is such an amazing individual who got a severe, life threatening vaccine injury after his second shot and has just had so much courage and integrity in the way that he went about talking and speaking up about it. And then, finally after some deliberation, I nominated myself. I think growing up with abuse is one of the least publicly talked about challenges, because it is so difficult to talk about, first of all, and because the people involved are still alive and out there in the world. 

I just finished a graduate program in art therapy and clinical counseling, where I took a deep dive into studying the psychology of abuse, why people are abusive, what is going on in their head etc. It was very enlightening to say the least. 

I nominated myself because I think it's time to speak up. I did part of my internship at school for an organization that works with people who have experienced abuse. It was called Valencia Shelter Services. Their tag line is, "Breaking the Silence of Domestic Violence." This is what I want to do. Silence is one of the biggest problems when it comes to abuse. Part of the abusive strategy is to manipulate the victim to be silent about the abuse. This is very affective. I still feel scared to speak publicly about it. But it feels so important to me now and I have a lot to say about it. I have been listening to the Daily Rally every single day, I love it that much, and I noticed that they have not had a single story about people who have grown up experiencing abuse. It's that hard to talk about. It's not that it's rare. It's unfortunately not rare at all. It's just really really hard to talk about. 

My notes in the above pictures say this:

 

"Abuse is about Power. It means that a person is taking advantage of a power imbalance to exploit or control someone else.

Abuse does not have to involve physical violence or even name calling in order to be abuse. Psychological abuse is very damaging. If you feel traumatized by someone's behavior, it is likely that they are abusive.

DARVO is the strategy that abusive people use. 

It stands for Denial, Attack, and Reverse Victim Offender.

"Abusers attempt to cast doubt on the credibility of their victims, denying the victim's version of events or reframing them so that they appear more innocuous" --From the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment and Trauma (Sarah Harsey and Jennifer Freyd).

"One of the basic human rights he takes away from you is the right to be angry with him. No matter how badly he treats you, he believes that your voice shouldn't rise and your blood shouldn't boil. The privilege of rage is reserved for him alone." --Lundy Bancroft.

I have so much to say about this, we didn't even cover half of it in the interview, but it got me going. Is this about my art??????? I don't know. I think it is though. It is what made me who I am. Why do I paint portraits? I will tell you. It is because when I learned to heal from an abusive childhood, I learned that the fundamental cornerstone of healing is reconnecting with your physical body's inner wisdom. It's about getting out of your head and connecting with your body, your inner authority, your inner compass, that part of you that feels a sense of relaxation and expansion as a way of saying, "yes, go in that direction." and a sense of twisting and knots as a way of saying, "no. don't go there." When I began drawing again, it felt good. My body was saying, "yes. yes. yes!" and when I drew faces, my body screamed, "YES! YES! YES!" That's why. That's the only reason.

sketchbook drawing from 2012.