Breaking the silence of domestic violence

 

    

    So I'm back on this blog now and figuring out how to be more professional as a blogger. I've had this blog for 15 years and I have never really actively sought out engagement. I didn't really think of it that way. I just wanted to try having a blog and so I did, and I enjoyed writing on it, especially when I was in Ireland. I wish now that I had known a little more about how to use it and ask for engagement and learn how to have an income stream from it. I'm learning now though. It all feels very new to me. I've been watching videos of an artist I discovered recently named Jonna Jilton. Apparently she is quite famous, but I did not learn about her until this year just a few months ago when I started google searching for how to make paint out of earth pigments. Her video came up where she talks about making her own paint from various rocks and earth from around her house in northern Sweden. At first I thought she was a bit cheesy. I'm not sure why, but my very first impression (for a second) was that I was going to feel annoyed by her. But then, thank god, I continued watching and it turns out she's awesome. She hit the nail on the head as she talked about how to make art from that free place inside you, where you experiment and play instead of trying to do it just like someone else does it. It struck me right to my core and I realized this girl was the real deal so I kept watching and watching and watching and I got addicted to her videos. They are so beautiful. Really breathtaking and I learned that she started out with a simple blog that she posted on relentlessly. The videos she started out with 10 years ago are nothing special, just her walking around with a camera and filming whatever she was doing and speaking entirely in Swedish. And I think she was just blogging about her daily life. She moved up north from the city to a remote place in northern Sweden where her family had a summer home/lake house and where it is epically beautiful and she wanted to make it work to live there so she started this blog. I can't read it because it is all in Swedish (10 years ago in the beginning) and then it took off and she was able to make a living from it and she obviously evolved into a very talented film maker and nature photographer. But what I love about her the most I think is her authenticity. She just talks to the camera about whatever she is thinking and feeling and she is just totally herself. It's so refreshing. I feel like I am learning from her as I listen to her talk how to communicate better in my relationships and how to be more authentic myself and how to articulate myself and what I'm feeling and going through. 

    There is a lot I can say about that. Briefly, I've learned over the past two years about how trauma affects the brain in the part that relates with words making it hard for traumatized people to articulate themselves. I definitely relate to this completely and I've realized that as I've slowly healed, I have learned how to speak and communicate better. I also took flower essences this year from One Willow Apothecary, (Daffodil) and I really think that that helped. I can tell that it did. Listening to Martha Beck's "Integrity Cleans" 5 million times helped too I think. But ANYWAYS, listening to Jonna communicate to the camera has also helped and what I wanted to say was this: 

    As I was watching her and thinking about her sharing her life so authentically like that I wondered how I would do that. She happens to come from a really supportive home with two very healthy supportive parents, so I imagine it's fairly easy and straightforward for her to talk about that openly and honestly to the camera. I don't know this for sure, but it looks that way. But what if you come from a home, like me, where there is abuse and a system of shame and silence and self-censoring and if I'm really honest about my life and the reality of it, I would have to tell the camera that I am estranged from my family, that I don't reach out to them because it feels toxic to do so, that my dad was emotionally and verbally abusive and that healing from my childhood has defined my life and my art? I guess I just said it, but even just writing that right now feels awkward and scary. What if they read this? What if my dad sees this? That is what it's like in an abusive family though. It's a learned and ingrained self-censoring and I've also found that trying to talk about it even among close friends can and often is incredibly difficult and awkward and is often met with very unhelpful responses that make the situation worse. I don't think that friends ever mean to do this. I think that people don't know what to say. This was the nature of my childhood. And, unfortunately, I think it is the nature of many people's childhoods. The most helpful things in my life were few and far between and I had to seek them out. One woman I met while I was in college said something to the effect of: "Let's get you out of there. You can come live with me. I will arrange it so that you can pay very little for rent so that it will be very doable for you. I urge you to take me up on my offer."  That felt like I was actually being seen. Another time, later in life when I was living on my own, a mentor from my church said to me, "You've been wounded." This simple statement felt so healing to me. It showed me that he heard me. He also related to my story and shared his own experience with me, which was helpful and validating. Later still in life, I encountered Martha Beck. She is a writer and life coach who helped me tremendously because she also comes from a history of abuse and she writes extensively about how to actually heal from it, which involves learning to reconnect with the guidance from our own body and tuning out all other voices by refusing to make choices that are motivated by guilt and shame and instead being motivated by what we love and genuinely want to do. I'm reminded just now of this quote by Rumi, "Let yourself be silently pulled by what you truly love." Martha quotes this line a lot. Learning this from Martha was a game changer for me in my life. I also was learning to meditate at the time I discovered Martha. Meditation was probably the single most important factor in my healing process. Meditation and prayer. I think they go together. 

    So that's my blog post for today and my question to my "audience" if you're out there, is how do I do this? How do I incorporate my own story into my business as an artist? How do I show up authentically when my story is such an uncomfortable one to tell? I'd like to practice that. It is actually central to how I make art and how my art evolved and I do think that that is so important to convey. There is a long story there that I would like to tell. Here's me attempting to come out authentically and fully with my full naked self. I think that this will take practice as I have had so many years of practicing silence. "Breaking the silence of domestic violence" is a phrase that has been running through my head lately. And that is what I want to do. I want us all to do it collectively as a world. Just imagine. Abuse thrives in silence and cannot continue to live when that silence is broken. It depends on it. 

    So let me know if you have ideas and suggestions or supportive things to say. I'd love to hear. I've been practicing making videos with me talking about this, but I haven't posted any yet. I'm also praying about it a lot. It feels very important to me. 

    Thanks and much love to you! Thanks for reading!

Love, Suzy.