Trauma & Art

1. The other side of the coin….

In 2014 after a long Sabbatical of abstaining to a great extent from reading material to do with psychology for over two years because I could not stay with the grief and somatic discomfort and anxiety it brought about, I started to tentatively and cautiously to explore online psychology courses that were in some sort of alignment with my own experience, interests and values this time. It was in many aspects an experiment that involved healing, through exposure and it was also motivated by a vague intuitive knowing that reconnecting with psychology would be significant in some way or other in the future. This first series of online courses I did had to do with trauma responses and defenses and early attachment adaptations informed by neuroscience and new research findings. In retrospect, it proved a sound decision and choice, but initially interacring with the course material was not that easy since my learning and studying were constantly hampered by mild panic symptoms and ongoing sympathetic responses, and to put it frankly it felt like a rehabilitation process from my master’s programme experience. Gradually, it dawned on me that in some sense a lot of my learning experiences throughout time have required some healing and overcoming, whether that was recovering from being left under the teacher’s desk in second grade for refusing to eat the sandwich, whose contents were strewn out on the wrapping paper lying on the floor next to me on display for all my classmates to see, which I had thrown in the bin during the break and which had unfortunately been reclaimed and reassembled by my teacher who had then insisted on my eating it or the hot slaps that landed on my face during PE classes in high school for being absent minded or for chewing gum or my extra curriculum book choices that were frowned upon or essays that were unacknowledged and ungraded and art exercises that disappeared or were lost……This new phase of pyschology learning and re-consolidation of old knowledge opened up doors to subsequent online courses, further learning and deeper understanding, and also, became a kind of data base for my posts these last years… Also, as a result of this interaction with online course material on meditation, mindfulness practices and mindsight I started engaging in meditation more seriously and on a daily basis, which brought about a shift in my way of relating to things, deepened my understanding in many areas and increased my resilience and capacity to confront traumas. Ironically, even though the things I have dealt with since 2011 have generated grief and losses and many emergency responses, the same events have been the incentive and driving force for the creation of this website, many posts, posters, a short illustrated story, new learning and knowing and an increased capacity to see the many beginnings when the seeds were planted, create links across experiences and discern recurring patterns and cycles, a strong incentive to break the silence and become visible, court procedures and many smaller or bigger battles for rights and restoration…

2.When I was a child I once had an upsetting encounter with a homeless man, which had shaken me a bit. Later in my university years, while I was working in a bakery, a young worn out pregnant woman probably my age rested on the pavement across the shop a great deal of the day and I always wondered if she also slept in the street since I always found her there at half past six in the morning when I got to work. She was one of my early customers and usually bought a bun or a cheese pie. When her eyes rested on mine I thought that the light in them had been blown out and she triggered compassion and concern, but sometimes watching her would momentarily bring up a primal visceral fear in me to do with survival and safety. Maybe it had something to do with the childhood encounter or the fact that deep down we all know that potentially we can all find ourselves in dire situations. Perhaps that is why many people rush quickly by the homeless, not because they are not compassionate or lack empathy but because of the fear. Anyway, I have always loved children’s books and luckily being a teacher and a mother has given me ample excuses and opportunities to buy books and read stories to others and myself. Yesterday I came across a heart warming and touching story The Boy Who Painted The World by Melody J. Bremer about Indigo, a homeless little boy with a gift and a dream, who spent his mornings in a refrigerator box, his afternoons shoveling snow, and his nights in the basement of a homeless shelter and who drew every free moment he had and dreamt of becoming an artist, and then when his best friend and support person landed in prison for shop lifting he set out on a quest to look for her, encountering art, friendship and family along the way. And as I got engrossed in the book the above incidents slowly emerged like the tips of icebergs in the sea of memory.

Awakening through quietening the mind and tapping into the body

“One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, and compassion” Simone de Beauvoir

There are many people I feel gratitude for their presence in the world and for the impact of their work in today’s world. In today’s brief and hurried post I will refer to Dan J. Siegel’s huge work, which literally created a route for me to walk back to the more authentic parts of myself. In particular his Wheel of Awareness is a tool I have returned to almost everyday for the last four years or so. As I have mentioned before I came across his work during an online CONFER course, with many other great teachers, most of whose work I have referred to in things that I have written and posted on this site. For the last four years I have engaged with various mindfulness practices and meditations, but this tool or technique is something I keep returning to. More recently I came across an audio by Pema Chödrön of a guided meditation of tonglen, which I found most appropriate to do for my mother, who died about nine months ago and whom I was prevented access to, despite my thirty month or so struggle to reach her. This last inhumane deprivation of rights allowed for a long string of assaults on identity to become clear and visible, whether that was the right to have: an identity card and the right to vote in my youth, access to personal early records and documents more recently, the right to express ideas within a safe context, respect to dignity and privacy or the right to earn a ‘well earned’ degree, etc, etc. What also became apparent was the connection between the private and the public realm and the underlying belief systems that have held all this injustice in place. Anyway, as I understand it, tonglen is a meditation practice for connecting with suffering, ours and that of others and for dissolving the tightness of our hearts. It can be done for those who have died, those who are ill, or for those who are in pain of any kind. I suppose it is a practice for awakening compassion within us both for ourselves and others. Then at some point I found myself incorporating the tonglen practice into the Wheel of Awareness, replacing the connectedness part with this deeper, more powerful and more demanding practice. To sum up, I’d like to send a big thank you to all the people whose courageous work and words are healing the world a little at a time and filling our bowls with light and hope.