Trauma & Art

‘Only you know where the casket of pain is interred.
You will have to scrape through all the layers of covering
And according to your readiness, everything will open’**

Scraping through the layers of trauma at times feels like passing through a needle’s eye; squeezing oneself either till breaking point or to the point of realization that the space is all yours; that the oxygen is sufficient; that your eyes need not be owned – neither by others nor your wounds and scars. During these moments of existential constriction, documentation, through words or images, of events and of snippets of a life, infringed upon by injustices and cruelties, becomes a basic necessity, as basic and essential as breathing.

Tonya Alexandri, April 3^rd, 2016

‘Through the white curtain of yesterdays to a place
You had forgotten you knew from the inside out;
And a time when that bitter tree was planted’**

**From To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings by John O’Donohue

If I should have a daughter by Sarah Kay

https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_kay_if_i_should_have_a_daughter/transcript

If I should have a daughter, instead of “Mom,” she’s going to call me “Point B,” because that way she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me.

And I’m going to paint solar systems on the backs of her hands so she has to learn the entire universe before she can say, “Oh, I know that like the back of my hand.”

And she’s going to learn that this life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air. There is hurt, here, that cannot be fixed by Band-Aids or poetry.

Read more

From To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings by John O’Donohue

For everything under the sun there is a time.
This is the season of your awkward harvesting,
When the pain takes you where you would rather not go,

Through the white curtain of yesterdays to a place
You had forgotten you knew from the inside out;
And a time when that bitter tree was planted

That has grown always invisibly beside you
And whose branches your awakened hands
Now long to disentangle from your heart.

You are coming to see how your looking often darkened
When you should have felt safe enough to fall toward love,
How deep down your eyes were always owned by something

That faced them through a dark fester of thorns
Converting whoever came into a further figure of the wrong;
You could only see what touched you as already torn.

Now the act of seeing begins your work of mourning.
And your memory is ready to show you everything,
Having waited all these years for you to return and know.

Only you know where the casket of pain is interred.
You will have to scrape through all the layers of covering
And according to your readiness, everything will open.

May you be blessed with a wise and compassionate guide
Who can accompany you through the fear and grief
Until your heart has wept its way to your true self.

As your tears fall over that wounded place,
May they wash away your hurt and free your heart.
May your forgiveness still the hunger of the wound

So that for the first time you can walk away from that place,
Reunited with your banished heart, now healed and freed,
And feel the clear, free air bless your new face

  Family