Reclamation: Art and art

I was emailing with my friend Jane, and she mentioned "reclaiming" parts of ourselves as we were talking about me starting to paint again. There are a few layers of this reclamation. First is the part where after my last BIG concussion in 2015 my visual processing, and hand eye coordination were greatly affected, as well as my sense of color (back in my college days I could mix a color for a perfect match...once I punched a wall and had to do a color match after I patched the hole!...yeah, wasn't one of my better moments). And granted, I was rusty anyway cuz after my graduation back in 95 I had done very little art.

Which brings us to the part where I pretty much stopped doing art after I graduated. Pre-college I always had a sketch book handy. Always. If I was staying somewhere other than my house, a sketch book was just as important as a clean change of underwear. But then I went to college. And there were a couple of things that happened to rob me of the joy, and pleasure of making art...the making art because I couldn't not make art. One of those factors was that my primary instructor, Trina, insisted that all of my Art had to be "ripping your heart out and throwing it on the canvas." For her, Art always had to be a capital "A"...art wasn't for fun, it was for making a statement. After a time that becomes rather emotionally exhausting, and definitely robs one of the fun of making art. 

Ah, that reminds me of the time in one of her classes that the assignment was to "just have fun" with the linocut as the purpose was to "get used to using the medium", "don't worry about making Art". Just have fun. So, going back to my favorite style of humor I carved out an outhouse with a starry sky in the background. And she flipped out. In front of the entire class she was crying, and yelling at me, "How could you Lu!" (I still can't fucking stand it when people call me "Lu") "I can't believe this Lu!" "How could you do this TRITE bullshit, why didn't you add a WINDMILL in the background to make it even more TRITE!" On and on it went. What happened to "just have fun"? Even as I write this I feel my traps contracting, pulling my shoulders to my ears.

The other part of that experience was that my first relationship was with her (sure I'd gotten drunk and made out with boys a few times, some of them more than once, but I was never in anything one would consider a relationship), and she was the first woman I was ever with. And that relationship consisted of secrecy (think small ND town in the 90s), and a whole lot of power and control fuckery. I got in trouble if I spent any time with friends, if I wasn't at home with her, I was to be at the studio making Art. If I did happen to go with friends (because out the other side of her mouth I was supposed to hang out with my friends so people wouldn't suspect we were in a relationship), and I didn't invite her I was an asshole who didn't love her. And if I did happen to spend time with friends rather than the studio I would literally be told I was going to get a C or a D for my A work because I wasn't making Art when not with her. Then there was all the yelling and screaming, and being blamed for everything wrong in her life. 

So, anyway, art and Art became a chore. And it became a constant rehashing of trauma so I could make Art instead of art as per Trina's edict. At one point I did start therapy, but my therapist instead of helping me work through/process my trauma just shamed me for shutting down when I got overwhelmed by my trauma and couldn't speak, or would say helpful things like "I don't think you know what a flashback is" when I would bring it up. So for 5 years I dug deep into my trauma without the support I needed, thus re-traumatizing myself over and over again, and forgetting what it was like to just enjoy line work, color play, and and shapes. Forgetting the joy of creating something from a blank canvas and an assortment of colors. Forgetting how to just let the creativity flow, and let Art come out of me because it needed to, not because I had to to make the grade.

Two years ago yesterday (as per fb) I pulled my oil paints and pallet out after having had a conversation with my barber
about painting (particularly about how I had stopped after college even though oil painting was my favorite medium), and how I needed to reclaim (yes, that very word) Art/art from Trina. That bitch stole it, and it was time for me to take it back. I started by just doing some random color play on the canvas-nothing particularly...well, anything but color play. And I picked up acrylics (just cuz its less messy and toxic for indoor painting) and tried to do some (terrible) self-portraits. After those in particular, I knew I wouldn't be making any of the pieces that I actually was proud of during my college days. But then as I approached my last gender affirming surgery I started feeling true inspiration, something I hadn't experienced since the mid 90s. And then I started painting and what came out surprised me. So much of what I thought I had lost skill wise was coming back. As I reclaim (or perhaps just claim) my body, I am finding myself reclaiming my skills, and my inspiration...and my joy in making A/art.

Top to bottom: 1994, 2025, 2023

Suicide Prevention Month

 I've talked very openly about my struggles with suicidal ideation over the last several years on social media. I know there are those who feel like I'm "oversharing", or looking for attention, but my decision to speak openly about it starts in about 1995. In about 95 I came out publicly in my small college town after I heard about the suicide of an Out young gay man who had been an LGBT advocate in the more urban part of the state. I had admired this person from afar for their bravery, and it...I've sat here for several seconds trying to describe the blow to my soul when I found out. Whatever that feeling was, it lit a fire under introverted, shy, social-anxious me to do something so other people in my community wouldn't give in to the hate that was unrelentingly rained down upon them. So, I came out. I started a GSA at my campus, I spoke college classes, I unashamedly spoke up about who I was. And today I speak about my own struggles with suicidal ideation so that others, regardless of why they are struggling with finding a reason or motivation to hold on to this life know that they are not alone, and maybe, just maybe that will give them the courage to hold on one more, or to reach out for help.

For me, suicidality was never about my gayness. For me it was, and is about drug resistant major depression, and its about trauma/ptsd. I first started having obsessive thoughts after an upper classman at my HS had suicided. It simply hadn't occurred to me before this that that was an option, and I kinda felt guilty that it hadn't occurred to me sooner. Guilty, because if I had thought about it sooner, maybe I could have avoided going through some awful shit. Anyway, from that day forward it was constantly on my mind, all mixed in with the constant flashbacks that haunted me: a shit smoothie to keep my brain occupied and agitated every time I had a quiet moment.

And there were a few times that I got close. I'll save those stories for another day, but will leave it at I was blessed to find the tiniest spark of hope to cling to, or to have someone remind me at a crucial moment that there were indeed people who cared about me, and that I would be missed (and being a people pleaser I didn't want to upset anyone!).

I've been lucky enough to have been in therapy for most of my adult like. I wish I could be the person who just needs therapy intermittently, but my PTSD is such that I don't know if I'll ever get to the place where I "graduate" from therapy, but who knows? Through that therapy though, I've chipped away at the trauma, and I've gotten to a place where the flashbacks aren't a daily TARDIS trip back to the shittiest days of my life. And I'm also very lucky to have a therapist who understands that in order to work through suicidal thoughts and feelings her clients need to know that they can bring them up without having to worry about an automatic involuntary commitment. Unfortunately many therapists are so afraid of liability, or take on too much responsibility for the actions of their clients that as soon as the "S" word in brought up they wan their clients to go straight to the nearest mental health ER, do not pass go, do not collect $50. So, dear reader, if you have a therapist and you have ever struggled with suicidality, please chat with your therapist about how they deal with clients disclosing this issue with them. If you're not having suicidal thoughts now, talk to them now so when the time comes you know what kind of support you can expect. And maybe that is part of the conversation: If I have these feelings, THIS is what I need from you to get through it safely.

Most recently, during my early recovery from my Top Surgery, and torso "contouring" I was in a bad place. I was in a lot of pain, my brain chemistry was all fucked up from the anesthesia, and having gone through all that just to have results that I was not happy with...having gone to sleep excited about finally feeling comfortable in my body, and waking up and looking down to see that it was obvious that the surgeon and I had very different visions of where my dysphoria was, it was devastating. And all those things combined, I was thinking about "going hunting" which is the euphemism my wife and I came up with after my last battle. And fortunately my wife saw how fucked up I was even though I was trying to hide it from her, and we talked about it together with a therapist, and that part of me that was ready to give up, found the spark again, and I'm happy to report as we enter into Suicide Prevention month, that I am actually in a place of being grateful for my life. It isn't a perfect life, a perfect world, or a perfect body, but I am grateful for the love that surrounds me, and maybe more importantly, I am grateful for being AWARE of all the love that surrounds me.

May you be be surrounded by love, and feel it all!

Bad Enough? (TW: SA)

 There are a lot of old stories rattling around in my head these days. Things shoved into the folder labeled "not that bad". As it turns out, after working through some of the "yeah, it was that bad" folder contents, I've found that the "not that bad" scraps have exploded their way out of the filing cabinet and I find myself slipping on scraps of paper at the most inconvenient of times. 

Let me take you back in time to an evening my mom had my bus driver take me home until she and my dad got home. The bus driver sent me and her 3 sons down to the basement to play out of her way. As soon as we got down to the basement S, the oldest boy (6-7 years older than me) suggested we play strip poker. Being the naïve 7 year old that I was, I kinda knew what poker was (mom loved card games), but I didn't know what kind of poker strip-poker was. I asked multiple times and simply got "you know, STRIP poker". No, I didn't know. But they were going to show me.

Once the cards were out, S explained the rules...not how to play poker, P would help me with that, but the part about taking clothes off. I immediately stated I didn't want any part of this game, but was told that I wasn't allowed to quit because I already said I would play. It was gross, and horrible, and scary. And it could have been a lot worse-I don't say that to minimize, but really, it could have been worse. Looking back at the whole situation...knowing now what that erect penis was and meant, it could have been so much worse.

I shut my eyes, and shut down, and I got through it. Eventually I was saved further humiliation when Bus Driver hollered at us to come up stairs. At that point none of the boys had touched me, but on the way up the stairs, S behind me slammed his hand so hard into my crotch that he knocked me off of my feet. As I struggled to regain my feet, he painfully groped me, then smelled his hand. And unfortunately, that was not the last time that it happened. Fortunately, I wasn't around him particularly often, but any time he and I happened to be on the stairs at the same time he took full advantage to repeat his disgusting behavior. The last time he did it was at school 5 years later with all his buddies watching (besides a stairway full of students heading to their next class), and then he and his homies laughed at me when I yelled "DON'T TOUCH ME!" into his face. These assaults were always humiliating, but to have a crowd of witnesses, especially ones who laughed...it just...I don't know, it was a reminder of how alone I was...how no one had my back. If I couldn't stop it, no one else was going to step in...and if I couldn't stop it, it must be my fault.

I've had a lot of shitty experiences. This is one that felt like his intention WAS to hurt me. Not just that he was oblivious, or apathetic to the pain he was causing me, but that he wanted to hurt me.

Maybe it was bad enough?

vi·o·lence

/ˈvī(ə)ləns/

noun

1. behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.

Freezing is not Consent (TW: discussion of SA)

It's been awhile since I've posted. TikTok has been my place to post my thoughts, and process my crap for the last few years. But I'm feeling like going old school today, especially since I only have a few followers here, as opposed to 6k on TT. 

I looked at a couple old drafts before I started writing, and not surprisingly, there was a tidbit that applied to thoughts that are currently rattling around in my head (and which will hopefully find themselves on this page in a coherent order soon enough). So, here is the tidbit in question:  I'm flipping through the rolodex of memories, I remember all the adult men I had to navigate myself out of situations with AS A TEENAGER, and it was always our shame to carry (I say our because my friend L was dealing with the same shit, sometimes the same man during the same camping trip). The camping trip incident was my introduction to "it's my job to make sure that this adult male that I don't want anywhere near me doesn't force me to have sex" as someone old enough to know what sex was.

So here's where what I pasted from my old draft meets what's in my head right now. There's an event that I have yet to process, not just in therapy; anywhere. I haven't journaled about it, I haven't talked with friends or partners about it (beyond vague hints), I haven't even really let myself think too much about the details as it tends to flood me when I do. I've avoided processing this memory not because it was the worst thing that has happened to me, but because of shame brought on by self-blame. I've had all of these ideas in my head about why it was my fault, why I shouldn't feel so traumatized by it, why it wasn't that big of a deal. And it all comes down to that sense of responsibility-it's my job to prevent adult men from (raping) me, not adult men's job to not (rape) me. I used parentheses in the previous sentence because I have believed for these many decades that if I didn't do "enough: {whatever that means} to prevent it, then it was my fault, and if it's my fault it isn't rape (or whatever flavor of sexual assault it might be). Now, if we were talking about your story, dear reader, I would have no problem identifying your experience as rape/sexual assault, but for me, unhitching myself from the burden of blame has been a doozy. 

Just to clarify, the incident in question wasn't rape. Violation maybe? Assault? I'm still working that out. But the place I keep getting stuck at is the belief *I* should have prevented it. Especially since at this point I was a whole 18 years old. 

Another place where I get bogged down is the idea of violence. I had a reminder this weekend of an incident where my sister's boyfriend was about to beat the f*** out of her right in front of me when I was a kid. It was a terrifying situation, and he had beaten her to the point of needing to go to the ER previously, so I knew the level of damage he was capable. So, if something happens and my eyes aren't swollen shut from a beating, have I tried hard enough to stop it? Was it violent enough for me to call it an assault, or was it just a misunderstanding...that happens to be my fault? My therapist has been helping me redefine my idea of what assault, violence, and force are. 

T    "So, was he just being affectionate?"

M   "Ugh, no!" 

T    "Did he block the entrance."

M    "Yes."

T    "Sounds like force to me."

T    "You tried to reason with him, and he didn't listen; you didn't consent. Freezing when he wouldn't listen to you in NOT consent."

I have a lot more work to do on this memory, but one thing I have been able to clarify is that he was not taking "no" for an answer, no matter how I phrased it. No he didn't beat me or threaten me, but he also crossed my physical boundaries, even after I gave him reason not to. He was a bull in a china shop, and was not going to be deterredunless maybe I hit him. I wish I could have hit him, but the layers of trauma from years of boundary violations shut me down. And that is hard for me- I was a little fucking scrapper...but I was too shut down, too up in my terror to move. "Freezing is not consent."

Bad therapy: Kathy W pt 1

With my latest therapist I have on a couple occasions started to delve into the re-traumatization (abuse?) by my first therapist. There are a lot of layers to it, and I think I've denied how deeply it has affected me, but here we are again, and now I'm giving it a little more sustained attention. I don't recall if I've written about Kathy W before, but here we go. 

I started seeing Kathy in 1993. I had known I needed therapy for a long time, but I was terrified of it because I was so terrified of the vulnerability of telling someone about my experiences, and specifically since I was a small child was very insecure about talking, and well, therapy does involve a lot of talking generally. By this time though, I was becoming so self destructive I was ready to try it.

Unfortunately, going in to it I thought a therapist would help me find a way to find my voice, would help me to feel safe, would perhaps give me a little validation. Unfortunately, I was assigned to a therapist who used confrontation as her main style. A therapist who, when my voice was smothered by my own shame and terror smugly told me to get out of her office because she had work to do, and I needed to come back when I was ready to talk. Unfortunately, when I tried to initiate the conversation about the original thing that I had identified as the issue I needed to work on by saying "I had a flashback about" the thing, her response with no further information than that statement was to tell me that she didn't think that I knew what a flashback was, and then she made me define a flashback. No further conversation about the flashback, or the material related to it. No questions, no "how did that make you feel", nothing. 

And as I was thinking about this earlier, I realized that it was 10 years and multiple therapists into my therapy journey before I finally found a therapist who patiently sat with me in the mire and muck of MY presenting issue. Ten years before I found a therapist who helped me to find a way to tell my story. Ten years before someone said, "that's fucked up, I'm so sorry you experienced that." Ten years of wasted time, ten years of therapists in new and interesting ways letting me know that it wasn't safe to share my story. And it all started with Kathy.

I didn't stop it

 Years upon years of therapy I've struggled to throw off the yoke of trauma, and shame. 

It is not a new thing that I believe that everything is my fault. During various events I knew in the moment it was my fault for not stopping whatever it was.

But yesterday I started talking about it specifically in context to shit that happened with adult men when I was a teenager...how anything that happened was my fault because I didn't stop it. About how I tried to figure out the dance of compliance: comply just enough to satisfy them and keep them from becoming angry and doing something way worse, and figuring out what my line is...how much can I tolerate, how much do I allow...how much is too much and then they think they can cross my line? And how terror kept me from just saying "no". How I didn't get to be traumatized because whatever did happen, I "allowed". And...how I'm not able to deny the trauma that pumps through my veins, and oozes out my pours anymore. 

And I also realized during that revelation that it isn't just in the context of perverts; it's also all of the shit with my mom (her nervous breakdowns, her half assed suicide attempts), and really anything that goes wrong. I'm now editing a few weeks later, and this last week at work I had a migraine and could do nothing but hide my head under a pillow and wait for death or my sumatriptan to kick in, and while I was down and other people were in charge of my little lady she fell. And my first thought was, "it's all my fault...if I just would have been there this wouldn't have happened. I didn't stop it. It's my fault." Fortunately I recognized it as an old pattern, and yet, the hook is still there. 

Spiritual Journey

(TW)

This will be a long yarn, and one that won't necessarily make sense in a linear way. I'll tell a long story because all of the parts are important...chocolate chip cookies aren't chocolate chip cookies if you forget the chocolate chips.  I tell this story not because my experience(s) is so unique, but because I'm sure there are lots of folks who can relate to parts of my story.

My family wasn't religious. If pressed on what religion we were my parents would answer that we were protestants. However; although I had been baptized my family had never stepped inside a church other than for a funeral or wedding until my teens. Shortly after we had lost the family ranch to foreclosure when I was 13 and we had moved to a trailer court just outside of our little village my mother started confirmation classes, and I eventually joined the confirmation class. The most important part of why I mentioned the loss of the ranch is because the ranch was my life. The land was the bones of my bones. Since 1st grade I couldn't wait to quit school when I was 16 so I could just work the ranch with my dad, and I had no desire to ever do anything but hide at ranch, safe from the outside world. The ranch was my life, my safety, my peace, my salvation, my connection to something bigger than myself.

After we lost the ranch my dad's mental health declined as his drinking escalated, and not long after he started racking up DWIs. And not too long after that a judge lost patient's with him and said he had to go to treatment. While at Heartview for his court-ordered treatment, my mother and I joined him for Family Week...a week of groups, education, and Ovid the screaming interventionist/counselor. One night we were given the assignment to write our "your drinking has affected me in the following ways" letter. When we went back to the hotel that night I sat down and diligently wrote my letter, excited that I was finally going to get to have my voice heard. For the first time in my life it wasn't about my "poor mother" who had to put up with my alcoholic father. Finally, i was going to get validation that my life had been affected by his drinking too (not to mention my mother's mental health). But after returning from meeting with Ovid my mom reported that I was to change my letter to say what hers did. My letter went in the garbage to my mother could have her own words validated. Once again, there was no room for me.

The importance of all of that is that when I started confirmation classes the Pastor actually listened to me; he appeared to value my opinions, my words. We had many great discussions about the Bible, spirituality...and heavy metal! I felt valued, I felt heard, and my new found religion became my anchor in a sea of chaos. 

Just before I turned 16 my mother decided to move her and I out of state as my father's mental health had continued to decline as a result of his drinking; he disclosed to my mother that the voices in his head were telling him to shoot her. The decision to go away was a good one, but it also meant losing my anchor. And it was a year of being alone with my mother with no support system, and no buffer. It was being all alone in a trailer in a strange town when I discovered my mom had taken a handful of Ativan... again, staying awake all night watching to make sure her chest continued to rise throughout the night because when I roused her she once again laid down the threat that the "social workers will take (me) away" and put her in the mental hospital, besides, she "does this all the time" and knows how many she can take. How many times could I do that? She gets to wake up and go back to "normal" while I carry the trauma, and terror alone. Just pretend everything is normal. Toward the end of the school year my own thoughts of suicide were growing. Each night after school I would walk the neighborhood in hopes of finding a rope that had fallen off of someone's truck so I could hang myself. After weeks of searching I finally decided the method didn't matter, instead the next time my mother would be out of the house for a few hours when i was home I would use any means necessary.  But then I had a dream in which I felt the presence of "God" and I was given a sense of peace, and also the sense that if I ended my life it would not end my sense of isolation. Whether it was divine intervention or just my own psyche it saved my life. And I drew on that moment of connection to Divinity for years when the hopelessness threatened to drown me.

After a year we returned to my home state, and I moved in with my father. And I was able to return to my old church. There was a new pastor, but once again I found someone who spent many hours discussing religion with me. In my conversations with Pastor V and Pastor L I learned three things: 1. the only thing you need to do in order to go to heaven is to state that you believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins...doesn't matter what you've done in your life (yes, even H!tler), just say the magic words. 2. gay people are going straight to hell. Doesn't matter how good of people they are, how many times they say they believe; nope, they are going straight to hell. 3. Pastor L introduced the concept of predestination, and his belief that in contradiction to #1, very few people were going to heaven (himself included), that it took someone "special" to go to heaven.  Fortunately I hadn't figured out that I was a lesbian yet, although I still thought it was bullshit. 

What did come of those conversations though was the belief that I had to be special, pure to go to heaven. I wanted to dedicate my life to God, but I couldn't be a pastor because I was female ("god created women second, so they couldn't lead a church" {wtf}), and there were no Lutheran nuns so I had to find another way to be special in the eyes of god. So I dedicated my virginity to god- I would retain my "purity", because somehow that equated to "godliness" in my head. 

So, I closely guarded my sacredness, my virginity. But then an unfortunate incident occurred, and so not only did carry the shame of the earthly act that had occurred, but I was (in my mind) no longer special in the eyes of god. God would see me as nothing but a whore since I had learned well the lesson that everything was my fault.  In the eyes of god I was shameful, and unworthy of his love and grace. The anchor begins to crack.

A few months later I had my first kiss with another woman and realized why I had never had the same feelings about boys/men as my peers. And that night I lay awake praying, and crying, and finally came to the conclusion at the end of my dark night of the soul that if god would condemn for who I loved, and not by the character of my life and heart, that he wasn't the god I wanted in my life. The anchor fractures.

After putting a gun to my head one night in a tsunami of grief, I reached out to the chaplain who had worked with me and my dad during his dying process. I started going to her church in hopes of finding the spiritual connection I had once had. Sitting in a pew finding joy in the birds returning for spring, flitting from branch to branch just outside the window; and only finding emptiness and loss of connection in the words droned out from the pulpit. 

The final severing from Christianity came when my church "friends", my spiritual community declared upon my coming out as a lesbian that I was a sinner and had no place in their lives (but of course, they would be praying for me). The anchor disintegrated. 

My leanings toward Earth centered spirituality began as a child growing up in what felt like the magical domain of nature, though I hadn't the words to describe it as such. And I had lost that connection to the magic when we lost the ranch, but as I had sat in the pew on Sunday mornings having my heart lifted by the birdies, I started to reconnect to the magic. There was no google when I started upon my pagan path, and very few books, and certainly none in my school's library. So my initial wanderings on this path focused on what I knew from growing up on a ranch, closely connected to the land...stewardship, and connection. Listening to the wind, feeling the heartbeat of mother earth.

My connection to specific deities has been relatively recent, only within the last 12 years or so. But even as my spiritual connection had deepened, solidified, so to had my hunger for spiritual community grown. I engaged with the local pagan community, was a part of a Grove for several years, but struggled to find "connection" and "community" in our 8 times a year rituals. And with the problems I saw in patriarchal toxicity in the Mother organization I had to admit as this last year died that so to had any benefit that I had gotten from the group, and I walked away. 

In what was meant to be a networking reconnaissance mission I found myself sitting in a Christian church once again. On my first visit I was welcomed by an open heart filled with a palpable love in the human manifestation of a petite little woman named Mercy. And so I came back again, and again to a church whose service opens with the words "welcome to all regardless of who you are and where you are in life's journey." Welcome. A church who "is committed to work for justice for all people and for the environment", a church whose vision includes the "desire to be an inclusive community that shares Divine love as a path to peace and justice in the world." Fortunately the service focuses more on the message than the scripture, so I can handle to Jesus, and big reason I keep coming back is that I came to the conclusion that I would rather have a spiritual community that shares my values if not my beliefs, than a community that shares my beliefs but not my values. 

I don't know that I will ever rebuild my anchor, but perhaps I've found a safe place to dock for awhile.