HOME | DD

Description
This may or may not be a draft to a final drawing. I was trying to create a reflection as if someone's looking through a window (that window being a memory to their childhood). Wanted to explore childhood trauma in a subtle and pathetic way. I think complex trauma is most often portrayed in extremes, but I think it's most often experienced through minute, long-term exposure. Of course, I'm not speaking for everyone, but I think that's a common experience. I think it's why people grow up undermining their own trauma because it is common and practically normalized. It can be so easily written-off by the child themselves, by other naive children, by ignorant adults, or by the guardians themselves. I had no clue what I was going through would be considered traumatic even in the most blatant instances of verbal and physical abuse. I think trauma is remembered in a variety of ways and I know I felt the most shame when the public might witness me as a "problem child." It reinforced the idea that there was something wrong with me and not with the parents. Even when becoming slightly self-aware, just knowing you're related to this unsocialized, cruel person invokes shame and disgust. I know I felt disgusted in knowing that I was capable of participating in the spread of their contagion. You can't help but reenact what you know, but we can learn to stop the cycle here and now. There's no shame in that.

Hope you are doing okay out there.

Description
This may or may not be a draft to a final drawing. I was trying to create a reflection as if someone's looking through a window (that window being a memory to their childhood). Wanted to explore childhood trauma in a subtle and pathetic way. I think complex trauma is most often portrayed in extremes, but I think it's most often experienced through minute, long-term exposure. Of course, I'm not speaking for everyone, but I think that's a common experience. I think it's why people grow up undermining their own trauma because it is common and practically normalized. It can be so easily written-off by the child themselves, by other naive children, by ignorant adults, or by the guardians themselves. I had no clue what I was going through would be considered traumatic even in the most blatant instances of verbal and physical abuse. I think trauma is remembered in a variety of ways and I know I felt the most shame when the public might witness me as a "problem child." It reinforced the idea that there was something wrong with me and not with the parents. Even when becoming slightly self-aware, just knowing you're related to this unsocialized, cruel person invokes shame and disgust. I know I felt disgusted in knowing that I was capable of participating in the spread of their contagion. You can't help but reenact what you know, but we can learn to stop the cycle here and now. There's no shame in that.

Hope you are doing okay out there.