I M Perfect lady

Tag: abuse

  • Where Love Lives.

    A lifetime ago, I used to go Caroling with my siblings. One year I made us all scarves to wear. The simple joys of the holidays. Being a creative person, each Christmas I would try and make them all something. Pouring my heart through my hands.

    My brother sent a text yesterday. “Happy birthday! Life is short, enjoy each day. ”  Just enough to bring them and the drama to the front. 

    No matter the words I use, they can’t comprehend my journey.  

    I started to respond, but what could I say? What words would make him and them – understand the magnitude of love, peace and joy there is away from them.

    I believe they see me as suffering in the past hurts, holding on to grudges and non-forgiveness. Forsaking this moment with a mind and heart full of anger.

    Why else remind me of the shortness of life and to enjoy it.

    No matter the words I would type or the sentiment I tried to present, he wouldn’t understand how my heart and soul are filled with light. That stepping away from cycles of abuse the brainwashed cult-like religion – set my soul free and my heart to love.

    I miss family – but not the toxic one. That family comes with generational behaviors and patterns that are near impossible to have real relationships with.

    When I look back at our blind innocence and the unconsciousness of our denial – how we dressed up the holidays to be more – to hide the truth that lay beneath.

    What an impossible task to try and make our family whole. No scarves or ornaments – made with love by me – could put a dent into righting the mess.

    Those simple fun memories are now tainted, knowing what we didn’t acknowledge.

    If only they were just joys of caroling, with fun scarves, sharing our Christmas baking. If only there wasn’t ugly truths right beneath the surface.

    A friend sent a photo of her and her 4 sisters caroling – and their mom.  It fills my heart and breaks it. Of the joy of family and the loss of mine.  A wound that will follow me always.  They are there – sometimes loud – most often a faint hum in the background of my wonderful life.

    I know there are many of us out here, who are living, loving and finding peace and joy – away from our families of origin. It is more than okay to feel the ache of loneliness and feeling sorrow when you see family being loving family. And, the holidays can be especially hard to walk in tandem with grief and joy.

    What I know to be true is that the grief just pops up here and there in the sea of goodness I live in.

    My heart can hold joy and sorrow. If Christmas wishes were granted, I would want my siblings to join me here – on the outskirts of toxic family patterns.

    Until then – I hold space where love lives.

  • Signs of Change.

    In the past 21 years I have been waiting for the sexual abuse to start coming to light. For the flood gates to open and for victims to start standing up and speaking out. For victims to rally one another and expose their abusers. (Victims in the First Apostolic Lutheran Church.)

    And, even more for those who hear the words of the victims to start hearing them.

    Not only listening but to also start taking action steps needed. To not care more for the religion or the reputation of the abuser and his family.

    But to care more about ending this systemic violence against children.

    It seems at least in the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church the darkness is being pierced by voices of victims. Older victims whose Statute of Limitations has passed – as well as those who still can press charges.

    What is so sad is that there are many decades between these girls. Decades of these abusers getting away with it. Decades of preachers knowing and doing nothing; but forgiving.

    I am hopeful the more who stand up, the many who will follow. There is more support today than there was even 21 years ago.

    So called by standers, have to stop standing by – and instead start doing whatever is possible to support the victims.

    To stop supporting the church, the preachers and even going against family if need be.

    As the victims speak out – there also needs others to be willing to listen and sit in the truth and more, be able to take actions.

    I always figured that things would happen in time. Not in my time – but for the truth to erupt when it was time.

    My heart and soul feel that the speaking up and exposing the abusers is contagious- I want it to be uncomfortable for those who do nothing.

    And for those who are willing to go up against the old paradigms to be cheered and supported.

    Twenty-one years ago began the seeds of estrangement. I was unwilling and unable to be with folks who were more comfortable in the darkness.

    I still find it hard to believe that I am the one on the outside looking in – that my family of origin has remained intact.

    While being outside of the family and without a religion, I have found inner peace, love and joy.

    It is my hope that the new victims coming forth are treated more kindly than I was. And that they have the support of many. I can’t even imagine what it would feel like to be supported by your mother and siblings.

    Twenty-one years later – and somethings are showing signs of change.

    May all victims start to live their lives with artful abandon and be who they were born to be – before the abuse happened.

  • Reconnected with my Soul.

    I wondered about knowing your own self worth…is it possible to be full of great wisdom, love, compassion, caring, etc and not know it?  Can a person really not see themselves and their gifts?  Where does self worth come from and how is it so easily overlooked?

    What is self worth?  Is it to see your self with your own eyes and can you do this objectively, or is there a flimy residue of past neglect covering you up?

    I have read that children see themselves through their parent's eyes….(in Alice Miller's books). That how our mother's look at us, is how we learn to see ourselves.

    Is that true?

    But, I also have witnessed people who were abused, and how they see themselves as only valuable when they are 'in use' by others. That they themselves have very little use for themselves in their own life. Their value lies strictly in how much other people need them.

    So, if you come from a very self absorbed mother who didn't see you, you will not see your self either.  And, if your father abused you, HE seen you as his desire…not yours.

    I just wonder when or how we get to our own view of self?

    What has to happen before we can see our own self worth?

    I guess for me, it was when I could clearly see I wasn't seen.

    I felt completely worthless in their eyes.

    I was reduced to nothing.

    I then had to re-build myself.

    My sense of self worth was an inside job and often times I was rediculed by others, and hollered at for choices I made while creating a self that was worth something.

    Even today, this self I now have, isn't always accepted or appreciated or even liked, by others, let alone understood, but inside, the way I see me…I like me.  I love my strength and convictions, my knowings and my feelings.  I am a peace with who I am.  I feel worthy, being me.

    My old view was with my mother's eyes and my worth, was how I was used…and I discovered I was solely used by her to keep her story going, to keep her 'family' together, to keep abuse far and wide from our lives, while abuse worked behind the scenes stealing the worth of each and every child.

    My mother had wrote about me, "Picking up the stragglers" in our family….like my task was to make things 'right' after the damage was done, to fix things, to make them okay again.  And, if I failed, I wasn't giving enough, trying hard enough, doing enough.

    I recall one night laying in my bed and feeling the enormity of their (my parent's) damage, how it not only affect our lives, but our childrens lives.  How it was so far beyond my reach of fixing…sobbing, shaking to the point of losing it, I let it all go.

    Let go of my responsibility for fixing the mess I did not create.

    I disappeared…for I was shown how helpless I really was…without a use. 

    Not only was I abused, but I wasn't going to be able to fix anyone…

    Abuse's insidious energy had completely overwhelmed our family….leaving behind worthless feelings, rising against guilt and shame.  And yet, they (siblings) rallied on, working to make their family right by not seeing yet again…or seeing it through my mother's eyes.

    The cycle completes itself.  Children who are not seen, will not see their children.

    Children who are not seen have no value…unless they are fixing their parents lives.

    This spinning hurricane of worthlessness not stopping…just seemingly to gain more energy as they worked to keep our family 'right'.

    While they were busy shoring up my father's/mother's life, they neglected to see, yet again, their own.

    Their sense of self worth is extracted by what they do for others…never minding at what cost to themselves.

    My journey could be classified with this quote,  "The path into light seems dark, the path forward seems indirect, the direct path seems long…the greatest love seems indifferent, the greatest wisdom seems childish."

    Is the journey recovering your own self worth?

    Who is responsible for it?

    Where will you find it?

    How will you know it?

    When I seen my worth in my mother's eyes, I knew how empty I was…I had done very little for me.

    I have spent the last 8 years filling up my self.


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    For, if your only value is outside of yourself, you can only see you in their eyes.  It will be impossible to see your self, for you eyes are always turned outward to find your worth.

    My own eyes could not see me.  I only judged me by how others reacted or needed me.  They owned me and gave me value.

    And, coming from dysfunction or abuse or co-dependent living, you will have to disappoint and become value less in their eyes in order to regain your worth.

    "If I gained the world…but, lost the Savior…" comes to mind.  I reconnected with my Soul.



  • Reflect That.

    Karma - "The total effect of a person's actions and conduct during the successive phases of the person's existence, regarded as determining the person's destiny."

    While doing yoga today, it came to me that Karma isn't about what you do for others so much as it is what you do for you. How your actions are in harmony with your truth and spirit.

    Karma is very personal…it is between your soul and how you present yourself to the world.

    Karma isn't about doing for others at the cost of your own inner peace, love and joy.

    Our lives (karma) are echoing back how we feel about ourselves…not what we do for others.

    Our destiny is decided by how we speak our feelings and how we create boundaries as we care for our self.  

    Karma is self care…self love…being one with your spirit.

    Our karmic care is lost in a multitude of ways…for me it was abuse and being raised by a woman who was selfish, but not self caring…if that makes sense.

    She wasn't able to care for her self, let alone for the 14 children she gave birth to.

    I wasn't given a good role model on how to sow a destiny of love, peace and joy for my self.

    What I hear many saying is that they are going forward with the positive, and leaving their past behind.  

    And, what I see is that they are unwilling to examine their karmic trail, to see the exact science of cause and effect, and it is how we respond that plants a new karmic seed.

    I just don't see how being 'kind' to my father served my mother.

    It left her with a husband that was incapable to love, no matter how 'loving' she was.

    This is what I mean by our karma isn't doing for others, but rather doing for our selves.

    She would have taught her daughters a completely different lesson, had she been aware of what her actions were doing to her self.

    I had always felt that she had multiple opportunities for a redo…each time he committed another act of abuse…she was given a choice to act differently, but time and time again, she failed to change her response.  She doesn't know how to begin to begin to change her karma.  She will always get what she has been getting, for she is doing what she has always done.

    There is an internal cost to loving people who hurt you.  Each time you focus on their needs and neglect your needs…you are being unloving and uncaring to your self.

    I just can't see how treating yourself poorly will grant you a karmic trail of love, peace and joy.

    You are not giving love if it is hurtful to your self…you are hurting your self and I am not sure what the other person is getting except perhaps a false message…or a message of how much you are okay hurting yourself.

    We are not responsible for the content and the destiny of each other's lives.

    We are only repsonsible for our own life. 

    Our life reviews will be feeling what we have done to others.

    If you are loving them falsely, you will feel this empty love.

    I believe that my karma path changed, my life's destiny was greatly altered when I began living from the inside out.  I went from expecting others to make me me….and instead worked on creating my own self.

    A self that had boundaries and self care rules.

    I no longer was self less and could do anything for anyone.

    I had an inner awareness of this living breathing soulful self who was affected by how I acted.

    I no longer lied to myself.

    I no longer pretended at the cost of myself.

    I became extremely aware of how each action I did was setting up my future world. For, I had experienced living a life, blind to the karmic response…and was intent on making others happy, while completely neglecting me.  And yet, I was very narcisistic.

    I just read that narcistic people can be either controlling or neglectful…and I believe that the difference between a narcistic person and one who is self loving is how they see/love themselves.

    I have been reading just a bit on narissistic people, and here is how I see it.

    They need someone else to show them themselves…they are incapable of seeing themselves by themselves.

    Meaning, I was a good mother IF my children showed me how I was.  

    I was a good friend, if a friend could show me how I was by what they said about me.

    If another person wasn't there, there was no me.  My sense of self was just a reflection.  I had no inner view of myself.

    A narsissistic person disappears without you telling them who they are.  It is a job that is endless.  My mother is only a mother if we make her one.  On her own, she is very much not a mother.  I was/am the maker of the mother daughter relationship…she couldn't be a mother without me.

    I know this will seem vaguely mental, but unless and until you can get away from the reflection of how others see you….you will not get this.

    I have deflected if you will all other's opinions, and have gained a connection with me inside.  I have literally turned inward to find out who I am.

    In doing so, my karma has changed from being narsisstic to being self loving.

    Anytime you are worried about your reflection (how others see you) you are dancing on the lip of being narsisstic.

    My mother believed, that her reflection of how she seen my father would change him…for, she loved her reflection of her self and not her self.  So, she worked on repeatedly changing his reflection by how she saw him.  And failed to see the real him.

    The world is not set up for us to change each other.  Imagine how brutal that would be, to have your image continual changed by how others seen you. Which they do and it does…but only in their eyes.

    No one can change my image of me, but me.

    I am solely responsible for my actions and my responses. It is my intention to pay attention to my inner world and the outer world will reflect that.






  • The Unofficial First Member

    I am part of a group of women who are in the incubation stages of forming a place where women can meet and share their journeys.  While its focus or its intentions is to help women travel their personal journey after abuse, it truly can be for any women who has something to share or needs a hearing ear and a helping hand.

    Sometimes groups tend to be 'victim' groups, but I know that while I was part of a quilter's group, I found it helpful to see role models that encouraged me to find a voice and to utilize a wider variety of choices.

    I see this women's group as being a two way street, where all are welcome…the abused and those who mentor us out of the darkness, we will teach each other the contrasts of life's journey.

    I am in the group as a free spirit, not connected or affiliated with a group or agency, perhaps, unbeknownst to me….the first official member.  For, behind my name is the experience of being abused, of living 40 years in denial…being without access to my personal voice, feelings or choices in my own life.  A victim without knowing it.

    I want to walk with others who are walking behind me.  I hope my experiences will offer hope.  

    The other women in the group are different than, and yet they too are traveling their own personal journey as well as being in the profession of victim services.  They have a wider view than I, and are seeing the victims from the outside.  My view is inside out.

    Together the combinations so far, are very different and extremely helpful, like many points of light…a lighthouse for women; we can see each situation from muliple views.

    All women are welcome, for we need good role models and mentors as well as creative artful women, and those in need.  We need victims in various stages on the journey of abuse, who can utilize and grow in our midst.  A community of ladies, each bringing their unique journey to teach us about their path.

    I want this group to be a place where all truths are honored.  

    Where it is a must to just be you.

    We accept only originals.

    I am excited that the seeds are planted….the beginning as begun.  I do love that I am the first member…or at least I see me as such.  For now, "The unoffical first member."

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    Ladies on a Journey!                                               photograph by Hannah Jukuri

  • My Body and Mind are with Me.

    I have been working on a book that has photographs of my quilts along with some writings and it feels like it is a completion to my Art Therapy. Sitting with each quilt and writing about what wisdom it imparted to me; a journey in fabric.

    I now can see why folks write books, for it takes all the loose ends and ties them together, completing a section of your journey.  I am seriously thinking now, of doing a reading book…one that will encapsulate how it feels to wake up in abuse and walk with truth in order to be free.

    It finally feels like I have picked apart and investigated many aspects of abuse and that I can leave it behind with full understanding…knowing it, will allow me to sidestep the same potholes in my future.

    The greatest part of my journey wasn't the act of abuse, but how I developed and grew from there.  How my mind was completely changed to make me believe in an alternate reality, one where I lived for 40 years.

    In my experience, healing from abuse is to work your way back to reality…where the truth fits in.

    It feels like I am entering into a new phase, one that isn't so littered with fragments of an unexplored life.  The mountain of abuse has to be climbed, it isn't good enough to just glance its way and walk on.  I had to become intimate with abuse in order to rescue my self from it.

    Abuse had infested each aspect of my life, for I was the common denominator and my mind was present in each of my life experiences, even when the truth was kept out. A confused mind recorded my history, "weaving the most plausible story"…as Dr. Jill Bolte writes.

    Wrestling my life back from my mind and correcting its errors has been a thrilling terrifying ride.  

    Martha Beck describes it this way. "I recall its horror and beauty, the enormity of all the things I have lost and the incalculable preciousness of the things I have gained.  I wouldn't give up the journey – not a moment of it.  On the other hand I have no desire to live it again."  

    I agree with her 100%.  I have no desire to restart this process of rewiring my mind connecting it to reality…nor would I want to again go through the disconnection of so many relationships.

    It truly is like killing one life and birthing another. Harder than death, for in death, you are just gone.  Now, I am gone from their lives, but alive.

    I felt the death of my old life. I grieved for me…while resurrecting a me.

    All that really died were lies….and what was born was truth.

    But, the lies I had come to love.

    And now I had to learn to love the truth…it took awhile for me to love the truth, for the first tastes of truth were seasoned with abuse.

    Now, I am comfortable here.  

    I love truth, and feel uncomfortable with lies and skirting around issues and pretend…or silence about the things that matter.

    I even believe that my mind is happier, more at peace, relaxed and content…for it no longer has to manufacture an overlay to hide what I didn't want to know.

    My body and mind are at ease, they agree.

    My Spirit feels safe to be me…for it no longer has a conflicted perception of the world in front of it.

    Where I am, my body and mind are with Me.

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  • We abuse our self.

    I am working on putting a Picture Book together with my Story Line quilts…and writing a brief synopsis about each quilt as it represents a portion of my journey.

    I have a visual graph of my inner transformation as I undid abuse and changed my perceptions back to the truth.

    Change is a very slippery word and it often times gets misconstrued, for we are expecting a dramatic life altering physical change, when all that is required is a 360 degree perceptional change.

    It is to change HOW you see things, not the things.

    To remove yourself from one belief and settle your self into another.

    Moving your awareness.  Rearranging your thoughts to match reality instead of using thoughts to cover up what is real.

    What most may fail to recognize, are the changes we fail to make when abuse calls upon us.  Many will focus on the physical act, but few will focus on our perceptions.

    In an abusive home, where abuse isn't addressed…what this means is that, perceptions don't change to now match the new reality.  It isn't that the act isn't dealt with, but rather the perceptions don't change to mirror what just happened.

    It is this that totally screws with the minds of a child.

    Here is the deal.

    My father CHANGED when he acted out sexually to me.  At this point, my viewpoint of him should have changed too.  When I didn't change this inside of my head.  My head no longer matched reality.

    With a head that is askew, I then built my life.

    To undo the abuse, what we are really saying is that we need to straighten out our perceptions.  We have to now make the changes we failed to make way back then.

    It sounds so simple, but I had created a whole life, based on the wrong perceptions.

    I now had to change a father into a pedophile, a mother into his accomplice, and it left me with a new family portrait.

    Change one picture, and the rest start to shift.

    My father changed when he abused me and I didn't act like anything had changed. 

    However, my reality had changed, I just wasn't allowed to let my perceptions of him change.

    Instead of recording the actual event, it recorded things that surrounded it.

    I don't have many memories of my childhood, but I do have wierd ones.

    However, most importantly, my body recorded it accurately.  IT feared my father.

    It didn't want to get close to him.

    No matter what my mind concocted, my body held the correct perceptions.

    I had to change my mind to match what my body felt.

    Undoing abuse means you have to change your mind.

    It doesn't mean forcing your body to feel comfortable or at ease with someone who has hurt you.  It means to follow your body's lead.

    When you change the perceptions in your head to match reality, you will begin to act differently. 

    You will act in kind to reality.

    I no longer felt I had to force myself to be in relationships with family who I no longer trusted or felt safe with…or whose perceptions didn't match reality.

    The greatest tragedy of abuse is that we don't change our perceptions of the person who hurt us.  We want a mother and father so badly, we will think anything to maintain this in our heads.  And as little helpless children, we needed to believe that we were safe.  We wouldn't have survived knowing there was no one there to save us, that we were living in the home of a pedophile and his wife.

    How awful this is to an abused child.  Your wounds go unattended, in order to keep up the perceptions in your home.  If they see your abuse, they will see the monster who lives there too.

    In order to keep the illusion going, you adjust your perceptions.

    Most have no clue what this does to a human being.  It makes you insane.

    Insanity is seeing a reality that doesn't exist.

    Seeing a father where a pedophile stands.

    I became sane, when I saw reality…my perceptions finally matched my body.

    Abused children who are abused by a family member, are usually neglected in order to keep the abusive family member. Rarely is the child treated and the family member removed.

    They would rather keep an abusive father than live without one.

    The child then learns, to overlook abuse and keep the relationship.

    What we fail to appreciate is that we are holding onto abuse and there is no relationship outside of that.  Our new relationships are abuse.

    It is abusive to ourselves to change our truth and perceptions to go against reality.

    We keep a 'loving' father and we abuse our self.

  • Hear Their Cries.

    It is that time a year when on my route, I get to see babies in nature.  The ones I particularly love, are the fawns.  They are so wobbly and tiny, and yet expected to cross the roads quickly behind their moms.  I have seen three sets this spring.

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    This little one got confused.  It did not follow the mom, and was making crying noises.  When I got between the baby and his mom, she came back across the road and stood between me and baby.  And she began making distress noises.  I drove off, letting them be in peace.  And, forgetting to get her picture.  You can tell by the size of the "For Sale" sign, how tiny it is.

    Further on the route, on a paved road, I again watched a mom cross the road, and a baby start, hesitate and then go back to the side of the road and lay down.

    So, I slowly drove up and snapped this picture.

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    This is right on the side of the pavement….I am just leaning out of my passenger window.  It can almost hide in the short grass.

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    As I am taking this picture, the mom comes back across the road, but quickly disappears in the trees. I again, leave…knowing I am causing them both stress.

    What amazes me is how attentive the mothers are in nature, and how defensive of their little ones, how they will put themselves in the way of danger to save their child. The natural mother instinct to protect, is alive and well out in the wild.

    What a marvel that without parenting classes they do this so well.  I said to the momma deer that stood and pranced in distress…."Good Mom, you are doing a good job!"

    And then there is the human species, who seem to fail at this in rising numbers.

    I am not sure if our natural mother instincts are disengaged, or do we not recognize danger?  

    In my experience, my body had a warning system fully engaged, but my mind overrode this "fear" signal.  It first of all deleted the molestation pictures or failed to even record them. So, all I had was a beeping body, but nothing else to go on.  My fears of my father seemed groundless and false.

    I was unable to discern danger…for I wanted my mind to agree. 

    As a child, in order to survive, our minds protect us. By not remembering the abuse. And this alone disengages the danger knowing.  We can't survive in childhood, with all of our faculties, IF we know, we are in danger.  Yet, oddly, what we don't feel is safe. We are not if full blown danger, but nor are we relaxed and feeling cared for.

    I have been thinking about what I could contribute to Dial Help as a hand out.  For they handed to me what was abuse.  I am thinking, instead there needs to be a worksheet, that is similar to "You know you're a Redneck, IF…."

    So, it would be, "You know you're a victim, IF…"

    The way the human body and mind work together to help us survive, is the hurdle we need to overcome in order to get back to who we were prior to abuse.

    This mechanism that is automatic, pre-sets us into believing what is not real…and not believing that which IS.

    Our inner sight and knowing is completely backwards.

    It is my belief, that there are many folks just like me in the FALC, who have this psychic blindness. And we are asking the blind to see. How?

     I am not sure I can articulate this accurately, to portray the dilemma any agency will have to flip this around, for they are living in a sea of danger and are unaware.

    The momma deer, knows I am a danger to her child.

    The woman who is married to a pedophile doesn't see the danger.

    What I do believe, though, at least in my experience…is that the child is trying to teach the parent. The child is giving out signals that the parent is missing.

    But what I also know to be true in most cases, is that the parent themselves are abused and their own pain has them so self absorbed, they can't see their children.

    They haven't healed from their own childhoods…so they don't know how to mother naturally, and to know danger.  Unlike animals in nature, we don't know who the predators are.

    And when this is so, the children are left unprotected.  It is open season all year round, and a child has no one to hear their cries.




  • By Feelings.

    I always knew that my quilting was Art Therapy, I just never knew how…it just was. 

    I never sat down and dissected the parts or even looked closely at the process, but rather was focused on the fabric, quilts and design, but not at what was happening behind the scenes if you will or what the overall technique was doing.

    I was processing my pain…while the mind was focused on the quilt, my unconscious was leaking out in the overall picture.

    It was like there were two selves down there quilting.

    The conscious quilter and the unconscious pain.

    My quilts were a barometer of my unconscious pain, my fears and sense of self; as my sense of self worth grew, the Lady in my quilt became more alive and animated. And at times answers to fears were shown to be unfounded.

    What I find so odd is that I felt I was escaping myself by quilting, and yet it was there that I was most prolific.  I wasn't running from me, but towards me.

    My feelings would dictate the scene in the Art and the fabric and design.  I knew I quilted by feelings, I just never looked at what I was feeling or why I chose what fabric I did and why I felt drawn to create a lady engaged in a certain feeling.

    And there were times I would start out with one feeling and then take sudden turn and a completely different quilt would emerge.

    All of this is very amazing looking back at my quilted journey of feelings.

    What I recall most, is the times I felt so out of sorts in real life, so lost in the now and old relationships, and how at home the Lady felt on the quilt…and how she seemed to foretell my feelings, ahead of me being aware I felt that way…perhaps ahead of my mind.

    Guess that is what Art is more about, getting out of your mind and playing with feelings.

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    Photograph by Hannah Jukuri

    A clothesline full of feelings as a woman processes her pain, her life and seeks to find hope for her future.  I was completely turned inside out and quilted from there as well.  These are my insides; my feelings and emotions.  Contrasts, convergences, waves of energy…processing who I wasn't and processing who I was…finding my way by feelings.

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  • Quilted into My Art

    Last week at Dial Help, I was given a thumb nail sketch of a few different disorders or what I guess we call Mental Conditions or ways in dealing with pain and abuse.

    One of the things we talked about was Cutting.  

    What I learned about self harming, is that it is a process. Yes, it is about feeling something (pain), but it is also about watching the scar etc appear…and about the special tools used to cut.  

    As our trainer talked about Cutters, it came to me, that I used quilting the same way.

    I was very drawn to the whole process.  It was my private space to hide in and to concentrate on the process so not to feel the pain of abuse.  And I was able to Feel, to make myself feel, except that the feelings I chose happened to be good feelings, excitement, but I was controlling how I felt.

    So, when my life would get especially confusing or out of control, I headed to the basement, where I could control what I felt, but in a totally different direction…and the process of quilting was very detailed.

    Choosing the fabric, playing with designs and watching the process of Art take place, the evolution from thought to completed quilt.

    A process of controlling my feelings.  

    I just didn't know what I was doing, but I knew I had to do this.  Imagine, how grateful I am….to have my Process (Art) on display, while cutters live in shame, hiding their scars.

    My scars…are all quilted into my Art.  

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    Photograph by Hannah Jukuri