Awhile back as I was healing, I had a visual of an old lady from a distance walking towards me. The closer she came, I realized she was a small child who had been abused. Barely walking, each step she took appeared painful. Startled, I realized she was me! I looked like a battered soldier walking away from war, alone. As I wrote this experience in my journal, I got dizzy and the room jolted sharply. Quickly, I realized I was in the present and kept writing my experience, though feeling nauseous.
As I looked at myself as a child, my clothes and face was disfigured and drooping like a Salvador Dali painting (Spanish Surrealist artist).
Courtesy of DaliPaintings.com
Salvador Dali’s paintings represent trauma extremely well. The distortion of oneself, people, time, and reality. Drowning and fragmented parts that haven’t been processed, not belonging anywhere, floating, warped and flooded. It’s like being held underwater and not being able to breathe, and like being sucked into a vortex of the unknown—unable to escape the terror and detaching from oneself.
Courtesy of DaliPaintings.com
Moreover, time feels like forever…but it keeps repeating itself, not free from it. And time is also lost—where did the time go? Am I in the past, present or future? It’s hard to know what’s real. From the website dalipaintings.com it states, “Dali had studied psychoanalysis and the works of Sigmund Freud, before joining the Surrealist.” On Dali’s website his paintings depicted unhealed trauma and fragmented memories intruding in the present. Dali’s quote, “The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret.” If Dali was a trauma survivor is it possible he released his secret on canvas?
According to Dr. Camea Peca Salvador has a trauma history. He lost his mother and his brother as a small child, and Dali also had a lot of sexually-related trauma. It is said that his father showed him, at a very young age, pictures of bloody and ulcerated male members sick with venereal diseases. The goal was to warn him about the dangers of sex outside of marriage.
Recently, I took a pilot healing and painting class, and I was surprised by the release of emotions and stored pain. Painting skills were not required. It was more about the “process” of painting than what it actually looked like. I painted in more of an abstract style.
Some of my paintings depicted suffering and my inner child floating upside down in the sky. I was able to paint the turmoil and depression that was beyond word description. In one of my paintings of injustice, I painted Jesus on the cross holding a black sheep (me). We were both bloody and tormented by abuse. Yet, I knew His peace by being held by Him. We knew each other’s sufferings—at the hands of others’ evil and vile acts. I painted the background bright yellow representing Jesus’ resurrection power. This was my favorite and most powerful painting. Jesus my compassionate witness and being on the battlefield holding me. As I’m writing tears are flowing realizing the beauty of healing, integrating and living a transformed life—and listening to the song, I Am Woman, an empowerment of healing trauma.
My abstract painting’s tell my story. There are so many ways to heal using art, writing, talking, creating a video (I will post mine in the near future—extremely healing), music and relaxation exercises. There isn’t only one way to heal and integrate trauma. What modalities are you using to heal and tell your story?
