Love Potion
I wanted to share a little of my writing this week, since I’ve focused mostly on illustration so far. I am currently in the midst of writing an upper middle grade fantasy novel, but it’s far too messy to share any of that yet. I am excited that I’m over 25,000 words in though, as that makes it the longest piece of writing I’ve worked on since I was 16! I will share more about that project in the future when I have the plot developed enough to at least provide a synopsis.
For now, my favorite thing that I wrote last year was a creative nonfiction essay about vicarious trauma (definition coming, if you’re not familiar with the term). For the last ten years or so, creative nonfiction has been my total jam, and I’ve experimented with lyric essays. I’ve come up with a way to write essays where I first write poems on a certain theme, then restructure them into prose, to make an essay that is broken into short sections. I find writing the poems really organic and can sometimes crank one out in five or ten minutes, so with my busy schedule during the school year, this is a great way for me to sneak in some writing.
I wrote the essay, titled Love Potion, for an assignment for my creative inquiry in interdisciplinary arts class fall semester at California Institute of Integral Studies. I then created a mixed media illustration for it, and made a handmade book to hold the essay as well as the illustration. This project helped me process so much of what I was experiencing at work as a mental health therapist at the time, and also helped me begin to recognize my desire to truly develop my skills as an artist and writer and dedicate more time to that part of myself.
I won’t be able to share the whole essay here because I do hope to get it published in a journal or literary magazine, but I’ll include a few of the sections for anyone reading, as well as pictures of the book. I do have to include a trigger warning here for the parts of the essay that I’ll share below: it contains mention of suicide as well as gun violence.
The cover of the book is made out of moss, which captured the idea throughout the essay and art piece of buried feelings, memories and trauma. The beads are a charm that I made and blessed following the steps of old Italian magic, due to my Italian heritage.
1.
Vicarious trauma: The emotional impact of being exposed to the experiences of others who have experienced trauma. The emotional impact of hearing that someone wants to kill themselves, over and over and over again. The emotional impact of picturing the sexual assault in your head that wasn’t yours, but now is yours to carry. You've taken a little of the load, and now you carry it.
My sister and I were sitting outside at a brewery one sunny day in Colorado, and there was a ladder attached to the wall, blocked off in some way so no one could access it, and we looked at it, odd, and wondered why. “Oh, it must be so that people can’t jump off,” my sister said, a trauma therapist, like me. And I looked at her and raised my eyebrows, skepticism and concern all in one. “It’s not even high enough for someone to break their leg,” I said, “let alone kill themselves.” She blinked, realizing the dark place where her thoughts lived. And years later here I am, staring at the hook in my sister's garage, for bikes, or equipment, or something benign, and all I can think about is the 14-year-old boy who wants to hang himself. And I tell my sister I can’t sit in her garage anymore, that 14-year-old boy haunting the edges of my dreams:
The emotional impact of being
exposed
To the experiences
of
Others (us)
(all)
The mixed media collage I created that took me over 20 hours to complete.
4.
She follows me - in the eyes of the girl sitting across from me, in the stories the therapist I supervise tells me, of her client who fights with her mom every morning, of her client who sees her mom drink every day, and she asks me, “when will the other shoe drop?” And I say, “maybe it won’t.” Some teenagers have such an incredible resilience, in the face of abuse and neglect their whole lives. They go to school, put on a smile, do their work, plan their lives. Cry frustration into their pillows at night at the things they can’t control. And they find a way out.
She follows me - In the words I once told her, “You’re so much tougher than most of these kids.” In the way she softly smiled and held her head high. And grief surprises me in these moments, noticing the echo of her once existence in the girl sitting across from me, in the stories I hear. Her death will never make sense. It can’t make sense. And I’ve pictured what it looked like, the horror of the teens in that house, the silence after the shot, the screams of her best friend, who saw the whole thing, who rocked her body as she slipped from this world into the next. And I know this grief will follow me, as I keep hearing stories that mirror hers, as I keep seeing that resilience in the moments between. Pain and joy and human life.
She follows me.
7.
Love Potion
A spell to heal that which we avoid
You will need:
Love
The most painful moment
Community
A song for weeping, sleeping, and laughing
A dance
Your ancestor's medicine
Your first medicine
Method:
Take your most painful moment and stare it in the eyes. Don't blink. Let it enter you, seep through your skin. Take your ancestors medicine and say a prayer for strength, for healing, for the ability to face the darkness instead of run from it. Then take your first medicine, the thing you did as a child that brought the most joy, the most calm. (For me, it is writing, for you, maybe dance, maybe song). Combine the painful moment, the ancestor's medicine and the first medicine. Stir slowly three times. Then paint yourself with the love. Listen to the songs of weeping, sleeping, and laughing. Wrap yourself in the community, and dance.
Please forgive the not great photos but I wanted to show what the whole book looks like in its accordion fold. This is the front spread.
This is the back spread.
This project is one of the art pieces I’ve made using both my writing and visual arts skills, and it really developed me as an interdisciplinary artist. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading the excerpts (well, maybe enjoyed isn’t the right word - I know it’s pretty heavy material!).
Till next week, keep creating!
