EN/DE
Healing

Trauma Has Many Faces

2 min read

Trauma Has Many Faces

Content note: This post is about trauma and emotional healing. Read with care and at your own pace.

For years I painted the trauma of my childhood – without knowing I was doing it.

In countless pictures, I captured the core of something I couldn’t name back then. I painted, and I learned to accept my dark side. That it wasn’t “my” dark side at all, but that of the person who exposed me to traumatic experiences for years, I didn’t know back then. The brain is an incredible master of repression.

Light breaks through

Again and again, the dark motifs were broken through by light and color. Just as I put my trauma onto paper, I also kept painting myself into my safe place – to the still water, the red houses, the summer in which nothing can harm me.

At the top, a peaceful watercolor of a Swedish lake landscape; at the bottom, a tangled ink drawing of faces.
“I go to my safe place.” · and at the same time: “I don’t know who I am.”

Both sentences were true at the same time. That is the nature of trauma: the safe place and the lostness live side by side, in the same chest, in the same picture.

What lay hidden for so long

My subconscious had long since begun to bring to the surface what had lain deeply hidden for so long. Until one day it came back with full force.

At the top, a large, darkly framed eye in ink; at the bottom, a framed, bright Swedish picture on a wooden wall.
“I don’t remember anything.” · and at the same time: “I dream of the future.”
At the top, a Swedish shelf still life with a painted car; at the bottom, a watercolor portrait with a closed mouth.
“I make plans.” · and at the same time: “I can’t speak.”
At the top, a menacing wolf in ink and watercolor; at the bottom, a woman in a turquoise dress fiercely raising a sword.
“I feel threatened.” · and at the same time: “I am strong.”
Now it may go.

After 35 years without any memory of what was done to me – but with all of its symptoms – I can finally become free. What had no name for so long may now go.

And I am healing.
With the help of my art, too.

Collage of six works: Swedish house, eye, lake landscape, ink faces, rose portrait and wolf.
A selection of the pictures that came to life along this path.