Elaine Ricklin

Memories of a Life I Never Knew #4
hand-colored photograph
8 x 10 in.

My mother was the kind of person who should have never had children. She was selfish, insensitive and often cruel. She called me “stupid” and told people that when I was a young child I was so ugly that she cried. I always got good grades, never lacked for dates when I was older, and graduated from high school in three years instead of the standard four. All of that didn’t matter because any shred of self esteem that I had was sucked out of me when I was very young. As an adult it took me a long time to reclaim my life. The only way I could survive was to reinvent my past. This was done through a series of photographs whose images I created for “Memories of a Life I Never Knew”.

© Elaine Ricklin