Mary Mills-Pester

Affects of Trauma Series #17
pen and ink on paper

Making marks on walls, arranging sticks and acorns on the sidewalk, peering out from the beautifully protective greens of an old willow tree is where healing from trauma began for me. This is where my creative process sprang from. It was a need to understand the disconnection and discord between cognition and emotion. I became creative through imagination and dissociation, a world where I found refuge.

What could have been an insurmountable traumatic phase in my life instead became my training ground; highly charged with emotions and ideas that flew like sparks from a live wire.

Gratefully I was not forced to take the silent flight that so many women have had to take. I was given a head and hands and the ability to create. For me to create has changed from an instinctual release to discover more information from myself about myself to a visual reminder that my secrets make me sick. Lastly and of great importance, to create is to break the silence and therefore the power that the perpetrator holds.

That space from which art heals resides within me, within the realm of choice, a word of both thought and action. For it is only in the aftermath of trauma that I fully understand the path I follow.

© Mary Mills-Pester