Adoption, Art Therapy, and PTSD

Posted on November 27, 2013 by Maureen McCauley

There’s a school of thought that adoption is equivalent to violence, that the separation from one’s mother is inherently traumatic, and that the loss of a family (language, culture, history, birthright, traditions) is for some people so severe as to be debilitating.

As an adoptive parent, I find that school of thought to be sobering and daunting. I’d like it to be wrong. Yet I know that, for some adoptees, the impact of their being adopted–even if it’s the “right thing,” even if the adoptive parents are good and loving people–has a challenging, lifelong impact that interferes with their ability to trust others and to build healthy relationships.

Add to the trauma of being adopted any incidents of abuse and/or neglect, either before or after adoption, and you have the potential for a diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

We think of that diagnosis perhaps most frequently for soldiers who have witnessed or participated in horrific acts during wartime, and who then seek help after that trauma. But PTSD can appear in other circumstances, including adoption.

The National Institute of Mental Health explains it this way:

“When in danger, it’s natural to feel afraid. This fear triggers many split-second changes in the body to prepare to defend against the danger or to avoid it. This “fight-or-flight” response is a healthy reaction meant to protect a person from harm. But in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), this reaction is changed or damaged. People who have PTSD may feel stressed or frightened even when they’re no longer in danger.

PTSD develops after a terrifying ordeal that involved physical harm or the threat of physical harm. The person who develops PTSD may have been the one who was harmed, the harm may have happened to a loved one, or the person may have witnessed a harmful event that happened to loved ones or strangers.”

Immanuel Williams was diagnosed with PTSD after being removed from his adoptive home. During the trial of his adoptive parents, Larry and Carri Williams, Immanuel’s therapist testified about Immanuel’s diagnosis and prognosis. I wrote about the therapist’s testimony here.

I doubt that most adoptees struggle with PTSD, but I am certain that some do. In any case, many children, teens, and adults deal with the “fight or flee” response quite often. I’ve read about a “freeze” response as well, that response of an inability to react, of staring, of feeling panic or anxiety. I would not minimize the trauma of adoption. Most adoptees ultimately do just fine, but some have mighty struggles. We do them and their families a disservice to minimize or deny the impact of grief, loss, and trauma.

In addition to understanding attachment and trauma, in addition to working with skilled clinicians in determining a diagnosis, art therapy can often be a significant healing tool, for wounded warriors, for adoptees, for anyone working through a profoundly painful experience.

Here’s a recent New York news story about the successful use of art therapy with soldiers. There’s a good, brief video about the program. Here’s an example of the art:

From wwnytv.com: “Art Therapy Helps PTSD Sufferers”

We tend as a society to discount or minimize the mental suffering that we ourselves or others go through. We also tend to minimize the value of art in healing some of that suffering. I am increasingly convinced that art can do great things in helping create new stories, or in expressing pain in safe ways, and in then leaving the pain behind.

It doesn’t have to with artistic talent. It has to do with letting go, with letting sadness and trauma take a different form, and with easing suffering.

Source: Healing Through Art (Facebook site)

Here are a few related Facebook sites; click on them to see more.

Healing With Art (I got the link to the New York story from this site.)

Art Therapy Without Borders

Art Therapy

According to the news story about the soldiers: “A permanent display of hand prints and pins will soon be on the wall of the building for all who enter to see and will include the following quote chosen by the soldiers themselves: ‘The healing of your invisible wounds begins here.’ ”

Let me say that again: “The healing of your invisible wounds begins here.”

Hana, the Ethiopian Community, and Ethiopia Reads

Posted on October 15, 2013 by Maureen McCauley

Sometimes we American adoptive parents can forget the feelings of our children’s fellow citizens about the loss of their children.

I’ve known many Ethiopians who are grateful to be in the United States, because there are truly far more economic and educational options here for them. I know many Ethiopians here in the US who are working hard to bring their relatives to the US, and who send money back to their families in Ethiopia, hoping to help them in small and large ways. I’ve had many Ethiopians express gratitude to me for adopting my girls. And I believe that when Ethiopians express gratitude to me for having adopted two girls, their thanks are tinged with wistfulness and sorrow that the girls had to lose their culture, their family, their language, their heritage, their people to be here.

The trial of Larry and Carri Williams in Washington state captured attention around the world, as people shared sorrow and outrage, hearing what happened to young Hana Alemu, an Ethiopian adoptee, and to Immanuel, both of whom were adopted by the Williamses. The Williamses were convicted on August of homicide by abuse, manslaughter, and first degree assault of a child; their sentencing is now scheduled for October 29.

As an adoptive parent of Ethiopian twin daughters, my heart ached for Hana and Immanuel. In the course of watching the trial unfold, I shared a number of conversations with adult international adoptees, as we sought to understand, grieve, and listen together. I also talked often with members of the Ethiopian community in Seattle and in Skagit County. Their grief was especially poignant.

In some ways, there is no understanding what happened in the Williams family. It is a tragedy for everyone involved. And it may seem simplistic or fatuous to suggest that any good can come from this harrowing case.

Yet I believe that good is indeed possible. I wrote about Hana’s Legacy here, and that gives some ideas for change and hope.

I have had a long-standing connection with the beautiful, complex, ancient country of Ethiopia for nearly 2 decades, as a result of adoption. I’ve long been interested in literacy and I love libraries, so my connection with Ethiopia Reads makes sense. Ethiopia Reads promotes literacy in Ethiopia, provides books in local languages, and has planted libraries in every region of that large country. I’ve been on the Ethiopia Reads Board, I’ve visited the Awassa Reading Center and other libraries, and I remain committed to the idea that with literacy can come empowerment and possibilities, especially for children, especially for girls.

Two talented Ethiopian artists, both of whom now live in the Seattle area, have also been wonderful, powerful friends of Ethiopia Reads. Both have also, like so many members of the Ethiopian community in Washington state and around the globe, grieved for Hana and Immanuel. Yadesa Bojia is an amazing artist and musician. Please take time to learn about him here. Sultan Mohamed is also an accomplished artist. You can read more about him here.

Both of these men have supported the work of Ethiopia Reads (and other important Ethiopian causes), through their time, their good hearts, and their incredible art.

Here is one of Yadi’s newest paintings:

Original artwork by Yadesa Bojia

To me, the painting shows the fire, the power, the light that can be created through reading. It’s a shared joy and gift between mother and child. It’s the mother’s knowledge of what reading and education can mean for her children, who have so much potential, given the opportunities.

Here is one of Sultan’s:

Original painting by Sultan Mohamed

Note the photo of Hana, surrounded by Ethiopian faces, perhaps angels, but certainly reminding us she is neither alone nor forgotten. Amharic writing engulfs her as well, ensuring us that she remains connected with her roots, her language, the sounds and words of those who loved her in Ethiopia and beyond.

These talented artists, these good men, have donated their paintings to an upcoming event (December 14, in Seattle, information provided below) to raise funds for Ethiopia Reads. I am in awe of their generous hearts, and of their deep commitment to children whose lives can change through literacy.

It may seem paradoxical that adoptive parents should work to ensure that fewer children need to be adopted, but it’s true. May we continue to move toward a world where all children can read, and thus be empowered in this world. May all children have safe, loving families, who can keep them and provide for them all that they dream of.

Information about Ethiopia Reads and the December event is available here. If you are looking for a small, effective organization that has opened libraries across Ethiopia where there were none, that has trained and employed Ethiopian teachers and librarians to sustain the libraries, that has worked with the local community in a respectful, transparent way, please look into Ethiopia Reads.

Mapping Adoption Journeys: The Cartography of Healing

Posted on October 13, 2013 by Maureen McCauley

As a writer and artist, I see maps in many ways, as canvases, as metaphors, as information. I love this quote from Peter Turchi’s Maps of The Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer.

“…The earliest maps are thought to have been created to help people find their way and to reduce their fear of the unknown. We want to know the location of what we deem life-sustaining and life-threatening. Now as then, we record great conflicts and meaningful discoveries. We organize information on maps in order to see our knowledge in a new way. As a result, maps suggest explanations; and while explanations assure us, they also inspire us to ask more questions, consider other possibilities.”

I considered that paragraph through the lens of adoption.

In adoption, we tend to create our own maps, and they often are missing significant signage, exact locations, and detailed directions. Our maps often change a lot over time, from what we thought we knew to be true when the journey began, to what we later see through different eyes, with new information, with deeper understanding. There are all sorts of roadblocks, dead ends, surprises, unexpected twists and turns. Maybe if we don’t have a map, we can create our own.

In addition to Peter Turchi’s Maps of the Imagination, I also highly recommend Jill K. Berry’s book Personal Geographies: Explorations in Mixed Media Mapmaking. Neither book is specifically about adoption. I’m drawing (literally and figuratively) from both books in considering ways that adoptees, first mothers, and anyone with “missing pieces” in their family history can draw a new map, whether real or imagined, with the information they have at hand. In so doing, perhaps a new measure of healing can occur.

I think of my daughters, and how they might create a map from the small Ethiopian village where they spent the first 5 years of life, drawing an arrow then about 200 kms north to Addis for several months, then to Bole airport, to Rome, to New York City, to Washington, DC, to Maryland. Those last 5 locations all were visited in one day.

That map would show an astonishing, life-changing journey. Imagine experiencing it through the eyes of a 6-year-old. Imagine contemplating it through the eyes of a 25-year-old.

I think of adult adoptee friends who traveled to the US from Korea as children, and genuinely have no idea where they were for years of their lives prior to arrival here. The map is blank. But their lives did not start upon arrival in America. Perhaps the creation of a new map could help clarify feelings, could consider possibilities in a healing, calm way.

I think of my friend Angela Tucker born in Tennessee, who then spent about a year with a foster family, and was adopted in northern Washington state. Her map would largely consist of Washington, Bellingham to Seattle, but recently she has revisited Tennessee, no well-marked map in hand, tracking down places and people she once knew, though in a different lifetime. (See the amazing, powerful documentary Closure to learn more about her journey.)

I think of birth mothers who can draw a map of pregnancy and delivery, but then the path goes dark. Their child’s travel continues, but the first mother is no longer part of that journey. Imagine the possibilities of creating a map that the two could share, showing where they’ve been and what they’ve seen in the intervening years.

Take a look at this “Computer Heart Map,” from Personal Geographies:

Computer Map Heart from Personal Geographies, p. 42

I love the possibilities here: a series of islands, shaped like a heart, with places like “Adolescent Straits,” the “Sea of Forgiveness,” and islands that the artist has named “Dreams,” “Ideas,” “Abandonment,” “Adoption,” and “Learning.”

I’m thinking of all these possibilities in connection with the Association of Personal Historians national conference in November. I’m presenting a workshop titled “Adopted and Estranged Families: Rebuilding a Personal History.” This is the description:

“Many people don’t have the luxury of knowing their family. Those who are separated by adoption or just estranged from their birth family still need to know where they came from and how to embrace their cultural origins. In this workshop, Maureen will discuss methods to find information, help normalize difficult pasts, and celebrate complex histories, even if birth records are not available. You will learn about innovative approaches using mementoes, DNA services, adoption records, new technologies, and more. And you will learn that even if conventional methods and research materials aren’t available, you still can have powerful personal history stories.”

One of the “innovative approaches” I will share include maps, and ways to create and re-imagine them through art, filling in some blanks, or at least re-framing them, with the goal mostly of moving toward healing.

Final thought today: Miles Harvey, author of The Island of Lost Maps, is quoted in Personal Geographies: “Sometimes a map speaks in terms of physical geography, but just as often it muses on the jagged terrain of the heart, the distant vistas of memory…”

Chinese Baby Girls and Terracotta Soldiers

Posted on October 10, 2013 by Maureen McCauley

China’s One Child law, which took effect in 1979, has meant that couples with more than one child would be fined or otherwise punished, There is a cultural preference for boys in China, and so girls have often been abandoned (or aborted or murdered). A trickle of adoptions from China began in the early 1980’s. Some 70,000 Chinese baby girls have arrived in the US for adoption since the early 1990’s. Thousands more were adopted to Canada, western Europe, and Australia. Most were under 3 years old, so most are now reaching adulthood.

The One Child law has created controversy in terms of ethics and economics; these controversies are familiar territory for international adoption as well. The policy has also, not surprisingly, created a range of responses from poets, filmmakers, writers, sculptors, and other artists, in China and around the globe.

You’ve perhaps heard of the astonishing Terracotta Army, a huge collection of sculptures buried underground in Xi’an with the first emperor of China, around 210 BC. They were discovered in 1974, and consist of over 8,000 soldiers, plus chariots, horses, and more. A Wikipedia article called “Terracotta Army” is here. If you are in Bern, Switzerland, you can see “Qin–The eternal emperor and his terracotta warriors” on display through November 7, 2013, at. The warriors will be on display at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis in May 2014. The Indy museum is the world’s largest children’s museum, by the way. Of course, the best place to view the warriors is in Xi’an itself, of course. It was a TripAdvisor.com Travelers Choice 2013 Winner.

So what is the connection among art, Chinese baby girls, and the Terracotta Army?

A BBC article “How Chinese art explores its one-child policy” explains. Here’s the introduction:

“Huiyun started her life in the garbage. As an unwanted baby girl, her parents abandoned her in the poor province where she was born in central China. There, a pair of refuse collectors found her with her umbilical cord still attached. They kept her, bringing her up as their own.

Huiyun is now 12 years old, and life has taken a turn for the better. This year she became one of eight models featured in provocative French artist Prune Nourry’s new exhibition Terracotta Daughters, now showing in Shanghai’s Gallery Magda Danysz. An exploration of China’s skewed sex ratio, the exhibition dishes up a new version of a national treasure − with a twist. Nourry has fashioned more than one hundred sculptures in the same clay, and using the same techniques, as the ancient Terracotta Warriors, the famous collection of sculptures representing the armies of the first Emperor of China. But instead of producing a brigade of soldiers, the artist has created an army of schoolgirls. They symbolise China’s millions of missing women.”

You can find the rest of the BBC article here.

I do want to note that while the title of the BBC article is “How Chinese art explores its one-child policy,” the sculptor of the Terracotta Daughters is a French artist currently based in Brooklyn. Prune Nourry in 2010 exhibited work titled “Holy Daughters,” which drew “parallels between the cow, sacred animal and symbol of fertility in India, and the depreciated condition of women.”

As a writer and artist, I find this work evocative and challenging. “An army of school girls.” Terracotta Daughters: yet whose daughters are they? And of course, there is an army of Chinese adult adoptees as well, and I mean that in the most empowering and respectful sense. Baby girls, and adopted children, grow up. Some choose to travel back to China, to explore the culture, to search for family, to re-connect as Americans, as Chinese-Americans, as immigrants to America, as Chinese adults.

The acclaimed documentary Somewhere Between follows 4 young women adopted from China as they consider identity, loss, ethnicity, race, and more.

We can learn so much by listening to their journeys and stories, as well as those of the Terracotta Daughters.

Adoption Stories In the Light of Day, Through Art and Hopes for Healing

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Maureen McCauley

About a week ago, I was sitting alone in my house on the eve of my birthday. The last few years have been tumultuous, filled with changes and surprises, some unwanted, some wondrous, some confusing. I was in a contemplative mood, wobbling among doubt, enthusiasm, and bursts of inspiration. I came across this, on the artist Flora Bowley‘s website:

Hi everybody. Have you heard about Life Book yet? It’s a really lovely year-long mixed media online art class put together by Tamara LaPorte. I had the pleasure of meeting Tamara last year in the UK and she is super fun and dedicated to spreading the joy of creativity far and wide. Life book offers creative insights through video lessons, prompts, images and writing by 22 amazing teachers throughout the year. What a great way to learn some new approaches and techniques!

I’m very honored to be one of these teachers this year…my first time. My contribution to the course will be a class inspired by my recent infatuation with using non-traditional “brushes” such as vegetables, flowers, sticks, etc. I will also be sharing some Bloom True tips and a meditation track.

And, guess what? I’m giving away one free spot for Life Book 2014 right here today! Simply leave a comment in the comment section about why you would like to participate in this offering and you might just win this awesome year-long creative adventure.

Hmm.

In May 2012, I happened to be in Portland, Oregon, when Powell’s Bookstore (a wonderful place) featured the talented, warm, inspiring Flora Bowley. She paints big, bold, colorful canvases.

Painting by Flora Bowley

Flora had just published her amazing, empowering book Brave Intuitive Painting, and she spoke that night about it at Powell’s. The book has since sold over 20,000 copies..

Flora embraces life with passion, and generously shares her talents, joys, insights, techniques, and sense of wonder. She’s a successful artist: her work is sold in several galleries across the country, and she has licensed merchandise sold around the world. She teaches hugely popular classes on-line, and holds art retreats in Bali, Brooklyn, Ireland, Boston, Mexico, and other exotic places. Jess Greene wrote about Flora in “Artistic Abundance: Flora Bowley” on Huffington Post: “Flora Bowley’s story is a beautiful example of full, unapologetic knowing that life unfolds and abundance follows when you follow your heart.”

One of my great passions is stories. There is no doubt in my mind that, if we truly asked about and listened to each other’s stories, deeply and patiently, we would have a better world.

When I chose the name for my blog–Light of Day Stories–I did so intentionally, with the hope that it would be a place to bring the light of day to adoption, to stories, and to art, through writing, listening, and creating.

When I read last week about Flora and the upcoming Life Book class, it made me think about how adoptive parents sometimes use “Life Books” with their adopted children. I think they were originally designed for foster children, but they’ve expanded well beyond that. They are special compilations of the child’s adoption story: where, with whom, how a child lived before he arrived in the adoptive family. Life books are a version of a “baby book,” meant to provide a sense of identity and of connection with the past. The books can help parents talk with the child about a complicated past, and are a means of acknowledging the child’s life prior to adoption. They can contain photos, letters, mementoes, and more.

Life books are relatively new in the world of adoption. Keep in mind that there was a time (especially in the days of same race, infant adoption) that adoption policy recommended not telling a child he was adopted. For children from abusive or otherwise difficult origins, there was once (not all that long ago) a policy that recommended forgetting the past, not talking about it, not rocking the adoption boat. That recommendation was passed on sometimes to birth/first/original mothers as well.

For some people, that has been a heart-breaking approach. Birth mothers never forgot. Adoptees, whether from US foster care or another country, wanted to know their history, even if it was grim, or difficult to find.

It’s hard telling stories that are complicated. It’s hard telling stories that have lots of missing or inaccurate pieces, which can happen in adoption.

Still, they are important stories to tell. We need to tell them, and we need to listen to them, because they help us to heal, learn, and grow.

I’ve been working this past year on developing creative, empowering ways for adoption stories to be told. I’ll be presenting a workshop in November at the national conference of the Association of Personal Historians. My workshop is titled Adopted and Estranged Families: Rebuilding a Personal History.

Here’s the workshop description: “Many people don’t have the luxury of knowing their family. Those who are separated by adoption or just estranged from their birth family still need to know where they came from and how to embrace their cultural origins. In this workshop, Maureen will discuss methods to find information, help normalize difficult pasts, and celebrate complex histories, even if birth records are not available. You will learn about innovative approaches using mementoes, DNA services, adoption records, new technologies, and more. And you will learn that even if conventional methods and research materials aren’t available, you still can have powerful personal history stories.”

Stories matter. Telling stories matters. Listening to stories matters. Flora Bowley describes her art this way: “a celebration of life: chaotic, subtle, beautiful, mystical, and ever-changing.”

Adoption stories can have some of those qualities as well. They can also be powerful, challenging, evocative, and intense: just like art.

That night a week ago, alone in my house, I decided to post a comment on Flora’s site, not thinking I would win the free spot for the year-long mixed media course.

Here’s my comment.

And guess what?

I am so thrilled. I share this with you because I took a chance, a leap of faith, and a deep breath, and I hope you will too when opportunities crop up. I share this with you because this class will allow me to connect with some amazingly talented and generous artists, and I can’t wait to share their insights and ideas in my work with the stories of adoption. Maybe they will be new versions of Life Books in adoption, maybe creative approaches to personal histories, maybe something right now unknown.

The themes of the Life Book 2014 course are self-development and healing: we can use those skills in the adoption community. I am very grateful to Flora for choosing my comment from the hundreds that were submitted. I am in awe of Tamara LaPorte of Willowing Arts for creating this Life Book class, and for partnering with 22 incredible artists who will present mixed media art lessons. Tamara writes that she believes “practising self-care through art and self-enquiry creates happier people, and happier people equals a better world.”

Mixed media: water color, gel transfer on wood. By Maureen McCauley Evans

So many stories. Lots of hope for healing, out in the light of day.

Asian Adoptees: Poetry from Diaspora Dreams

Posted on July 5, 2013 by Maureen McCauley

I believe so much in the power of art and in its ability to liberate emotions and create new perspectives. I’m also interested in the art of adoption, as I define it: the creative work and energy that evolves from adoptees. I wrote about it in Art of Adoption: Playwrights and Poets.

From the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, here is “Tending the Speculative,” a thoughtful, provocative, evocative group of poems by adult adoptees from Asia (including Vietnam, Korea, the Philippines) who grew up in the United States. They reflect yet another dimension of Diaspora, those individuals united in separation from their roots.

A quote from the introduction:

“…unlike the witness who remembers history or who can turn to birth family or ethnic community to ask, the poet writing from an adopted diasporic condition oftentimes cannot testify to the events that orphaned her or him. These conditions retain an uncanny presence in her/his dream life.”

Strong Love, and Slender Threads

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Maureen McCauley

Singer/songwriter/guitarist Kate Wolf died much too young, from leukemia in 1986 at age 44. I heard her in concert only once, about 30 years ago. One line from one song has stayed with me:

“Sometimes the strongest love hangs by such a slender thread.”

I’ve long thought that gentle sentence describes the connection between first families and adoptees, whether they were born and placed in Maryland, or arrived at 8 years old from Korea or Ethiopia.

Adoption is full of strong loves and slender threads.

That’s been true for quite a long time. In the 1700’s, in the midst of devastating poverty, mothers left their children at London’s Foundling Hospital, often hoping to return to get them someday. They would also leave some small token: a bit of fabric, a ring, even a hazelnut. Those memory tokens would be sealed away in the child’s file. When (if) the mother returned, she could use that to identify herself, and reclaim her child.

“Threads of Feeling” is a new exhibition opening at Colonial Williamsburg May 25. It will include a display of the Foundling Hospital swatches of fabric and other bittersweet items that were the only connection between a mother and child: such small objects, ragged and dirty perhaps, with such enormous significance.

My children arrived with various items from various sources: a soft blue bunny, a hand-crocheted baby blanket, black patent leather shoes, a sweet snowsuit. We know the stories behind some of the items: humble, valuable treasures. To think whose hands have held them, and chose them, and made sure they accompanied small children to unknown places.

And whose hands might again embrace.

Adanech, Art, Adoption, and Me

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Maureen McCauley

When my kids were growing up, I loved doing art projects with them. One daughter remains interested and is really good. This is Adanech’s painting from a photograph of her and her niece/my granddaughter about 6 years ago.

For all of us, the arrival of the baby Zariyah in October of 2006 was wonderful, amazing, joyous.

My daughter Aselefech, Zariyah’s mother, was adopted at 6 years old from Ethiopia. For Aselefech, Zariyah’s birth may also have been a visceral connection to what her Ethiopian mother had gone through giving birth to her.

For Adanech (Aselefech’s twin sister), it may have been the same; plus, Zariyah was now a second person biologically related to Adanech, living under the same roof.

Biological connections are a big deal. Having people who look like us, have the same quirks, laugh or sneeze the same way, who are connected to us by blood, can matter a lot.

I have no siblings. My mom died over 9 years ago, and my dad lives in the memory unit of an assisted living facility, where he’s doing quite well. We skype every Friday, and that’s a joy. I have some wonderful cousins, but we are miles apart.

I have no biological connection to the children I adore more than words can say. Zariyah, now 6 years old, knows I’m her grandma. She is still sorting out what it means that I am white and she is black, and that she also has an Ethiopian grandma that we hope she meets maybe this summer. Zariyah knows she’s not adopted, and that her mom, auntie, and two uncles (my sons) are. She knows the word “adopted.” I’m not so sure she fully gets it.

Someone will probably tell Zariyah soon that I’m not her real grandmother, just as other kids told my children I wasn’t their real mother when they were little. Blood matters, and each of my children have a real mother who gave birth to them and cared for them–they also have a real father, real grandparents, siblings, cousins. I’ve met some of them, and what an incredible blessing that has been.

And my children have me, and their dad, and their grandparents, and on and on. We are real too. I’ve always told my children the more people who love you, the better off you are. I hold their first families in my heart (those I’ve met and those I haven’t), as I do my own mother and others whom I love and who are no longer here. It’s a very big family portrait: a bit abstract, surreal, impressionistic, realistic, chiaroscuro. A work in progress.

Zariyah intent on her art

A few of my collages–piecing colors and images together. Hmm.