I named this quilt "Reverence" and here are the words that I wrote about this quilt.
"I stand in reverence of my old self…it wasn't an easy life to live so shut down, choiceless and voiceless…to keep my truth from pouring out. To live disconnected not only from her self but the Universe, feelings and emotions..and Love. A cold, empty life…broken but unable to know it….wounded and untreated; trying to be normal and even perfect. An impossible task after abuse. Her life was to keep the abuse from ever being known…once it was out, her life was over and My life began. She was a pretend me. Survival me. The person I had to live as in order to belong in my family. I understood she was born to save me from reality…and she died when I was able to see that which was too terrifying to see as a child….abuse. A pedophile instead of a father and a mother buried in denial. She was perfect coming from whence she came. In order to grow into my Self, she had to die."
I love this quilt in how it honors but buries the old me.
Until you can understand that a life after abuse is to hide the abuse while displaying it, you can't fully appreciate the journey a person has to take to reclaim their life.
A life that fully accepts and sees abuse and its affects while then transcending them by making new choices. To do what feels like going against nature's force.
A force field of fear and the only life you have ever known.
It literally is to die in one life and be born in another while alive.
I am in reverence for the hard life I lived and for what it took to die and be reborn.
Abused folks are the perfect representation of abuse. I M Perfect...and it is impossible not to be....perfectly Me...the old and new.
