Preferred Name: Niamh Stewart
Pronouns: they/them
This piece is my attempt to express the nebulous emotion of grief. Grief is such a huge part of healing from sexual trauma and it is also the most personal. We live in a world that loves trauma porn – a world that feeds off the drama of other people’s tragedies. They want the gory details, they want the unhealthy coping mechanisms, the post-breakdown comeback drama. We think about this as being the narrative that celebrities live with, but in reality, we all do to a certain extent. Grief is something no one wants to ask about – many don’t even understand that you can grieve for things other than death. This collage and poem are my way of reckoning with my grief. Of tending it, befriending it, and not allowing shame to force me to hide it.
The sigil (the image made out of newsprint) presents the phrase “I hold space for my grief”. This is what I want to do with this pieces – hold that space; for me and maybe even for others. Grief is big and scary and can seem impossible to actually let yourself feel it. It was important for me to include a sigil in this piece because sigils are a big part of modern-day witchcraft – when I started to learn more about tarot and astrology and magic in general it transformed my life. As a kid, I loved all things magical and tarot, astrology, sigils – they’re magic for adults. Working with these forms of spirituality has connected me to my inner child as well are coping mechanisms for my adult self.
Creating art like this where I examine my life and my trauma through my own lens is extremely empowering. Sometimes healing from trauma can feel like having an overbearing parent always trying to find you a boyfriend – you know they have the best intentions but you don’t really want to have dinner with Todd who’s majoring in Economics and likes to golf and whom you would make beautiful babies with – you want to do things your own way, that is to say, the way that works for you. People are always telling me how they think I should “fix” my trauma; what meds I should take, what books I should read, what root vegetable I should eat; and my voice, my needs, my intuition get lost in the mix. But through art, I am able to show people how I feel in the way that feels right for me. It’s a small reclamation of space – space to express myself, space to fuck up, space to be good at something, space to explore hard parts of my life in a safe way.
