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a’driane n. nieves notes from the laughing barrel AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 3

for the last 4 nights i’ve been painting “laughing barrels” in my dreams. it is hard to find historical information on laughing barrels—everything i’m able to find online says they’re considered a myth but that they could also have been a practice that was passed down via oral history rather than written historical record. supposedly, slaves used to place their heads deep inside these barrels while working in the fields so slave masters wouldn’t see or hear them laughing. these barrels were used as a means to hide and suppress Black emotional expression from whites because to laugh or reveal any part of your humanity equaled punishment or worse, death. in every dream about this, i’m standing in front of a canvas, painting the barrel and whatever line or mark i paint inside of it suddenly becomes animated and MOVES. in my dream tuesday night, i painted a talking head inside of the barrel and everything that came out of the head’s mouth danced. aside from the barrel and head, everything that became animated was abstract in shape and of varying colors. –notes app, july 28, 2016 /// 4 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 4

when your origins are as tangled and rooted in trauma as mine, attachment and belonging are cravings that grow into a gnawing understanding of displacement. you are neither his, hers, or theirs; searching often leads to piles of severed roots that serve as evidence of the disconnect between yourself and the knowledge that can connect you to your lineage. my roots were placed in knotted, tangled heaps at my feet the moment each foot was pulled out from the security of my mother into the abyss of an unknown space. i went from darkness to light, but only in the sense that my place of residency had changed; from the shrouded enclave of her womb to the brightly lit hospital operating room where my mother lay on the table, cut open to save both our lives. i was birthed into a meticulously sterilized environment designed to facilitate a safe arrival, while at the same time born into a familial existence where my survival was not guaranteed. the way i see it, i was physically born on wednesday, december 1,1982 at 7:45 p.m., but the core parts of my actual Self died the moment i was taken home. /// 5 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 5

some things have required my silence, but too much has required my blood. /// as a child, my mind was my own laughing barrel. i would retreat to it when i needed to cry, laugh, scream, or react to external stimuli. there i would allow myself to feel the tiny moments of joy i’d squirreled away every time i was away from home. i often wonder how many of the emotions that i sense in my body and conscious mind on a daily basis are not even my own but belong to the mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, and cousins i am born from. i wonder if perhaps my body is a home for what they could not express, a channel for the emotional release they were denied. 6 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 6

i wonder how much of what i express now as an adult is a regurgitation of what they were forced to swallow generation after generation. home. my imagination became my home in the ways physical dwellings were not. living with a verbally, emotionally, and physically abusive parent meant that any utterance of independent thought or emotion in my voice, on my face, or in my body language put me at risk for—and usually subjected me to—some form of violence. in response, i taught myself how to be hollow, blank, and expressionless. i trained my eyes to be walls instead of windows. the muscles in my face learned to remain slack. /// emotions were consolidated and stifled, shoved deep, deep, deep, down in recesses and compartments of myself before they really had a chance to grab ahold of me. i couldn’t risk their existence being detected on my face or in my body language or bursting out of me. i hid everything, even from myself. i was 19 years old before i could begin the excavation process to unearth all that was 7 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 7

suppressed during those early years. it has taken 20 years, but i have reclaimed the power of expression stripped from me during the most formative years of my life through my art practice. i view my practice as my own personal form of a social science. it offers a lens in the way that it holds space for me to view and research what the impact of having to live an emotionally blunted existence has on a body, a psyche, a heart, and a soul without judgment. i use it as a microscope for examining these impacts on self-perception and emotional release. it’s effective in magnifying the processes of deconstruction and reconstruction that occur once you’re able to start forming new identities on your own terms; both of these processes are ones that shape, alter, and refine every part of a person. i leave each studio session with a more thorough understanding of who i was, who i am, and who i hope to be. /// 8 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 8

an exhortation for eldest daughters: if you are the eldest daughter born from generations of mothers who had complicated relationships with their own mothers and motherhood, this is for you. if you are the eldest of your generation in your family, and the weight of that responsibility has left calcified deposits in your bones as you’ve made your own way in this world, breaking the unyielding ground for those born after you, this is for you. if you are the healer tasked with holding space for and then transmuting the pain of your ancestors in your family so they can know the liberation that eluded them in their corporeal forms, beloved, this is for you. if you are the cycle breaker whose mission is to disrupt patterns of dysfunction, toxicity, and abuse in your family, this is for you. if you are one who was separated and kept isolated from your people early in life and are currently climbing out of the sinkhole such displacement opened up in your life, if having those bonds and attachments severed before your identity could root into an informed understanding of who you are has set you off on a never-ending quest for 9 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 9

belonging, this is for you. if you seek to know whose blood from the past flows hot through your veins as you continue to stretch into the future, this is for you. if you have been given the opportunity to transform the genetic expression of your bloodline through the life you live and the work you put your heart, hands, and mind to, this is for you. if you are visible to everyone yet seen by no one, this is for you. /// throughout my childhood, the only predictable aspect of my external environment was just how unpredictable it always was. navigating the constant uncertainty meant traversing landmines of violence, along with verbal and emotional abuse, manipulation, and demands to remain silent. “children should be seen and not heard” wasn’t just an 10 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 10

old-school parental expectation in my house, it was a law that came with grave consequences and punishments when my mouth and body did not comply. as a 39-yearold woman raising my own children, i look at how they are able to just exist in their bodies, how natural it is for them to freely move about our home with ease; in them, i don’t see any traces of the trepidation i carried in my own body as a child. their movements are lightweight, not burdened by hesitation; their bodies are never seized into submission by warnings. they move throughout their days completely unencumbered and unfamiliar with the fear i knew intimately in my most formative years. i watch how easy it is for my sons to move their bodies as they mill about the house going from room to room, lounging on the furniture. they don’t wait for what feels like hours in their rooms, next to their doors, listening intently for the right moment to emerge and sneak quietly to the bathroom unnoticed. my sons don’t have to listen for every movement my husband or i make, wondering if our footsteps will make a stop at their door and what will happen when they do. the boys’ visibility and presence around our home does not expose them to violence or vitriol. their voices are full, strong, clear, loud, unfiltered—not stuffed down in their throats. they shout, run, play, relax, talk with one another, and openly 11 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 11

communicate their emotions and opinions even when it can be a struggle for them to do so. i am in awe of their freedom and relieved that as their parent, i have been able to create an environment for them that fosters and nurtures the very freedoms i was unable to experience myself at their ages. my imagination was the safest space i occupied as a child and teen. with my emotional and verbal utterings so suppressed, i withdrew inwardly as far as i could to where it felt safe enough to exist. my internal life supported layer after layer of mental and emotional scaffolding designed to preserve pieces of self that emerged but could not outwardly be shown as i developed. creative expression became a safe—but somewhat secret—channel for me to allow those parts of myself to be seen and heard without retribution. in my early years that looked like building worlds with classmates on the playground during recess or during car rides as i stared out the window. blank face, eyes observant for danger but not curious, body ready to move as soon as directed but still as stone until then. i remember going to restaurants—grandy’s, luby’s, sizzler, shoney’s—and creating stories out of the words in front of me on the placemats or card displays; i’d use the words to conjure up visuals that created scenarios completely different from the reality i was living in. i was 12 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 12

always motionless so as not to give away how active my mind was. at age 12, my imagination found writing, allowing me to process thoughts i kept hidden. at 14, performing arts gave me an opportunity to naturally move my body in ways i couldn’t at home, and oration offered my voice the chance to be expressive rather than silenced. i think about what my childhood and teen years were like often as i engage with my creative voice as an adult no longer trapped under that environment of suppression. creative expression for me has always been about coming to the surface for air, repeatedly attempting to keep parts of myself alive. but even after years of experiencing deep healing, i still find myself contending with impacts of those formative years in my art practice. i still haven’t fully deconditioned myself from questioning if what i’m revealing will be met with retribution. sometimes i look at a mark i’ve made on the canvas and can see it came from the place where my deepest fears around abandonment and stickiest yearnings for approval reside. i am constantly editing myself in my head which can make it difficult to write as vulnerably and embodied as i paint. i struggle with vulnerability and intimacy in other areas, 13 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 13

too. even with all of the work, with all of the unlearning i’ve done in order to relearn how to truly be myself since turning 19, verbalizing needs and feelings still remains the biggest hurdle i have to clear. the older i get the more i realize how my fear of opening up to anyone beyond myself was birthed from a fear of rejection and violence rooted deep in my subconscious. three years ago, my therapist said i’ve learned to skillfully intellectualize my trauma and life experiences as a defense against having to feel their emotional impact. she said mentally processing what i’ve survived allows me to put enough distance between myself and the memory so i am not transported back to how it all felt in the moment. she told me the mental and emotional scaffolding i built as a child was designed to protect me then, but now as an adult, and even as an artist, my task at this stage of life is to feel it all so it can be released. i believe that is an accurate assessment. i’ve carried it into the studio with me over the last three years with a renewed intentionality as i’ve worked to transmute emotions into marks and paint on a surface. her words play on a tape in my mind as i try to write out what feelings accompany early memories that rise to my consciousness. some memories have no emotions 14 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 14

attached to them at all, which leaves me to wonder if i suppressed them so deeply as a child that i am unable to access them. (where did they go?) in the studio i often grapple with what it would mean for those emotions to remain hidden from me, and so i’m left to wonder: what is it exactly, that i am protecting myself from? what does my inner child still know that i’ve yet to be able to remember? when will she trust me enough to tell me? those are a few of many questions i’m here to answer. here, on the page. here, on the canvas. here, ultimately, in my life. /// every new brushstroke is a match that sets my suitcases of past sorrows ablaze. /// 15 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 15

stiff joints/heavy body (paint) /// it is safe for me to express myself (now). /// much of the focus in my practice these last two-and-a-half or three years has been on alchemizing and releasing the contention that exists in my relationship to my physical body and cognitive challenges as i’ve struggled with the impacts of autoimmune and inflammatory disease. as i look back on what i’ve painted since 2015, i see that my practice has evolved from painting about the impact of trauma on the psyche, to the physical impacts of it on the body; over the last year especially, each painting was imbued with a sense of physicality and the corporeal form through my use of heavy-body acrylic paints and stiffer brushes to produce stiffer, thicker, aggressive, and messier brushstrokes and marks. all of the work feels very 16 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 16

much like flesh and blood, wounds and war. i won’t lie and say that i haven’t found a deep comfort residing in this space within my practice. i find pleasure and satisfaction in the dense marrow of healing work, the guts and explosive bowels of raw expression, and the companionship of pain is gutting yet seductive; i have found my pain to be an arduous and thorough lover. however, i can feel my spirit calling me to come up out of such navel-gazing indulgence—as warranted as it may be— and reach for an embodiment that manifests itself in less self-seeking ways. i am being reminded that these processes of transmutation, alchemy, transfiguration, and healing do not exist solely for my own benefit—not when it comes to my work as a writer and visual artist. and so i am allowing myself to ascend and expand into the next iteration. there is discomfort in this, but i am finding new lovers to receive from: joy, ease, freedom, trust, and faith. this shift has also brought me back to this idea of the laughing barrel, which i first began exploring in 2016. while the existence of laughing barrels and their use are stored somewhere between historical fact and southern myth, the imagery of an enslaved african or free Black person during jim crow using a barrel to suppress and hide their emotions from white people as a means of 17 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 17

survival and protection from white fragility is a striking one to me. it has been burned into my mind’s eye for years, in large part because of how it resonates with much of my own experience with emotional suppression as a young child. my ideas and interpretation of the concept of a laughing barrel have changed since i first explored it in 2016, into a statement that is more aligned with the thoughts and emotions that are surfacing within what i’m painting now. my focus and interpretation of this concept are less about the pain and trauma that result in being forced to hide one’s emotions, and are instead revealing what’s on the other side of finding and reclaiming one’s emotional autonomy. from where i’m standing at the age of 39, after years of grueling work to heal, recover, and contend with the psychological and physical impacts of trauma, there is yet still another experience of living fully alive that i desire to share with others both visually and in writing. /// painting is how i’ve reclaimed both language and experience in my own voice. it is a nonverbal channel for me to 18 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 18

communicate all the things that aren’t safe for me to say. too often, i find that words come with a price i’m not always ready to pay, yet still must be said. i often reconcile this tension of needs within myself by writing out what feels impossible to verbally convey out loud onto the canvas in front of me. i then obscure the text with paint, translating what’s underneath into a new language deciphered only by someone dropping into their heart space and granting the painting permission to reflect the things they’d rather leave unsaid but must face, just as i did. /// some works are an altar call. triage room. reflecting pool. a tether between what you know of yourself and what’s buried deep in your subconscious patiently awaiting your tug. others are a dance floor. an embrace. a knowing look. a premonition. a eulogy, a benediction, an elegy, a lament, a shout of triumph, a divination. the torch setting our pyres ablaze. a nudge. affirmation. reality. every single one is a pill swallowed, a memory buried, a thought ceaselessly ruminating, a desire realized, the 19 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 19

truth uncovered. shadow work. /// full moon meditation: one thing i’m clearing is the cynicism and distrust that’s been storing up within me in recent years. i was already struggling with it mightily before the 2016 election, but being so ill the last 3 years wore me down, making room for it to grow exponentially. i realize i’m a natural optimist who’s gone astray, so i’m recommitting to rooting into hope where i can, especially when i’d much rather root into the opposite. this might seem counterintuitive considering all that is unfolding around us on a daily basis, but for me it really isn’t. in fact, my work and practice are demanding that in order for both to evolve, the cynicism has to go or it’ll rot everything i touch. i can create art that speaks to difficult things and work to build transformative futures without being married to despair, even when shit is unbearably grim. i can lament, i can rage, and i can grieve, but resting in cynicism will not 20 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 20

provide comfort nor a reprieve from what must be faced. i cannot let what i am witnessing harden me. i simply cannot. this is why i must stay focused on and rooted into my art practice. my work and process save me, keep me on my path and connected into what’s happening in the world on a collective level in more ways i can enumerate here. i know i am a better person/partner/mother/community member/leader/lover/friend when that is at my center. living and making art is my tether but also my Source. it is a survival mechanism, divination tool, medicine, faith, channel, liberation, future, and sanctuary. /// igneous vs. sedimentary: when subconscious emotional residue from past experiences trigger sedimentary processes in the physical. 21 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 21

/// it is safe for me to come into fullness. it is safe for me (now) to come alive. it is safe for me to receive the devotion i was once denied. i can freely move about my life without fear of retribution or being brought back to confinement. it is safe for me to exist (now). it is safe for me to be seen. visibility will not expose me to violence. visibility will not expose me to your violence. i can come out of hiding, i can stop scanning the environment for your presence. no more looking over my shoulder out of fear. while i am too much for you, i am more than enough for me. i am not too much. i cannot be contained by the limits of your expectations or perceptions or demands yet i still deserve to be loved as i am anyway. my autonomy is not a threat and you are finally no longer one to me either. it is safer for me to exist now at 40 than it ever was at 4… or 8…or 12…or 16. 22 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 22

you said you’d always be able to find me, that escape would never truly be possible but i am just as protected now as i am free; your manipulations no longer have a foothold in my subconscious. it is safe for me to exist now. it is safe for me to receive without shame what i have most longed for. /// it’s been a drier summer than in previous years when thunderclouds would deflate the heat with their burdens it seemed almost every week. but on this september morning the sky has finally opened and released in full measure what the clouds have been withholding, so i stretched out my hand to receive what i sowed in faith during the dry season and found my hand is too small to hold all that’s coming pressed down, shaken together and running over. painting gives me a container to work with and process cellular memories, their expression, and the epigenetic residue of the past, which covers my subconscious like a thick, viscous membrane. i find that without painting to 23 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 23

unearth, process, and then channel these memories, they can grow into a second skin that envelops my entire being and sense of identity. /// i needed the space the studio provides today. my body needed the movement. i find painting to be omnipotent in this way, always guiding me to discover for myself what it already knows about me, always refuting the lies told to me by others during my early years. it receives my outpouring of mess and guts and reflects back to me that i am indeed a good thing anyway. painting has become mother and father, breath and marrow, subconscious, heartbeats, language, mirror, therapist, portal and time machine, Living Word, altar, the tongue of the ancestors, and voice of my Highest Self all in one. /// 24 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 24

pandemic meditation, year one: i’m grappling with the expectation that’s been yoked around our necks; this insistent, relentless demand that we just keep moving, no matter what losses are incurred. every type of loss becomes compacted and stuffed, suppressed under the pressure of that demand. it feels like we’re just being marched towards our deaths and so many literally have, as they are no longer with us, while the rest of us are stripped of our rituals of mourning and forced to just step over their bodies and continue marching. continue working. continue learning. continue acquiescing to The Big Lie that says sacrificing ourselves on capitalism’s altar is the only choice we have. that says this is normal and the only way it could’ve been. i’m concerned about the impact being forced to capitulate to such an expectation is having on us personally and collectively and on how it’s already generating changes in the manifestation of our dna. i’m wondering if what i’m doing to try and disrupt the patterns this specific and ongoing trauma will be at all successful in keeping my great great great grandchildren from feeling what i’ve been carrying these last eleven months...just as i can feel the traumas my grandmother and her mother and our people carried for generations. i grew up under the same types of manipulation, neglect, 25 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 25

and gaslighting so the actions and behaviors i’ve witnessed since march 2020 remind me of an intimacy with abuse i’d rather forget. but i remember what it felt like back then, to be force fed a diet of lies and marched slowly but insistently through what is killing me daily. my blood and bones remember what my mind works protectively to forget. /// some layers of paint are thick, others are thin. i just keep compressing, suppressing, and piling demands upon the canvas in the same way they have been piled upon me without my consent. /// sticky thoughts, marrow, cell regrowth, synthesis, a calling down, flooding, chasms, breaking through, pressing in, tactile, a remembering, relearning, no model, new pathways, increased proprioception. 26 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 26

pause. /// no one told me liberation comes with such tender bruising. /// pain, grief, retrograde, squaring planets, one horror making conjunction to another and then another. life lately feels like an open flesh wound you can see the rhythm of each pump of the heart oozing through. like sticky pulp. like a strange relationship. like we’re experiencing multiple dimensions and inceptions simultaneously. like past life regressions and future reclamations. i’m trying my best to stick with my art practice and other creative projects, napping, daydreaming, play, prayer, and staying soft even as we hurtle toward even more 27 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 27

calamity. i’m fighting to believe it (everything) matters. fall. /// abstraction and expressionism are where i experience liberation from the constraints of the white gaze and relief from the violence of white imagination. /// i don’t have many photos from my early childhood. i’ve lost a wealth of memories due to disassociation disrupting the conversion process between my short- and long-term memory, but the photos i’ve been able to hold onto from those years enable me to remember who i’ve been and the conflicting dualities i’ve embodied for much of my life. there are pictures of me from the first summer i went to 28 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 28

visit my mother after my father kidnapped me and took me with him to his new duty station in alaska. i was 3 at the time. it took her 2–3 years to find me and for a new custody agreement to be reached. somehow, a judge selected my father as my custodial parent; my mother was only allowed summers. part of their custody arrangement also mandated that i spend two weeks of my summers with my paternal grandparents who had refused to tell my mother where my father had gone after he took me from her. that first summer was 33 years ago. i was 6. on the surface, photos from that first summer with my mother and grandparents tell a story of reconnection. a closer inspection of certain details in each photo reveals a more complex narrative. there is one set of pictures in particular from that time that always make my insides twist into knots of tender discomfort when i see them: we are in the philadelphia airport and i’m emerging from the gate, plastic wings pinned to my shirt, my little hand gripping the much larger one of the delta stewardess charged with taking care of me during the long flight. my hair is in pigtails fashioned with white barrettes and ballies. my shirt is white with blue and green writing and an orange fish. i’m wearing shorts and all29 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 29

white, heavily scuffed reeboks that barely fit. in fact, closer inspection of my outfit reveals that all of my clothing barely does, which is something i learned years later that my father had a habit of doing: sending me to my mother in the summer with clothing i’d long outgrown, thereby forcing her and my stepfather to buy me a brand new wardrobe so he wouldn’t have to. in the other photo, my mother is hugging me while the delta stewardesses and pilot look on. there is reconnection in this photo but there is also pain in my mother’s body language and in mine, evidence of how our separation had fractured our attachment to one another. seeing this image always feels like running my hand over an old scar that gets phantom aches. i’m never comfortable seeing the tears on my face or how broken i look during these first moments of being reunited with my mother. all i can actually recall is feeling overcome by very intense emotions that i did not understand and felt far too big for my tiny body to hold. i remember being as terrified as i was relieved, confused yet keenly aware of the magnitude of the moment. you can see twinges of the terror and confusion in my eyes, which makes me wonder who was present in that moment of reunification: was it my 6-year-old self or my 3-year-old self? 30 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 30

there are photos from our trip to the philadelphia zoo with my cousin: petting goats, riding elephants, feeding camels. another group of photos reveal a playground setting. it’s the early ‘90s, so my mother is dressed in a neon blue, yellow, and pink wind suit, an indicator of what was on trend. i’m sliding down the playground pole in my all-white, heavily scuffed, too-small reeboks and in another photo i’m sitting in front of my mom at the top of the metal slide before we ride our way down together. in another set of photos i’m smiling from ear to ear while riding the speedy gonzales tijuana taxi ride in the bugs bunny land section of six flags great adventure. i’m wearing new clothes purchased at echelon mall and on my feet are a pair of brand new high tops colored white with neon pink trim and shoelaces, evidence my mother had taken inventory of what was in my suitcase and deemed a shopping trip necessary. then there are the photos of me in my grandparents’ home. i can see how being away from my father and being allowed far more developmentally appropriate freedom in new environments resulted in me being much more expressive than in the photos from when i first arrived at my mother’s, but there are also hints of discomfort in my body language. looking at the photos as an adult, i 31 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 31

wonder if somewhere within me i didn’t feel fully safe with my grandparents. i can’t help but think how fucked it was to force my mom to relinquish 2 weeks of her summer visit to the people who refused to tell her where my father had taken me, and who had done absolutely nothing to protect me. there’s a shot of me in oversized sunglasses from the dollar store. another in those brand new pair of white high tops with neon pink laces on my feet, neon orange shorts and a scowl on my face. another in front of the stage at chuck e cheese, an animatronic character behind me and costume jewelry around my neck. i’m missing 2 front teeth. there’s a smile on my face but it doesn’t reach my eyes. they’re filled with the same twinges of fear and confusion visible in the previous photos of me hugging my mom at the airport. /// the pressures and horrors i ate and compacted within obediently for years until they burst from my innermost recesses like dough escaping a vacuum sealed can; i’ve exorcized them in therapy but sometimes the memories are clammy like the insides of my palms when i used to sit suspended under swells of anger, bracing for impact. time 32 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 32

creates a buffer between me and the physicality of such emotional distress, but i suspect traces of it will always linger as a permanent imprint. it’s not just my body that’s kept the score. /// “The ancient Greeks and Egyptians described a mythical bird called the Phoenix, a magnificent creature that was a symbol of renewal and rebirth. According to legend, each Phoenix lived for 500 years, and only one Phoenix lived at a time. Just before its time was up, the Phoenix built a nest and set itself on fire. Then, a new Phoenix would rise from the ashes.” (wikipedia, britannica) “Associated with the sun, a phoenix obtains new life by arising from the ashes of its predecessor. Some legends say it dies in a show of flames and combustion, others that it simply dies and decomposes before being born again.” (web search) i’m a survivor of many forms of abuse. every survivor’s healing process varies, but mine has always involved 33 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 33

building my own pyres in order to burn down false narratives and harmful frameworks constructed to protect my abusers and blockade both memories and their associated pain. time and time again i have lit the frameworks and constructs i built around myself on fire, sifting through the ashes of my former selves in hopes of finding the truths born from each burning. my healing process is one that requires burnt offerings of self, and is full of gore, not glory. it is messy, full of decomposing pulpy bits, the stench of it is often pungent. the only way i’ve been able to navigate the pain is by plunging my fists deep into every wound to locate their origin. i also must bear the feelings that arise throughout this process which is terrifying. it involves swallowing a measure of courage and embracing another descent into hell every time i strike the match. i’ve done it time and again over the years, and i don’t always believe i’ll make it back, but i somehow eventually do. sometimes there are many truths left from the fire, sometimes there’s just one. it’s taken me a long time to swallow enough courage to put them into my work, but now i’m holding a fresh match. 34 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 34

/// i exist between many intersecting piles of ruins but i seek to fully embody those of color, texture, pattern, contrast, composition, progression, and insights born from excavation and experience. /// it is safe for me to express joy! /// the more healing work i do through therapy, re-parenting, and my art practice, and the more healing i experience as a result over time, the more i understand that healing is a fluid, dynamic set of macro and micro interconnected processes that move us through a multitude of existences and experiences. 35 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 35

healing always defies my expectations, no matter how high or low i’ve placed them. allowing these processes’ ebbs and flows to fortify me in new ways without hardening me into a fortress is always a delicate, exacting procedure. what if breaking cycles and healing ourselves isn’t just about ensuring those coming after us are living in more freedom…what if living in the present is the purpose of healing work? what if the whole point of healing is to allow ourselves to receive right now what those before us weren’t afforded space to? what if our job is to give those coming after us even more room to experience the transformative, healing power of reciprocity? what if healing is not just hard work but also experimentation, living, play, shapeshifting, wrinkling time & timeline jumping, and evolution? what if the future we envision is not external, a far-out point on the horizon, but internal; a scribe writing new narratives that are imprinted on us at a cellular level so that we can step into new realities when we place our feet on the floor each morning? what if healing is not a destination to reach but an experience to embody fully, imperfectly? what if it’s about radical self-acceptance and compassionate self36 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 36

awareness divorced from the compulsion to fix? this self-development work is integral to my life’s vocation, yet i do not desire for my identity as a healer to become an albatross around my neck, constricting my ability to fully expand into the present. if my healing does not translate into experiencing such expansive liberation in my everyday, imperfect life, then what is the point? /// red oxide. yellow ochre. sandbank. anthraquinone blue. burnt sienna. titan buff. titan mars pale. light portrait pink. light apricot. venetian red. indian yellow hue. mars black. baked clay. atmospheric. breathless. sangria. azurite hue. mars orange. yellow oxide. teal. naples yellow. blue red deep. celadon. raw sienna. dioxazine purple. as i rub the colors on my hands or brush them across a canvas, the movement and sensory input transport me back to who i was and what filled me with joy i hid deep within my body out of fear. albuquerque in october was my favorite time of year; the season remains imprinted 37 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 37

upon my subconscious all these years later. i remember the excitement of running out to the playground with my classmates and teachers in october to try and count what seemed like thousands of hot air balloons dotting the midmorning sky with their bright colors. this visually mesmerizing sight filled me with wonderment from my toes to the tips of my ponytails. i also remember sitting very still in the back of the car but straining my eyes to look out the window and take in all the balloons in the distance. the car window back then was a portal for my imagination and watching those hot air balloons as they burned color into the sky made it easier for me to envision myself floating away in one towards freedom; i’d picture myself in the basket, warming myself on the heat of the flame, my eyes fixed on the horizon in front of me. looking out the window and up at the sky while in the car was like looking over the threshold of another world i wanted to belong to. when paired with the mountains, clay-colored stucco buildings, deep-blue sky, hot pink and orange sunrises, green cacti and yucca flowers, and sandy-colored ground, the festive colors of the balloons painted enrapturing visuals that were a sensory relief from my reality. 38 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 38

/// pandemic meditation, year two: i’m grappling with weariness and too many other things, including panicked fears that obscure my visions of the future i hope for. each wave of the virus and ongoing isolation have eroded pieces of us that i’m not sure can be renewed. everyone else has moved on but we are still here, visible but not seen. yet painting reminds me of the endless elasticity and world-building power at my disposal. the portals i can enter. the sanctuary it gives. prayers can be visual. my tongue knows another language. relief is always found in my return. /// my therapist told me trauma has to move—it must have somewhere to go, otherwise it just builds up reservoirs of pain in the body that calcify into varying forms of illness and grief. 39 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 39

/// i was always able to find a home in imagination. /// this concept of a laughing barrel has stuck with me because i have spent most of my 40 years on this earth having to fit myself inside of small spaces—ones that are too tight, too narrow, too confining to contain all of who i am—so as not to disrupt the lives of those around me. i learned early on how to embody the contradiction of being visible but not seen, how to exist inside of the expectations, opinions, understandings, and perceptions of others. i became a character in narratives that are not my own, crafted instead by those closest to me that i internalized subconsciously and consciously. i am no longer willing to squash myself into a small enough shape and into a small enough way of moving through the world. it is time to embrace growth—i no longer fear growing beyond others’ stories and expectations. 40 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 40

/// our wounds were not designed to be places of rest. i’ve learned you can only nurse your pain for so long before it turns you into a haint, haunting the abandoned fields of your life. /// is there shame around the way i have actively worked to keep myself small? in my early adulthood, yes; but now at 40, no. what i feel is more like pride. i’m proud of the way every version of myself fought to live. staying small was survival. truly. i couldn’t risk growing beyond the spaces that other people created for me to exist inside. those spaces and environments—i had no choice but to adapt to where i was, to mold myself into what was required to stay alive. yet i am grateful for the past iterations of me that fought so hard, were savvy and wise enough to find ways to remain generative in such 41 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 41

barren circumstances. it’s a hard habit to break. limiting my volume, editing my personality, pruning my thoughts and behaviors to be the most sterile, acceptable version of “me” for my own safety and wellness. i have worked hard over the years to make sure i don’t grow beyond what others want from me, completely ignoring what i want for myself. even after i had broken free from the harshest environments, i still played small. in order to maintain connection to people i care about and love, in order to feel safe in my relationships and interactions with people, in order to try to gain favor with others, in order to appear respectable and good, and in order to prove my worthiness and value, to show that i am deserving of attention and love and care, to have my humanity fully recognized, to seek validation and gain approval. i have spent so much of my life actively working to meet all of these checkmarks, to fit inside these neat, clean containers. i knew better than to grow beyond other people’s expectations, understandings, and opinions of me. long gone are the days where little me had to make sure my body was not in the way of anyone else when i was at 42 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 42

home. we have turned the calendar pages on the years where i worked to make sure that my voice was not too loud, my voice was not too emotive, that my voice did not betray anything that i was feeling internally—and that also goes for my physical body. i actively worked very hard to ensure that my body, its movements, and the way it would physically react to my environment were not visible or discernible to anyone else. that was my way of attempting to keep myself safe, of trying to protect myself, of trying to be good and to fit within the boundaries i was given which were very tight. i am very capable of hollowing myself out so i am just a shell of a person that can be filled up with what other people want me to carry and hold. this is a skill that no longer serves me; it’s safe for me to box it up, set it on the shelf and let it become rusty and dull. it’s time to hone living out loud, being my full self. no limits. no pruning. no editing away the parts that someone may find unpalatable. now, in my 4th decade, i only have time for the truest, most limitless and authentic existence. /// 43 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 43

when i’m working on a painting, my process is intuitive. i may see certain images and a color palette in my mind, but i never truly know what a piece is going to look like, where it’s going to take me, or where we’re going to end up. sometimes i don’t even know how i’m going to start until i’ve gently pressed my body into the canvas and felt my heart beat against it. or until my hands have skimmed across the surface, palms and fingers stretched wide in an attempt to feel every inch of possibility. until i’ve made my first mark on the canvas. i am always seeking a sense of balance. i am always looking for an anchor or a tether as i’m working through a painting. as haphazard or as chaotic and spontaneous as the marks and brushstrokes on the canvas may be, i am always taking a step back and looking for balance points. i’ve realized this is simply my subconscious mind seeking grounding, primarily because as i’m working through a painting internally what i’m really working through are things i want to be reconciled but most likely can never be. while i’ve subconsciously put out a call for reconciliation within myself, the answers can’t always be determined. my paintings don’t offer an endpoint resulting in a resolution; instead the answers are nonlinear, messy, not 44 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 44

clean cut—nothing here is neat or tidy. my inner child craves simplicity and desires happy endings as it relates to my past; as an adult i’m finding i can’t outrun the impacts of those experiences and instead i have to sit with them and contend and grapple with them. i have to make peace with them. as i crave and seek balance i crave and seek resolution and what i find by the end is that the resolution is just me sitting with the truth, sitting with reality and making peace with the truth, making peace with my reality, making peace with new understandings and new clarity and new insights that have surfaced during the making process. there is no evading impact’s reach. we have to live with it. i’ve chosen painting as my way of making peace with the influence of past experiences so i can live my life out loud, unencumbered by the weight. /// when painting calls, my body answers. painting is an all-in, immersive, consuming, physically engaging action for me; i’m grateful because my body and 45 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 45

mind need the release it provides. i’m a processor with a compulsive need to express input received from internal and external stimuli because it helps me learn about myself and the world we live in. each movement, mark, and color translate what exists subconsciously into a more accessible language for me to understand. it’s a dance of communication; it calls, my body responds through line and form, every movement providing the superconductivity needed for messages to flow without restriction. just as much as i need other basics like sleep, food, & fresh air, along with silence, connection, play, and stillness, i need painting. there’s not a part of me or my life as a person, partner, or parent that can fully function or thrive without it. /// i paint to the edge of the canvas because no surface can contain all that i am or will be. /// 46 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 46

in the studio, i excavate memories, emotions, words, and movements of Self suppressed during childhood. finally unburied, i get to stop the tapes. i get to examine the narratives written for me and programmed into me as a child. no matter how much work i have done, there are still tapes that play in my head, reminders of old narratives i am always working to untangle and release. on canvas, on paper, through movement, with paint, it is safe to explore how past experiences inform how i live, how i show myself as a person and artist, how i move in the world, how i interact with others, and how i engage with memories, thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, and opinions that are presented to me. what’s driving my behaviors? what’s driving my thoughts? what’s driving my instincts? my impulses? my opinions? my ideas? what are the sources for these things? where do these things in me have their source? creating allows me space and opportunity to do the work to locate answers in my subconscious as i examine all these questions, gaining more insight into and respect for every version of myself that i’ve been to survive. 47 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 47

every approach to the canvas is an act of reclamation that allows me to call back every part of me that i had to let go of throughout my childhood in order to conform. each gesture with the brush or graphite assists me in taking ownership of myself, and in cultivating the autonomy and agency over my mind and body that i wasn’t allowed to develop or nurture organically. this is especially important as an abuse survivor; the psychological impact of living with a narcissist and a manipulator is that your mind is not your own when you are with them. your mind grows to become a mirror of their psyche. it develops into a distorted, twisted version of itself...emulating what your abuser thinks of you and how they view you, what their perception of you is. this type of abuse obscures your own visibility into yourself. when you live under that for years and years and years, especially during your formative years as your identity starts to emerge, those early iterations of your personhood is affected in ways that are almost indescribable. as an adult, the idea of being able to access these earlier versions of who you were, who you might have been—it almost feels impossible. just as you were starting to emerge and take on some kind of shape, this outside, external presence took up residence in your psyche and 48 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 48

obliterated it. abuse takes control in very subtle ways— way more than i think we even realize—at least i know that’s the case for me. the way my father had control over me—not just physically, but mentally and emotionally—it’s a very subtle kind of psychological warfare. it’s a way of dying again and again and again; you grow into a shelled version of yourself as an adult. as i create, i’m attempting to repair that shell, trying to glue pieces together, trying to source myself and who i am, while answering the question “who can i be now, now that i know these things?” as i’m learning these things, that becomes the question. “now who can i be? if i can’t go back...i can’t go back and undo what was done to me in my childhood. i can’t abandon the parts of me that helped me survive. i can’t abandon them completely—they’re always going to be with me. i can’t go back and change anything. the only change that can happen is here in the present. change can happen here when i’m standing in front of the canvas, it’s here when i’m putting paint in my hands, it’s here when i’m stretching my arms to move the brush across the surface. that’s the moment where change is and where change can happen. that’s the moment where i can reclaim my power and where i can stand in my own truths and the truths i’ve uncovered and learned. that is where i stand in my own 49 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 49

personal power. those are the moments where change for me occurs. those are the moments. that’s when i can make change. the question becomes “how do i do that?” what changes do i make? what kind of change? how do i change? if i make those changes then who will i become? who can i become? how can i use these former shreds and shards of myself? how can i recreate and reimagine them, really, into parts that can be useful in my selfdevelopment and evolution as a person? how can i reintegrate them in a way that brings me to wholeness and closer to the fullest assertion of my personhood and humanity? /// my healing is yours, too. /// paint is the medium and an activation. 50 AddyeZineA5_2023-01-11.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/23 8:45 AM Page 50