Tara Retondo
Fragmented
My trauma has left my memories completely fragmented. When I first learned of a suppressed teenage rape it was a decade later. My brain chose as an act of protection to shield this truth from me, however my body knew the story. Through processing the painful details of what happened I have found my memories to be spliced in pieces. Together they make a full image but they are only revealed to me in parts. When I tried EMDR therapy I saw these memories one by one randomly flashing in my mind. My life played back like a silent horror film. I have learned as a survivor of sexual abuse that memories of the event hurt. While it isn't reliving it, sometimes I feel it might as well be because the wounds still can feel the fresh. My mind knows what happened is over but my nervous system with complex PTSD is convinced I'm frozen in time, shattering all over again.
Shattered
I often say that my traumas left me shattered, like a delicate, fragile, piece of glass that breaks into millions of shards once it hits the ground. This page out of my art therapy journal depicts the very specific moment I physically and mentally, felt myself shatter from the sexual abuse. A mirror across from me held a reflection of the horror that was upon my face. The mirror didn't break right there, but I can't say the same.
Haunted Woods
In the sounds of silence you can hear the screams of a child's cry, haunting memories of her past stretched out like trees in a creepy forest as they leave her lost asking but what question "why"?
This is a page I drew in my art therapy journal right after my mind finally shared through flashbacks of a suppressed trauma that happened to me at four. Up until last year I was only aware of a bullying and a rape I experienced in my teen years. It wasn't until these images appeared and my body reacted so intently to them that I unfortunately found out there was far more to my story. I am now a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. The level of horror my four year old self endured is something I cannot fully describe in words honestly, but through metaphors of imagery I try to tell her story. These internal screams I now carry within show up somatically through my Complex PTSD. Immense amounts of tension and paralysis floods my nervous system as I am forced to remember. Every sensation I hold is that little girl's internal screams that she wished she could've expressed, and it can only be heard in the sounds of silence.
A Child's Moonlit Dreamscape
Childhood trauma can leave us trapped longing for an escape. This painting is of a little girl who dreams of escaping her entrapment, finally able to be free, and fly like a butterfly is meant to. I not only see this little girl becoming free one day, but she also grows up to the woman who learns to spread her own wings. Just like the moon she now shines bright in the darkest of nights. She sits among the stars as a symbol of light for those that need it. She flies as far as her dreams and her wings will take her. This very much describes a touching and beautiful metaphor for my own healing.
inner healing
For this art work I wanted to capture the inner workings of my trauma healing. As a trauma survivor, I have come to know many different wounded younger traumatized parts within myself that are paralyzed with fear, suffering in pain, desperately searching to be found. All they need is for someone to see and hear them and what better person to do that than myself. Through the psychotherapy approach known as "Internal Family Systems" created by Dr. Richard C. Schwartz I have come to know these parts of me. I am able to show compassion towards them and by doing so I have strengthened the relationship I have with myself. We all have survived and mustered the strength to survive at all costs. Through the power of imagery we tell our story. Wether it's learning to swim through the waters of grief, find a path through the haunting, eerie memories of our past, just like one would find their way in a dark and spooky forest, or withstand the brutal coldness and isolation of living alone in a dark cave; I take every part of me hand and hand on my journey of healing now.
Another’s Twisted Imagination
When someone has an idea implanted into their head, you suddenly become the victim without any warning. Their twisted imagination becomes your greatest living nightmare. As a survivor of rape and childhood sexual abuse, I wanted to capture some of my story using the concept of telling the story from words originally not mine. Each word of this poem is from magazine clippings. These words all originally created different meanings from each magazine page but then became mine when I had pieced them together. Trauma is similar in this way, the narrative of the perpetrator's minds are drastically different than the truth every survivor must bear.
The Crime
The words on this painting are lyrics from a song called "The Crime" by an artist named Taylor Bickett. "The crime of being alive" has struck such a cord with me, being a rape and child/teen sexual abuse survivor, I have never found words to be more true. Survivors are forever punished by just simply being alive, existing in a world that can be brutally cruel. There is nothing we did to deserve what happened to us but even with knowing that we still hold such deep rooted shame, especially when we were children when the trauma occurred. How does a child comprehend such heinous acts? I still find it hard to wrap my head around the cruel reality of this world sometimes. I try to make sense of the senseless. The song "The Crime" captures the confusion and endless questioning survivors have about why we had endure the abuse that we did. Nevertheless the real truth of the matter is, what happened to us was wrong, and should simply never happen but the brutal reality is that it does.