Ella couldn’t tell her Carson Art Therapist what had happened to her. At three years of age, the things that she’d survived in life’s first year were locked inside her as memory that had no words attached, because Ella had no words back then. Even her adoptive parents didn’t have many details about Ella’s history; they knew there had been enough “abuse and neglect” that Ella and her brother had been removed from their biological parents’ custody. They could see that Ella cringed in terror at the sight of most men and often awoke with night terrors, so they knew she needed help. But they could offer no more information to the Carson Art Therapist.
Ella loved the Art therapist’s large rolls of paper and beautiful Cray Pas oil pastels. On this visit, she drew colored shapes, and then, with the happiest face, Ella grasped a black pastel and colored assiduously over every bright shape and color. She deepened the pressure on the pastel and paper, and expanded the black until it covered everything. Ella’s face stiffened; she took the black pastel and broke it into pieces.
Her Carson Art Therapist peeled back the edges of the paper on the broken pieces and handed them back to her, encouraging, “Even the broken pieces are yours.” With great focus, Ella grasped the black shards and colored until the black Cray Pas wore away to nothing. Her small hand was in command of the great darkness she drew out of herself and onto the paper. She then took a new Cray Pas, a deep red color. She drew a looming, relentlessly jagged shape in the upper corner.
“What is the story of this drawing?” asked her Carson Art Therapist.
“It’s a scary storm, and a scary monster and I don’t want it anymore.” Ella deliberately crumpled and then folded the black parts of the large paper. When she came to the red shape, she raised her voice and sharply commanded, “GO!”—and then, appearing suddenly frightened, she turned for help from her therapist, “Fold it all up!” which her therapist, of course, did, asking Ella to direct her as she did, “Like this?”
“YES!”
“Come, Ella, let’s draw together now. How about your family?”
Ella’s breathing evened out as she sat in front of the new paper, across from her Carson Art Therapist. She drew her Daddy’s arms wondrously long and encircling around her and the family. Her mommy’s feet were drawn large and solidly planted next to her. Mom and Dad formed a circle around her and her brother.
Emma’s Art Therapist noticed that Emma drew her own hands large and with each of her ten fingers distinctly articulated. Her mouth, with teeth, was similarly complete. These were hands and a mouth that were capable of drawing out her own truths, at her own pace, and resolving them with her drawings and her stories where she is the narrator and the artist, and no longer powerless. Together, through the facilitated art process, Emma would reset the stones of her earliest foundation, so that her life ahead, full of color and love, will be well supported.
by JAC Patrissi
