coat of arms illustration

***to read my personal coat of arms, see part one here and part two here

last month i posted my personal coat of arms, and said i was going to do an illustration for it.

i started a draft but never finished it. i will still probably do a drawn illustration eventually...but i've been really busy lately.

i decided to illustrate on polyvore, which i have never done. so many survivor bloggers use polyvore as an art therapy tool. i have to say i rather enjoyed it, although i became frustrated by being unable to import a lot of copyrighted pictures. :)

1. something i am proud of: my art. this is what the palette represents.
2. something i hold dear: my family. silhouettes of my husband with our son, and me with our daughter.
3. child self. this is what the teddy bear represents. (i have written about my teddy bear before.)
4. future goals. the sun. i want to be happy, to shine, like the sun.
5. resilience. this is the daffodil--one of my favorite flowers. in spite of dying every winter, the daffodil reemerges, sometimes in the snow, every spring, just as beautiful as before.
6. hope. the butterfly. beauty and grace, hope from turning into a beautiful butterfly from a drab caterpillar, gaining wings and learning to fly.

my personal motto: i am a passionate, loving, and creative woman who is striving to be a better person in order to enrich the lives of my family, friends, and all with whom i come into contact.

this is who i am.

my personal coat of arms: part two

yesterday i posted about a personal coat of arms. it got to be pretty long, so i decided to split it up into two posts. here is the second part.

4- future goals. this is a tough one for me. the ultimate goal....to be happy. but is anyone really happy? no one is happy all the time. i guess the goal here is to learn to be happier more than i am now. learn to manage my depression and PTSD in a way that is healthier. my goal is to continue with therapy, deal with my past in a positive and healthy way, and move forward with my life. my goal is to be a better wife, a better mother, a better person...to be nicer to my husband. to laugh more. to joke around more. to not get so worked up over stupid things.

and the scariest goal of all: to confront my abuser, to tell him what he has done to me and my life. how he has changed me. what he has taken from me, what he has done to my family. saying this sends tremors of fear down my spine. but i think it may be one of the only ways to truly be able to move forward--and what a terrifying leap it is.

5- resilience. another question. perhaps this means, how am i going to be resilient? i had to read up on the term 'resilience' in a psychological context. resilience is, in effect, recovery from trauma. taking the horrific experiences and turning them into a strength. becoming a strong person in spite of my childhood.

so how do i become a resilient person? i don't think i can do it alone. i need help. my husband, here by my side, is my biggest help. in spite of being frustrated by my issues, my instability, he is still here (a miracle in my eyes) and he still loves me. he tells me i am strong and tries to get me to see that i can be better than i am. my therapist, as well. she is helping me, treating my mental illness, slowly helping me to heal. if my husband is my support, she is my guide through this scary journey of healing.

the american psychological association suggests "ways to build resilience." these include: maintaining good relationships with close family members
avoid seeing crises/stressful events as unbearable problems
accepting circumstances that can't be changed
developing realistic goals and moving toward them
taking decisive actions in adverse situations
looking for opportunities of self-discovery
developing self-confidence
keeping a long-term perspective
maintaining a hopeful outlook
to take care of one's mind and body
learning from the past
maintaining flexibility and balance
paying attention to one's needs
engaging in relaxing activities that one enjoys

that's a lot to think about, and way more than i can (or wish to) address right now. so i will talk about the ones that i feel are most pertinent to me.

i have already talked about working on my relationship with my family members in my goals section. this is very important to me...and frankly a difficult task. it's hard for me to be nice when i'm struggling with flashbacks and nightmares and my own personal demons. but i have got to learn, for them.

i definitely need to work toward not seeing stressful situations as unbearable. when i get extremely upset...it seems my mind instantly gravitates toward suicide, which is definitely not healthy.

developing self-confidence....that is a big one. possibly the hardest hurdle for me to overcome. i have talked a lot about this in the past and so i won't go into more detail here.

the last i will discuss is engaging in relaxing activities one enjoys. for me...this is my art. for a very long time i have been doing very little, if not nothing, with it. until recently when i started taking an art class again. and i just love this. i love the two hours a week i have to paint....where i feel like myself, at the most basic and most pure level of who i am.

so, resilience. these are some pretty good ways to become more resilient to my past, even to my present, thanks to PTSD and depression. i have become more resilient than i have been in the past and i can continue to be more so.

6- hope. this is a big word. hope. i have hope for the future. hope for a day where i won't think about the abuse. hope for the day that i can be happy....without something big and dark and nasty lurking in the back of my mind. hope for being a better person. hope for better relationships with those i love. i have hope. some might call it faith. to me...it is the same thing. faith that my life will get better. hope is what has kept me alive. without hope for a better life, without hope of being a better person, there is nothing else, is there? even with my family, even having my family, if there is no hope for a better life for them, then what is there? hope is the driving force behind all of us, i think. it is a fundamental part of life, what keeps us moving forward. hope for love, hope for money, hope for a better job, hope for a family, hope for healing, hope for happiness.

so now...for the last part. a personal motto. i wasn't sure how to do this either. so more researching on the internet....and i found a great way to do it. here is the format: "i am a _____, _____, and ______ person who is ____ing" phrase.

i am a passionate, loving, and creative woman who is striving to be a better person in order to enrich the lives of my family, friends, and all with whom i come into contact.

so there it is. my personal motto. i hope that's how it's supposed to be done.

so now...i challenge you, all of you readers out there, to create your own. this was a great way to reflect upon myself and my life.

thanks tara for inspiring me to do this.

my personal coat of arms

recently i discovered a blog of a fellow survivor, tara, who blogs at broken but learning to heal. i saw this idea that she put up on her blog: a personal coat of arms. somewhere in my distant memory i think i have done this before, but obviously can't remember....it was probably ten years ago at least. so i think i'm going to do it again, and would invite anyone out there who would like to participate to please do so.

so here's the setup. it is divided into six sections and a personal motto. here are the sections:
1-something you are proud of
2-something you hold dear
3-child self
4-future goals
5-resilience
6-hope

i have decided that i am going to do both a written and a drawn coat of arms. my coat of arms will also be split into two posts because as i'm writing i've found it's pretty lengthy.

1- something i am proud of. i am proud of my art. i am proud of the way i can pour my emotion out onto a piece of paper by means of a pen, a pencil, a paintbrush. i am proud of the message my art conveys--it is my own, my soul, out there for the world to see. i am proud of myself for being courageous enough to show such personal parts of myself to the world, and to be open for criticism.

2- something i hold dear. i hold my family dear. my husband, my beautiful children. my chest aches thinking about how much i love them, how much they mean to me. my family is my world. i hold onto them inside of me with a fierce grip, one that i will never let go, never loosen. i hold the sweet smiles, the hugs, the word "mommy" and the love dearer than my own breath. i need them, i need their presence in my life, i need my husband's love and acceptance, the love and trust of my children.

3- my child self. to be honest, i'm not really sure what this is asking. who is my inner child? i haven't really addressed this much in therapy, if at all. i have been thinking about it a lot lately, reading others' experiences in healing and caring for their own inner child.

my inner child is scared. she feels terror, betrayal, confusion, physical and emotional hurt. my inner child needs to be held close, and to hear someone she loves tell her that she is loved, she is a good girl, she is worth something. she needs to be rocked back and forth and told that everything is going to be okay, everything is going to work out. she needs to believe that. and understand that even if everything doesn't work out the way she thinks it will...it will still be okay. my inner child needs to feel joy, needs to feel safe and protected.

my adult self needs that, too.

tomorrow i will post the rest of them.