They will try to destroy you and call it love
Today is an extra day, a freebie, and I hope it feels that way. Easy, spacious, yours.
I’ve got two new pieces for you today — I hope that in some way they help.
love, brit
New Art
Familiar epiphanies 🌔 a few recent ones for me:
I need plenty of sleep to feel well
While telling the truth can, sometimes, change everything- usually it’s not so dramatic. There’s more space to surprise myself and others than I thought.
Seeing friends makes everything feel lighter, even if nothing is changed
When Miko is barking at me she is trying to communicate something, not just hurt my ears. I can listen and meet needs instead of resisting. (This goes for more than the dog.)
It’s possible that I’m safer than I feel
This sticker is for Feb patrons - join a tier with a sticker reward before midnight if you’d like one.
“They will try their best to destroy you and call it love” -Alok Vaid-Menon
Some terrible things happen in an instant, fitting into a single sharp sentence to convey how bad it is.
But other injuries happen repeatedly, as patterns over time. They are harder to pinpoint, camouflaged into the cultures that made them, like family and religious systems, rape culture and white supremacy. The sense that these terrible things are normal alienates us from ourselves and slows down the process of seeking safety and making repair.
Our complex wounds deserve to be understood, and held with reverence and care.
(Note on wording, “Complex trauma”1)
I made this piece for our February patrons. If you’d like a print, join us on a “new art” tier before midnight.
Late Winter Shop Update
New prints & stickers are up in the member shop, too:
*Complex trauma is a term used to describe traumas are occur in an ongoing or persistent way over time, and are usually interpersonal. It is commonly associated with childhood trauma.
I drafted this piece many years ago when I was first diagnosed with PTSD from complex trauma and I was trying to explain it to my friends. I found myself saying, “it’s like, the terrible things that happen so much that they seem normal, so it affects you on another level too. Like racism, or abusive caregivers when you’re a kid.”
Like all my work that interacts with mental health concepts, this isn’t meant to offer a technical definition, but to describe my personal experience.