Domestic Violence Personal Narrative

In an attempt to shift beyond my father’s acts of violence and angry threats, I started to draw. I spent hours alone, after school, weekends, and most of the summers. My mother would bring me crayons and paper to my room. I felt at times she was visiting me. I started with very simple drawings from the Sunday newspaper comic strips to re-drawing my mother’s greeting card set. I realized drawing muffled the sound of my parents arguing, it helped released me from the emotional prison and gave me a source of freedom even if it was for a brief time. When I witness domestic violence, the feeling of unworthiness, guilt, self-blame and trying to appease the abuser you lose your identity along the way. As a child, there is a lack of understanding of having a parent who is encountering abuse and another who is mentally ill. Despite the fear children will maintain incredible allegiance to their abusers, despite the horror of their experiences. My art gave me a safe space because my father was not allowed to mentally come it. Art became my friend, the friend that let me know I was worthy and good at something. My art was my therapist that allowed me to have a voice through crayons, paper and my …show more content…
For children who have been abused or have witnessed violence in their homes and are often silent in their suffering, art expression can be a way for what is secret or confusing to become tangible.

This didn’t last long, my mother discovered my little secret world of drawing and before I knew it she was entering me into my first art show in the children’s division of the annual community art fair. I was exposed and feared losing my safe space. Was I going to lose my sense of freedom? I began to worry, what my father was going to do? My art gave me the strength to have something to fight for, my