In this blog post we hear from Nicola who has taken part in four art workshops as part of the Speaking Out project.
When my support worker asked me along to a Women’s Aid art group I said yes, just for something to do. As a single parent and full-time student, summer work is hard to find and free time is a luxury that I don’t often get to enjoy. I knew that the art group was part of a funded project aimed at marking Scottish Women’s Aid’s 40th anniversary and thought I’d just go along once, to see what it was like.
I was exhausted from a tough round of uni deadlines, being a single mum to my young son and also having to deal with the abusive aftermath that inevitably follows many women around after they flee an abuser. Abusers don’t like to move on with the same urgency that their victims do and being the target of continued abuse is all too common for women like me. It’s exhausting, extremely challenging and it wears you down. Sadly, even after four and half years of ‘freedom’, it’s just a part of my life.
And so, I arrived at the first session feeling tired, a little nervous about meeting new people and far too early. But, the venue looked pretty great, there was tea and biscuits and the art supplies looked like they had been raided from Priscilla Queen of the Desert’s set design cupboard with glittery disco paper and glamorous feathers – ok, I thought, this is going to be ok.
My support worker was there with a couple of other staff running the project along with the group of women who, like me, have suffered abuse by a partner. We delved into the biscuits and the art supplies with just one guiding principle – free reign to create whatever we wanted (within our loose theme of masks and fans). That is one of the most enjoyable aspects of the group – there are no special skills required. This was truly art as a form of expression, and we had permission to express anything and everything.
After the first session I realized I had vastly underestimated how much I would enjoy it, how valuable it would be, how much I really needed it. Granted, we’re not sculpting the Venus de Milo, it’s just craft, cobbling together bits and pieces of paper, sequins and feathers, scooping biscuit crumbs out of the glue pot. We’re just a group of women like so many other women who have been abused by an intimate partner – ordinary, regular. We’re just mothers and co-workers, scholars and carers, but we are together, creating, pottering, sharing. We are safe. We have permission to say in one breath ‘Did you see the news last night?’ and with the next ‘I remember that time I thought he would kill me’ without causing shock or hurt to creep across a loved ones’ face. We can laugh together about Donald Trump’s hair and we can cry together about the trauma of ‘that time he flipped out in a hotel room abroad’. Each one of us is uniquely different, has had a different experience, a different abuser, a different journey. By coming together over art and craft we can share these differences with a common understanding, and a sense of complete safety, that is hard to find elsewhere.
The art group wasn’t something I would have sought out had my support worker not invited me. I’m a literature student, not ‘arty’ in the traditional sense, but it turns out I didn’t have to be. The art group provides us with an opportunity to make a permanent record of our experiences as women who were / are abused. It’s an outlet for the frustrations and anger that injustice can leave us with and it’s a place of safety to melt away the isolation that abusers rely on to wear their targets down, even long after they have left the relationship.
I’m so grateful to have learned that recovery and support from trauma and abuse doesn’t have to be serious or difficult or soul bearing. It can be as simple as tears and laughter, tea and biscuits, glue sticks and glitter.
By Nicola Muir
Artwork by Nicola and others from the group will feature in the Speaking Out exhibition, on at the Museum of Edinburgh from 11 November until 28 January.
For more information visit http://www.edinburghmuseums.org.uk/Venues/Museum-of-Edinburgh/Exhibitions/2016-17/The-History-of-Women-s-Aid-in-Scotland
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