OOP (ORDER OF PEACE) is the beginning stages of journaling the release of trauma.
The drawings are free of critical thinking. They emerge as immediate responses to memory, emotion, and the physical sensations associated with revisiting traumatic experiences. Only after I return to them later, with new insight, do I look at them objectively. Sometimes reworking them, if ever so slightly, or not at all. Enhancing a once subconscious thought and bringing it to significance.
I allow and invite the medium's influence on the pages that precede and follow the current entry. Colors bleed, impressions transfer, and marks carry forward beyond their original page. I embrace these traces and work with them. I akin this to accepting both history and the future, coming to terms, and finding peace. The past leaves its impressions on the present. Healing is not erasure. It is learning to live with what remains while continuing to move forward.
I bravely turn the page.
Through methods like these, integrating art into therapy addresses a person's whole experience. This is critical with PTSD.
The journal began while preparing for an Order of Protection and continued throughout the prolonged legal proceedings that followed. Preparing for court required me to repeatedly read emails, text messages, photographs, and other records documenting the abuse. Revisiting these materials often triggered intense emotional and physical reactions. The text drawings became a way of processing those reactions as they occurred. These works are not illustrations of abuse. They are evidence of my response to it. The entries contain anger, fear, grief, resistance, and ultimately survival. They reflect my experience of violence, coercive control, manipulation, intimidation, and the long process of reclaiming autonomy after leaving an abusive individual.
The attempts to lure me back into the relationship often began with apologies, promises to change, and declarations of love. When those efforts failed, threats, intimidation, and retaliation followed. It took four attempts before I was able to leave permanently. The journal records an abbreviation of that journey, and the aftermath, in real time. Art became a way to externalize experiences that were often difficult to articulate through language alone. Many of the entries began as subconscious or instinctive responses before later becoming subjects of reflection and understanding. Through this process, private experiences were transformed into something visible, examinable, and communicable.
While deeply personal, OOP is not solely about my experience. It is also an examination of power, control, survival, and recovery. The work seeks to contribute to broader conversations about intimate "partner" violence, coercive control, accountability, and prevention.
Artists, such as myself, continue to use art as a catalyst for critical conversations about universal human experiences. His threats of revenge porn, promises to "fuck up" my life for as long as he lived, accusations intended to portray me as a racist, and ongoing efforts to manipulate, intimidate, and control me could no longer keep me hostage to the cycle of abuse. In order to recover, I had to seek help, educate myself about coercive control and intimate partner violence, and better understand the dynamics that had gradually eroded my autonomy, peace, and sense of self.
Through that process, I came to understand that the relationship was not built on mutual respect, trust, or care, but on power, control, and exploitation. The more I learned about coercive control, the more clearly I recognized the patterns that had shaped my experience. My work reflects that journey of understanding, recovery, and reclamation. What was intended to diminish my autonomy has instead become material for awareness, education, and resistance.
I am no longer interested in protecting the narrative of the person who harmed me. My interest is in telling the truth about what happened, understanding its effects, and helping others recognize the warning signs before violence escalates.
OOP is both a record of trauma and a record of resistance.
It is the process of reclaiming authorship of my own story.
It is an Order of Peace.
If you or someone you care about is experiencing violence in their home and/or narcissistic abuse, there is help. The National Domestic Violence Hotline recognizes narcissistic abuse and trauma and is available 24/7 in more than 200 languages. Call 1-800-799-7233 to talk with an advocate.
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